Welcome to Provide Your Own - Tech


As we all know, we live in a highly technological society. While that very technology provides many blessings, it is also enslaving. We are constantly at the mercy of manufacturers, and the bulk of them overseas. We cannot build anything ourselves, nor can we even repair the things we own. What is worse is their inherent short product lifetimes, forcing us into a constant purchase cycle.
Here at ProvideYourOwn, we want to improve on this sorry state of affairs. Our goal is to pioneer techniques of building and repair for these technological marvels. As we progress together, we will gain the knowledge and tools to build, hack and repair own stuff. Manufacturing will likely never return home in the way it was. However, we can change things at a personal and local level by manufacturing ourselves.

Make Your Own Stereo Microscope – On the Cheap!

By Scott Daniels | Published: May 14, 2012

Do you have an old telephoto lens lying around that you can’t use anymore? If you add an inexpensive pair of binoculars and a couple of prisms, you can make your own zoomable stereo microscope. This article tells how – http://www.funsci.com/fun3_en/uzoom/uzoom.htm… Read the rest

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Make Your Own PCB
  1. Making Your Own Printed Circuit Board - An Overview, part 2 (coming soon)
  2. Making Your Own Printed Circuit Board - An Overview, part 1

Making Your Own Printed Circuit Board – An Overview, part 1

By Scott Daniels | Published: April 30, 2012
PCB Image Transfer

If you start tinkering with electronics, eventually you will want to make your own printed circuit board, or PCB as it is generally called. In the olden days, this subject was pretty straightforward. You went down to your local RadioShack, and bought an etching kit. You drew your single sided design using a marking pen and some supplied stickers. The board was fairly big, and it had only a few simple through-hole components.

Those days are now pretty much gone. Now most electronic projects are much more complex, the boards are much smaller, and you need to deal with 2 layers, surface mount components and vias. In this overview, I will tackle the different problems you may encounter and the methods available. I won’t cover PCB layout software or commercially made boards. I’ll deal with those topics in separate articles.

Basic Steps

Making a PCB involves several steps. Today’s PCBs require a lot more steps than they used to, but for your own use, these later amenities can be omitted. The steps involved are:

  1. Imaging your design onto a blank PCB
  2. Etching
  3. Drilling
  4. Amenities – solder mask, silk screen, tin plating
  5. Vias
Each of the steps can be fairly involved and each … Read the rest
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The Ultimate Makers Guide to Android Apps – Buy $1000 of equipment for $30

By Scott Daniels | Published: February 15, 2012
Samsung Acclaim

How would you like to buy dozens of gadgets and other useful equipment totaling over $1,000 for only $30?What’s the catch? There is no catch. It is simply the tremendous inherent value in today’s smart phones. Because of their built-in sensors, clever developers have created a large collection of apps, that replace a whole slew of equipment. Best of all, the controls and displays of all this equipment is far superior, often includes data logging and is completely self-contained in a small gadget that fits into your pocket.

My Story

I have wanted a tablet computer for over twenty years. Now that they have finally arrived I have been viewing them with a keen interest, but high-end tablets are too expensive for me. The looked really attractive, but I recently discovered an app that I couldn’t live without that requires bluetooth (more on this app later), which the Kindle Fire lacks. Mulling it over, I had an idea – what if I put the tablet on hold for a while, and instead see if I could buy a cheap, used Android phone.

I have heard about all the amazing things people could do with iPhones and Android phones, but … Read the rest

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Getting Started in 3D Printing the Easy Way

By Scott Daniels | Published: February 8, 2012

3D printing is all the rage in the Maker community these days. I am itching myself to own both a desktop CNC and 3D printer, but haven’t found the time yet.

One of the biggest hurdles is actually not in the hardware, but at the software end. There are lots of hurdles at the hardware end, but without the ability to create and export designs, those issues are moot.

There is a new option available to solve the software problem. It is called TinkerCad. You don’t have to install any software either. Just go to their website and start designing. They even have a video showing how easy it is. It really is that easy. It is kind of like playing with toy blocks, except they are resizeable.

Once you have a finished design, you can then export it directly to 3D print vendors such as Ponoko. They are even running a contest for those using TinkerCad.

Why wait any longer. Give it a try and get started printing today. I am.

UPDATE: I cannot get this HTML5 application to work on either Linux Ubuntu computers, nor older Windows XP machines. If you have any experience with TinkerCAD, … Read the rest

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Easy Way to Send Large Files

By Scott Daniels | Published: January 6, 2012

If you have ever tried to e-mail a large file to someone, you know how much trouble you often run into. It turns out there are a number of free file transfer websites available to accomplish this task easily. After reviewing a few of them, I found Sendoid.com to be most to my liking.

Its strengths include direct peer-to-peer transfer, with 128 bit encryption and optional password protection. Their servers are never directly involved in the file transfer, since the file is directly transmitted from your computer to the one you are sending it to. Best of all, you don’t need to create an account to use this service.

Using  it is as simple as a single click to select your file and (optionally) attach a password. It then provides a link to the file to share with others. You then just keep that web-page open until your file is retrieved. The open web-page session is what provides the peer-to-peer connection.

That’s it to using it – it is fast, secure, and convenient. Give it a try next time you need to transfer a big file.

