The image above shows an Electro Wire Stripper that might be very useful for all of us.

 “For years we’ve used razor blades to do this, as the tiniest wires don’t have a slot on our trusty wire strippers. But often we cut all the way though the conductor (or many of the strands) when doing so.”

If setup correctly, it can be very precise and give feedback telling when the blades have cut deep enough, and this is how it could be used:

• Sight down the blades.
• Align the blades with where the wire should be stripped.Move the wire into the blades having the blades cut into the insulation.
• When the blades cut through the insulation and contact the wire the LED will light.
• Spin the wire or the tool to cut the insulation completely around the wire.
• Remove the wire from the tool and pull off the insulation.

This is a really cool and clever hack! What do you think?

(via Hackaday and thingiverse)

For example, the Papilio Plus has an external SRAM attached to the FPGA and it also has 4M bits of FLASH attached but the problem is that this memory is very slow to access and here comes the project  that Alex shared with us on papilio.cc :

“It would be nice to have a fast, parallel access ROM attached, but how does one turn a SRAM which loses its contents at power off into a permanent non volatile ROM? This project addresses that issue!

The basic priciple is to store the ROM contents into the comparatively slow serial flash then copy them at power on into the SRAM before handing over control to the user. We need to bootstrap the SRAM…”

In his article alex explained how to store data in FLASH and how to copy this data from FLASH to SRAM and then talked about the different limitations of this project.

Click here for the full article, enjoy!

Feel free to discuss in the comments thread.

Thanks for sharing your project with us, Alex!

Read the article to see an EagleUp image of the Papilio Plus PCB:

Here at Gadget Factory we’re happy to announce that the first release of the Arcade Blaster application is now officially available for download!

The new Arcade Blaster application makes it easier then ever to load games to the Papilio Arcade hardware. It works just like MAME, simply provide ROMs that you own and it takes care of everything. You will be up and running with your games in less then 15 seconds. If you’ve been on the fence about buying the Papilio Arcade then wait no longer, the Papilio Arcade is available for $84.99 at Seeed Studio.

The Arcade Blaster is a new multi-platform application that simplifies using Papilio Arcade kit and eliminates the need to directly work on HDL sources.

The new application runs on Windows as well as Linux and both JRE and FTDI drivers are part of the installer however you can still choose the Arcade Blaster compact version If you have these components already installed.

A documentation page is also being released at the Arcade Wiki for any information about the application you can go to this page to know all about the installation, requirements, how to use it and more…

• Here’s a link to the Arcade Blaster documentation page.
• Download the Windows Installer with Java.
• Download the Windows Installer without Java.

The Gadget Factory Team

For everyone who seeks a solid guide to help them develop their VHDL skills here is a free book we found that will help you get all that and much more.

The book was written by Bryan Mealy and Fabrizio Tappero, you can download the electronic version of this book for free here: freerangefactory.org

“Feedback and Contribution: The authors are more than happy to consider your contribution in improving, extending or correcting any part of this book. For any communication or feedback that you might have about the content of this book you can contact the authors at the following address: contact(at)freerangefactory.org”

Click here to download PDF version.

This book looks pretty good, what do you think?

The picture above shows a very nice audio interface wing for the Papilio one that Rudzz designed and here is an excellent topic that he has started on our forum to share with us what he has come up with.

“I have been working on trying to create a nice audio interface wing for the Papilio one, and I thought I would share with you what I have come up with.  I am using an AC ’97 audio codec chip, namely the Cirrus Logic CS4202 … This chip has capabilities for 3 stereo and 2 mono line level inputs, and 2 mono mic inputs. It has stereo line out, headphone out (with amp), and mono out. 18-bit stereo A/D converter and 20 bit stereo D/A converter.”

Feel free to discuss in our forum this interesting topic and share with us your suggestions to help improve this project.

“Any suggestions and comments are welcome! I would like to know also if anyone has any interests in using this design, so feedback is appreciated. “

Thanks for sharing your work with us, Rudzz!

Have you ever thought about designing a GPS Receiver? It seems very complicated but not with this design we found at holmea.demon.co.uk, the article clearly explains how to make a homemade GPS receiver and we thought you guys would find it very useful.

