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 Solder Flux

By Scott | Published: June 17, 2012

I found this great video on making your own flux for soldering. Flux is a must have product when doing any electronics work, especially for surface mount parts. It helps to clean dirty parts and improves the surface tension of the molten solder so it stays on the pads instead of running between them (called bridging).

One would think that making your own solder flux wouldn’t be as good as the real thing. That may be true in some cases, but for most this at-home method is not only inexpensive but allows you to vary the thickness of the flux. Commercial flux comes in viscosities ranging from a watery liquid to a waxy paste. To understand how to create your own viscosity, let’s look at the recipe:

  • Isopropyl alcohol – the kind in your medicine cabinet
  • Pine Rosin – thickened sap from trees. Used to make violin bow hairs grab the strings and make them sing. Search for violin rosin on e-bay, and buy for a few bucks.
  • Glycerin – just a drop or two per batch (2-3%). Buy in drugstores.

To make a batch, simply crush the rosin into a powder with a hammer (put into an envelope first … Read the rest

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The End of College Education?

By Scott | Published: June 14, 2012

Recently, I wrote about how anyone can use Khan Academy to obtain a top class math education from the basics to advanced calculus. The handwriting is now on the wall for over-priced college education. Just as the Internet has been a great equalizer for independent journalism, it is now poised to do the same for education – even college education. Sebastian Thrun, a prominent Standford professor is aiming to do just that. This Forbes article describes his vision for a college degree available for only $100 that anyone anywhere in the world can obtain.

His education initiative Udacity is now online. You can see the course offerings here. While it doesn’t offer many courses yet, his vision is bold, and he has the credentials to make it happen. While online learning has been with us for awhile, a major stumbling block has been certification. That obstacle will soon be overcome, and Udacity may just pave the way.

The other major innovation by Udacity is integrating the course material into real world problems and their solutions. Instead of long, isolated, boring lectures, you actually work on a project as part of the course, learning what you need to know along … Read the rest

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Tools for Math and Math Education

By Scott | Published: June 11, 2012

Whether you are a student, have school age children, or have used math at all in your life, you have no doubt struggled at some point with mathematics. Math is one of those things that can be difficult no matter how good you are at it. I know – I am very good in math but I still struggle.

I wanted to share two excellent resources that make that struggle much, much easier. So much easier that, for many of us, math may cease to be a struggle.

Math Software

When it comes to solving and visualizing mathematical problems, good math solving software can make a difficult task significantly easier. Unfortunately, the mainstream offerings such as Maple, Matlab, and Mathematica are way too expensive for casual use. Now there is an alternative called Sage.

Sage is open source, and you can both download it (and run it on just about any OS) or run it from a browser. It has a simple interface, and is fast and powerful. This video gives a history of the project and at about 38:45, you can see a short demo.

With Sage, you don’t have to toil over an algebra or … Read the rest

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Guide to Arduino and AVR Communications

By Scott | Published: June 6, 2012
easytransfer_serial_arduino_communications_library

If you spend any time playing with Arduinos, ATtinys or looking at AVR spec sheets, you soon encounter a bewildering smörgåsbord of acronyms for various communication protocols. With examples such as I2C, LIN, SPI, TWI, USI, etc., it can get pretty confusing. If you don’t believe me, just take a look communications column for Digikey’s listing for the ATmega series chips. Confused yet?

What do these terms mean? How do you choose the chip that meets your needs? How do you make use of these protocols?  In this article, I take the mystery out of all these acronyms, and provide a brief overview of what they mean and how you use them in your projects. We’ll examine each of the protocols, including some of the terms that are not exactly protocols, and survey some of the software libraries available to make communications easier.

Communication Protocols

SPI

The SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) is the protocol used by the ICSP (in-circuit serial programming) facility transmitted over the ubiquitous 6-pin (2×3 pin) header used to program AVR chips. It is useful not only for programming AVR chips, but also for other types of communications between ICs. From Wikipedia:Movie Carol (2015)

SPI interface diagram

The

… Read the rest
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Make Your Own PCB
  1. Making Your Own Printed Circuit Board - An Overview, part 1
  2. Making Your Own Printed Circuit Board - An Overview, part 2

Making Your Own Printed Circuit Board – An Overview, part 2

By Scott | Published: May 19, 2012

In the first part of this article, we covered the extensive subject of imaging a design onto a blank board and the best way to etch that board. After completing these steps, you will have a PCB almost ready for assembly. I will now explain the remaining steps. Some are essential and some not so much. As usual, each has their own set of problems to overcome.

Drilling

Now that you have a nice shiny PCB with your traces and pads imprinted on it, you need to drill the holes for thru-hole components and vias. The easiest way to do this is with a desktop drill press. Since I don’t have a dedicated PCB fabrication setup, I found another easy method for drilling holes at home. Harbor freight sells a 12v powered Dremel-type tool. While this tool is way under-powered for most tasks, it turns out to be a virtue when drilling small PCB holes. I simply chuck up a #60 bit and the hole already etched in the copper pad provides a nice indentation to hold the bit steady. The low power prevents the drill from getting squirrelly and jumping out of the indentation. You can probably get similar … Read the rest

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Make Your Own Stereo Microscope – On the Cheap!

By Scott | 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 1
  2. Making Your Own Printed Circuit Board - An Overview, part 2

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

By Scott | 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
… Read the rest
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The Ultimate Makers Guide to Android Apps – Buy $1000 of equipment for $30

By Scott | 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 | 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 | 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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