Low Voltage Labs

2013 Seattle Mini Maker Faire Starts Tomorrow

Eric — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 06:04:33 +0000

The 2013 Seattle Mini Maker Faire starts tomorrow at the Seattle Science Center. Low Voltage Labs will be demonstrating our Raspberry Pi Media Center.

We are located in booth #31, hope to see you there.

2013 Bay Area Maker Faire starts today

Eric — Sat, 18 May 2013 15:05:16 +0000

The 2013 Bay Area Maker Faire starts today. The Low Voltage Labs and Samurai Circuits booth is located in south central part of the Expo building, booth #520. Hope to see you there.

http://makerfaire.com/makers/raspberry-pi-and-arduino-project-demonstrations/

Visit Low Voltage Labs at the Bay Area Maker Faire 2013

Eric — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:10:07 +0000

The Bay Area Maker Faire is only a few days away. Visit Low Voltage Labs and Samurai Circuits we will have a booth located in south central part of the Expo building, booth #520.

http://makerfaire.com/makers/raspberry-pi-and-arduino-project-demonstrations/

LinuxFest Northwest 2013 presentation

Eric — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:24:55 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation at LinuxFest Northwest 2013 on Sunday. The presentation was an overview of how to connect your Raspberry Pi to the outside world using the GPIO.
Raspberry Pi GPIO for the software geek

You can download a PDF of the slides I used for the presentation from the LinuxFest Northwest site:
Raspberry Pi GPIO for the software geek PDF slides

Already looking forward to LinuxFest Northwest 2014!

Low Voltage Labs now has an events page

Eric — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:34:50 +0000

Keep up to date on our future happens with the events page. The page lists upcoming events that Low Voltage Labs will be attending as well as events we’ve attended in the past.

Coming soon:

April 27-28, 2013: LinuxFest NW 2013, I will be presenting Hardware interfacing with the Raspberry Pi GPIO for the software geek
June 15, 2013: Our application for the Eugene Mini Maker Faire 2013 has been accepted.

Pumpkin PCB files in KiCAD format

Eric — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 23:26:57 +0000

This year at the Seattle and Portland Mini Maker Faires I did a presentation on getting started with designing your own PCB using KiCAD. In this presentation as an example I created a pumpkin shaped PCB with a candle like flickering LED.

Here are the KiCAD schematic and PCB layout files to use as the starting point for your own project:
KiCAD schematic and PCB files (zip file)

These files are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

You can see photos of the actual PCB on Flickr:
Great Pumpkin PCB photos

The Pumpkin PCB is now also available as a kit:
Low Voltage Labs Pumpkin PCB kit

Photos from the Portland Mini Maker Faire 2012

Eric — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 01:00:46 +0000

Thanks to everyone who visited the Low Voltage Labs booth at the Portland Mini Maker Faire.

You can see more photos from the Portland Mini Maker Faire on Flickr or Google Plus.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lowvoltagelabs/sets/72157631537730129/
https://plus.google.com/photos/115017817208112204973/albums/5788191122002116257

Portland Mini Maker Faire starts tomorrow

Eric — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 00:10:25 +0000

The Low Voltage Labs booth is all setup for the Portland Mini Maker Faire starting tomorrow.
Hope to see you there.

Visit the Low Voltage Labs booth at the Portland Mini Maker Faire 2012

Eric — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 13:49:50 +0000

OMSI is organizing Portland Oregon’s first Mini Maker Faire on September 15-16, 2012. The faire will be located in OMSI’s north parking lot.

Low Voltage Labs will have a booth at the Portland Mini Maker Faire. I will also be speaking Sunday on how to create a printed circuit board using open source software KiCAD. You can see a preview of the same talk I did at the Seattle Mini Maker Faire.

Find out more at OMSIs website:
http://www.omsi.edu/maker-faire-pdx

Date: September 15-16, 2012
Time: 10am-6pm
Cost: $12 adults, $8 youth (3-13) and seniors (63+)
Located at: OMSI’s north parking lot

Portland Mini Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly showcase of creativity and cool technology, and a celebration of the Maker movement. It’s inspiring, stimulating, and fun for all ages.

Maker Faire is a weekend filled with an incredible variety of exhibits, talks, demonstrations, and performances bridging arts, crafts, science and engineering—many of them hands-on and all of them engaging. Maker Faire is a reflection of our community at its very best.

Bring your whole family and enjoy a full day at the inaugural Portland Mini Maker Faire!

Low Voltage Labs now has a forum

Eric — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 15:08:13 +0000

Low Voltage Labs now has a forum at http://forum.lowvoltagelabs.com/

You can create an account on the forum or just sign in using your Google, OpenID, Twitter, or Facebook account.