“…I was motivated to design this receiver after reading the work of Matjaž Vidmar, S53MV, who developed a GPS receiver from scratch, using mainly discrete components, over 20 years ago. His use of DSP following a hard-limiting IF and 1-bit ADC interested me. The receiver described here works on the same principle. Its 1-bit ADC is the 6-pin IC near the pin headers, an LVDS-output comparator. Hidden under noise but not obliterated in the bi-level quantised mush that emerges are signals from every satellite in view.”

The article is complete with source code, resources and more so that you can start making your own GPS Receiver!

Click here for the article, enjoy!

Feel free to discuss in the comments thread.

(via holmea.demon.co.uk, original article by Andrew Holme)

Mike Field has written a Mandelbrot fractal generator/ viewer that runs on the Papilio platform, and he’s controlling the zoom and scroll functions with the Papilio Arcade MegaWing.  We found an article over at Hackaday about this that sheds some light on the technical details of the project:

“Calculations to generate the shape are being run at 240 MHz, with the VGA output running at 80 MHz. The device has enough horse power and SRAM to show an 800×600 pixel output with a 60 Hz refresh rate.”

Cool stuff, Mike!  Jack and I were saying that it’s like a little universe to explore.  These things never cease to amaze me.

You can check out Mike’s project here.

(via Hackaday, video and project credit to Mike Field of Hamsterworks)

GitHub is a giant online storehouse for archiving and sharing code.  We’ve got a bunch of code available on GitHub for many items of Gadget Factory interest that we’re sure you’ll find useful in your endeavors:

• Gadget Factory top-level repository
• Gadget Factory Wing PCB designs
• Papilio Arcade source code
• AVR8 source code

We also came across a great “crash-course” for GitHub by Ryan Lowdermilk that we thought you guys would find useful.  Here’s a quick overview of the “getting started” guide:

• Read “The Most Official and Complete Introduction on GitHub – Ever Written”
• Read “What 80% of People Do On GitHub”
• Download and Configure GitExentions in 5 Clicks
• Read “Use GitHub Like 80% of People”

If you’re new to GitHub, this article breaks it down for you nice and easy.  Original article can be found here.

(via Ryan Lowdermilk, image credit: GitHub)

Thanks to reader Sowbug, who sent us this nice tidbit about how he got Pac-Man running on his Papilio Arcade via Linux.  Sowbug says,

“Just got the Papilio on Sunday and was going through converting the Windows-based .bat and tools for merging/loading the Pac-Man bitfile. The first time I ran the loader with the bitfile, it paused for what seemed like maybe 250 milliseconds — far too short in the opinion of someone coming from an Arduino background. Then I looked to my side and saw Pac-Man running on my old VGA monitor. I almost jumped out of my seat! I didn’t expect it to work the first time, and especially with so little time elapsed since loading. Fun stuff!”

Check out Sowbug’s original blog post for an in-depth look at what went in to the project, and for access to the fork he wrote for Linux.  I have to say, I really like Sowbug’s photo on that post.  Great composition!

On the same forum thread where this was discussed, the issue was raised about using a PS/2 keyboard for joystick functionality.  I just remembered that Mike Field had some code pertaining to that in his Papilio Wiki.

The specific entry, with code for using a PS/2 keyboard for joystick controls can be found here.

“This project allows a PS/2 keyboard to be embedded into a project that usually uses a joystick.”

Thanks for sharing your work with us, Sowbug!

“Did you know that with the raw power of the Papilio’s FPGA, the ZPUino, and a VGA Wing you can write sketches with VGA output? You can use VGA output to write text, boxes, virtual LCD’s, menus, and even games. This article will get you started with using VGA on the Papilio. “

If you’ve picked up the Arcade MegaWing for $84.99 from Seeed Studio or already have a 3-bit VGA Wing then you can get started right away with making your own custom VGA graphics using a simple VGA library.

The latest article is really two articles: the first one presents several VGA sketches and the second is an introduction to the ZPUino to get you up and running quickly.

If you don’t have an Arcade MegaWing yet don’t worry we have you covered:

Pick up a Papilio Arcade Combo for $74.99 while supplies last.

Or even better, it’s completely Open Source so grab the EAGLE files and build one for yourself!