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Over here in facts-based land, the Note 7 has a MAX77838 keeping track of power.

The MAX77838 is a power management IC. It claims to have some other circuitry for battery management, but since MAXIMs website does not acknowledge that part number, we have no way of knowing what it really has or doesn't have. All outward appearances would suggest that it is a custom chip for Samsung (probably used in several of their product lines). Personally, I expect that the MAX77838 is similar to the MAX77829 (PMIC + single cell Lion charging circuit). This would make some sense since it looks like Samsung elected to use an external PMIC, and since they had to have one anyways, getting one that had the charging circuit built in would not be that big a deal. Unfortunately for Samsung, the charging circuit has to be relatively tuned to the specific battery being used. Generically designed Lion chargers have a habit of failing. (So much so that Tenma actually ships many of their battery chargers with a fireproof pouch to put the battery in while charging it...

This just goes to show how stupid Samsung is for designing it this way. Since the fault lies either with the Custom Maxim Chip, with the battery itself (or a mismatch between the two), Samsung has backed itself into a corner. They cannot just replace the defective Maxim Chip with an off the shelf component because there is no drop in replacement or they wouldn't have had Maxim build a custom chip in the first place. Nor can they simply change the battery easily, as the batteries are manufactured to spec as well.

If samsung had offloaded the charging and battery management control into software running on one of the processors in the phone, then they would likely have been able to fix the problem with a firmware update. Now, because they did not have the sense to do what everyone else is doing, they are fucked.

The best kept open secret in the Phone / Tablet world are the PSOC processors that are used extensively for all of the low level work in these devices. Cypress sells nearly as many processors as Broadcom, and nobody has ever heard of them. Their processors come with built in PMIC, Capacitive touch sense (which is why everyone started using them in the first place), and a host of other powerful features that reduce part count and unit cost. I have personally designed a half dozen devices that used them, two of which had battery charging circuits and charge control software. The irony is that the PSOC processors cost cost about $5 each and they are full featured processors while the Maxim ICs Cost more than that and are just a PMIC.

TLDR: Samsung is staffed by incompetent engineers. Its no wonder they have exploding phones, their engineers designed a phone with at least $5 more parts than they should have had, but skipped on the thermostat protection on the battery to save $0.50. If they used this same chip in the S5, then they lost more than 60 million dollars in excess unit cost in just the first three months of sales, and now with the S7, its going to cost them billions.

It's probably coming from here.

Ok, I will bite. I am an Arduino enthusiast. While I know there are lots of microcontrollers out there, are there any platforms out there that allows a hobbyist to quicjly build a few circuits because the infrastructure around the controller chip is very easy and foolproof to us.

Try the PSOC line of SOC systems. You can buy an eval kit that has the processor and labelled breakouts for all the pins. It also has the programmer built right into the board (usb connector on one end). The dev environment is very good, and the chips are awesome (think MCU, FPGA and programmable analog all in one package). They have tons of sample projects, and the whole thing is very easy to use.

You can get them here. If you're willing to bargain hunt, you can get them from a bunch of different places. You can even get them direct from cypress.

I already had most of the components laying around, but I did buy power supplies for the Pi's. I also have one in the attic running dump1090 and the upload client for flightradar24 - it has no case either, and I'm using a <$15 RTL tuner from nooelec.com.

Flash Card: $6
Case: None - taped naked to the back of the TV
Power: About $7
HDMI Cable: $3
Ethernet cable: already had tons laying around, or could make one for $1

Grand total: $17

Exactly. I can get a FreeScale FRDM-KL25Z for $13. For many in the hacker community, this is plenty. These other guys need to work on the pricing a little.

Where the heck would you find a 3 ohm resister?

At the "3 ohm resistor store" next to the scotch tape store at the mall, of course.

Or maybe between the 2.94 and 3.01 ohm resistors here. They list 85 of them.

And, of course, you can find one in the box with a Minnow, packed next to the burned out LED.

I bought a Model B several months ago from Newark, and have two more in transit to me from them. But yes, stock is low; they were backordered a couple of weeks.

this is my exact beef with the raspberry pi.... it's not really a $25/$35, it's a >$100 solution that is hard to obtain. Once the supply chain issues are fixed this may be more interesting. But at this point it's main attractive feature - price - .

I'm a software developer. I have 8 of them. I have so many of them I sell them to friends at cost instead of turning around and gouging on eBay like a prick. I have four of them in my room so I can do the cambridge distributed processing experiments.