VideoOverlayShield now available from Seeed Studio

Eric — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 09:21:48 +0000

I am happy to announce that the VideoOverlayShield is now available from Seeed Studio.

The board has all the same great features it’s always had but now at a new lower price of $39.95.

Purchase the VideoOverlayShield at Seeed Studio for $39.95.

Bullduino Unboxing

Eric — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 14:45:40 +0000

I recently applied for the 2012 Red Bull Creation contest at http://www.redbullusa.com/creation

Yesterday I received my official Bullduino board so I thought I would share a few photos. The box didn’t include any instructions, so I guess if you can’t figure it out you don’t deserve to be in the contest.

Custom cardboard box:

Two bulls on a circuit board, first time I’ve seen that:

Black solder mask:

Atmel ATMEGA328:

See more photos here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/115017817208112204973/albums/5757236654665771553
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lowvoltagelabs/sets/72157630244743638/

Photos from the Seattle Mini Maker Faire 2012

Eric — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 03:03:05 +0000

I’ve posted some photos from the Seattle Mini Maker Faire.

You can see them on Flickr or Google Plus.
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lowvoltagelabs/sets/72157630049133116/
Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/photos/115017817208112204973/albums/5750749757409609921

Seattle Mini Maker Faire presentation

Eric — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 18:32:26 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation at the 2012 Seattle Mini Maker Faire on Sunday.
The presentation was an overview of creating a printed circuit board using the KiCAD suite of electronic design automation tools.

Here is a PDF of the slides I used for the presentation:
Release your hardware hacker potential with KiCAD

Also a big thanks again to DorkbotPDX PCB, Midnight Maker and Seeed Studio for the PCB samples, they were a big hit!

DorkbotPDX PCB http://dorkbotpdx.org/wiki/pcb_order
Midnight Maker http://www.midnightmaker.com/
Seeed Studio http://www.seeedstudio.com/

Join me at the Seattle Mini Maker Faire

Eric — Wed, 30 May 2012 05:08:51 +0000

I’ll be speaking at the Seattle Mini Maker Faire this coming Sunday June 3, 2012 at 12:40PM. This is the first year for the Seattle Mini Maker Faire and it’s being held at the Seattle Center in Seattle, WA, USA.

The presentation will take you step-by-step through the process of creating a printed circuit board using the KiCAD suite of electronic design automation tools. From schematic to gerber files, you can do it all with the open source tools in KiCAD.

Here is the presentation schedule for the Seattle Mini Maker Faire:
http://makerfaireseattle.com/presentations/

Hope to see you there.

VideoOverlayShield is now Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike

Eric — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:01:37 +0000

We’ve decide to update the license on the VideoOverlayShield product. Previously it was licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike, which says you can copy and remix the product but not for commercial purposes.

We have decided that this is no longer necessary and have changed the license of the VideoOverlayShield to the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. This allows the copy and remix of the product even for commercial purposes. This also puts the product more in line with the values of the Open Source Hardware (OSHW) Definition.

Slides from my presentation on gEDA

Eric — Mon, 16 May 2011 23:57:06 +0000

Last year I did a presentation on getting started with gEDA at the 2010 Open Source Bridge conference. I just received an email from someone asking for the slides from that presentation. I thought why not post them for everyone.

I don’t have complete presentation notes but you can view the speaker notes I did make from the action menu at the bottom of the full screen presentation.

View them full screen here:
https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dccz7pqb_213gx7nb5f2

Join me tonight at the March PLUG Advanced Topics meeting

Eric — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:58:27 +0000

I’ll be speaking tonight at the Portland Linux/Unix Group advanced topics meeting. The topic is going to be creating a printed circuit board using the gEDA suite of electronic design automation tools.

Here is the announcement from the PLUG mailing list:
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/pipermail/plug-announce/2011q1/000656.html

The meeting is at 7PM tonight (Tuesday), March 15th at Free Geek: 1731 SE 10TH AVE, Portland, OR.

Hope to see you there.

Arduino shield board outline in gEDA format

Eric — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:43:37 +0000

I have been working on a few different shield boards for the Arduino platform. In an attempt to make life easier for myself I created a couple starter files for my future projects. The zip file below includes a schematic and PCB file in gEDA format. The board has the four headers and mounting holes for an Arduino shield board. I’ve decided to release the files into the wild for anyone to use.

Arduino shield outline schematic and layout files in gEDA format (zip file)

These files are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Low Voltage Labs now has a wiki

Eric — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 18:43:36 +0000

Low Voltage Labs now has a wiki at http://wiki.lowvoltagelabs.com/

I plan to use the wiki for product documentation, future product ideas, and listing resources related to electronics. Let me know what you think.