UPDATE: There were a couple of comments posted that referred to some other file … Read the rest

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How to Insert Code into Your WordPress Blog

By Scott Daniels | Published: December 12, 2011
code_sample

If you do any coding whatsoever – either for a website, your blog or an Arduino, you have seen code blocks in a web page. Every now and then I need to do the same in this website. My first thought was – this is WordPress, the most popular blogging software in the world. The functionality I need is either built-in or a plug-in is readily available. While I found that belief to be true, it was not nearly as easy as I had expected it to be. Instead of readily finding a quick and simple solution, I found a lot of confusing and non-working ideas and articles. I have put together what I consider a simple and straightforward solution which I will detail here. It requires two plugins and is a WYSIWYG implementation.

Fixing TinyMCE

The first thing you must do is to make some changes to the default TinyMCE configuration. This is the editor called Visual in your WordPress admin page. This is easily done with a very safe plugin called Visual Code Editor. This plugin basically facilitates writing code in the TinyMCE editor. Some of its more necessary features are:

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Cheap Alternative for Hard to Find CDS Light Sensor

By Scott Daniels | Published: December 6, 2011
cds_cell

CdS (Cadmium Sulfide) photo-resistors are commonly used for detecting light levels. Their resistance varies considerably depending on the intensity of light striking them. They are common, fairly cheap and easy to use. So what’s the problem? They are becoming hard to find. The reason is because of the RoHS directive. Since CdS cells contain cadmium, a toxic heavy metal, this important component is no longer stocked by major electronics distributors. The good news is that not only is there an excellent alternative, but it is more versatile and vastly cheaper.

If you guessed photo-diode you are close, but even better is the humble LED. If you are building an analog circuit, then you will be limited to photo-diodes and photo-transistors due to their greater sensitivity. If, however, you are building a micro-controller based circuit such as a PIC or Arduino, then you can use a simple LED to achieve the same end and even more.

Photo-diodes and LEDs

Both of these devices are essentially the same. Both are diodes enclosed in a translucent case. They will both permit a small amount of reverse current to flow through them when they are reversed biased. The difference is that the photo-diode … Read the rest

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The LED Lighting Revolution – A Primer

By Scott Daniels | Published: October 21, 2011
White LED

A lighting revolution is coming. LEDs will usher it in, but the road may be rocky along the way. Why? Because LEDs are a radically different type of lighting than what we are used to. For them to be used effectively, we need to change our way of thinking about lighting.

The Problem

LEDs are so different from Edison-style incandescent bulbs, that trying to create a drop-in replacement is problematic. This article in particular points out that current LED offerings have poor color spectrum, poor luminosity, and poor reliability. Ouch – they don’t sound very good at all, at least as screw-in replacements for a hundred year-old technology. While I think that they will eventually achieve a screw-in replacement that is fairly decent (look at this innovative offering from Phillips as an example), this pursuit is really the wrong approach. If you want to learn more about how LEDs work and how we can create some really special lighting that is hard or impossible to do with yesterday’s technology than read on. The best thing about LEDs is that the technology to solve our lighting problems is not in the future. It is available today. You just need to know … Read the rest

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Advanced Arduino – Including Multiple Libraries In Your Project

By Scott Daniels | Published: August 9, 2011
Arduino IDE

The Arduino IDE is a great environment for getting started programming microprocessors. It radically lowers the cost of entry, and greatly simplifies the learning curve. The importance of these properties should not be underestimated. Most of us are capable of advanced microprocessor programming given time, desire and opportunity even without the Arduino environment. The biggest obstacle, however, is getting started. When that first hurdle is at last overcome, we can then soar to greater heights. That is where the Arduino is an incredible blessing. It is so simple that it removes most of the barriers to entry. From scratch, we can get started in microprocessors and build our confidence and knowledge at an easy pace. Once that is done, then we can advance to more complex projects and techniques.

That easy means of entry, however, can also become a limitation. Because the Arduino IDE makes the cost of getting started very low, that same simplicity can also prevent us from advancing to more complex projects. A good example is when you want to create new libraries that make use of existing libraries. When you try to do so in the usual fashion of including libraries, you are confronted with compiler … Read the rest

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Arduino’s AnalogWrite – Converting PWM to a Voltage

By Scott Daniels | Published: June 15, 2011
D-A_converter

When I first started working with the Arduino platform (it was also my first experience with microcontrollers), I was a little surprised that analogWrite didn’t actually output a voltage, but a PWM (pulse-width modulated) signal. After all, the ATmega had a A-D (analog to digital) converter along with Arduino’s analogRead. The complementary analogWrite function was there, but no D-A (digital to analog) converter on the AVR chip itself. Fortunately, there is an easy way to convert a PWM signal to an analog voltage. To do so you only need to implement a simple single-pole low pass filter. Does it sound complicated? It isn’t. There are some great online tools to help. Once you learn how to make one, you can quickly and easily output analog voltages from not only the Arduino, but PICs as well as any other microcontroller that has PWM output.

PWM Primer

Pulse width modulation (or PWM as it is most commonly known), is a way of encoding a voltage onto a fixed frequency carrier wave. Commonly used for radio controlled devices, it is similar to FM (frequency modulation) or AM (amplitude modulation) in what it accomplishes. Each type of modulation scheme has its own advantages … Read the rest

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