How did I do it? Who's knob did I slobber? Nobody's. Remember back when orders were opened up on (assuming you're in the US) Newark and Allied? I put in three separate orders for each site for one each. It would be 3-4 months before the first arrived. They identified me as a repeat orderer so they simply reset my orders each time they shipped one. How much money did I have to front? $35 * 6 = $210 + S&H. Lotta money, right? Except, I looked at this just like I would some gaming console and it wasn't. Yes, it requires patience but put in an order and in 6 to 14 weeks you'll probably have a Raspberry Pi from either of the sites above. Totally worth the wait. If you're super American and can't wait a month to get something, go get gouged. Oh, just don't get upset when the 1GB models ship later this year -- it'll probably be good to have at least one 512MB to test for backwards compatibility.

How did I know to do this? Was it the hundreds of Slashdot posts by geeks saying "I don't want to hurt anybody but I would kill a dude in front of his own mother to get a Raspberry Pi" or perhaps the fact that learning institutions were putting money down for millions of them? It doesn't take an oracle to figure that out ...

renders it closer to vapourware than anything else

A product so successful it's Slashdotted into "vaporware?" Come on, there are many good criticisms of the Raspberry Pi -- this is not one of them.

Even though he is a self-starter ...

Okay, awesome! What you should do is get him a raspberry pi then pick up an HDMI cable, a cheap keyboard and cheap mouse (both of which should be wired as it lags to offload wireless processing to the pi) from monoprice. Right now, B&H Video has a deal where you get 2 x 16GB cards for $15 if you add two of these to your cart with free shipping. Okay, I've actually already bought several sets of this stuff from these exact same suppliers and handed them off to a bunch of kids that are loving them right now. So that's all legit. You'll need to have a TV or monitor with an HDMI in and it helps if you have a cheap webcam (one of the tutorials I'm gonna mention uses it). You'll also need a second computer with a way to access SD flash cards (pick up a USB toaster for $5 if you don't have this)> Optional would be male-to-female wires like these with any breadboard so he can tinker with making his own stuff -- you'll probably have to drop more cash on more electronic devices to interface with it if you go this route though.

Next, you might consider this book but I prefer this one more. Okay then you send your kid here to get the hard float raspbian wheezy and you tell him how to figure out how to get it on the flash card to boot on the pi. There's a wiki for all this stuff. Then you send him here and make him do these tutorials. Then you make him read all the issues of the MagPi. And if he's smart enough, you buy him some more peripherals. There should be a lot more tutorials coming out for this device.

Once he has all that stuff, you go to the liquor store. Now, the liquor stores around my house sell a lot of types of vodkas and Absolut is great but I've found that Sobieski satiates me just as well. It's made from this Dankowski rye that makes great gimlets. Try to buy a case of handles and haggle him down to ~$13 a handle (that stuff is really cheap). Then you go to the store and you get some of that Real Lime lime juice. Not the key lime shit, the actual lime juice. You're gonna need a decent blender because this thing is gonna be working all summer long. Also, a bag of hazelnuts. Go home and fill a cup to the top with ice and put in about one finger of lime juice. Fill the rest with Sobieski. Blend that shit up, garnish with a couple crushed hazelnuts to really dry that shit out and kick back. Trust me, your kid is going to come and talk to you about python and apt-get and registers and you are not going to want to have to deal with that. So just get good and fucking faced in the sun all summer long. Your kid will thank you for staying out of his hair. A summer of riproarin' fall down drunk? You can thank me later.

Newark/Element14 does... http://www.newark.com/raspberry-pi/raspbrry-modb-512m/model-b-assembled-board-only/dp/43W5302 And if it's out of stock, it takes no more than 14-21 days for a backorder to be fulfilled... I always buy mine through them, they are great.

Newark is listing them for $10-11, Q250. Not in stock, of course.

These are surface mount LED modules, not bulbs. I checked one out. At 700 mA @12V (8.4W) gives 1040 lumens - approximately as much as a 70-watt incandescent - in a square 7mm on a side. This is only 123 lumens per watt. Max current is 1250 mA, so you could conceivably get a lot more light out of one, and presumably 1W is where the 200 Lumens/W kicks in, but that's only about a 25W incandescent equivalent - still pretty respectable considering the size. They cost about $10 in quantity 500. ROI is about 6 months vs. incandescent, or 18 months at the 200 lumens/W level.

I think I could see some interesting applications for this one. At 1040 lumens 18% of the electrical energy is converted to light, so around 6.9 W of heat. It's also too bright to look directly at.

Yes, it's a slashvertisement / press release. But LED lighting has /. common interests energy, technology, and so on. Progress is progress.

If they can just improve the efficiency a little more these might be interesting not only as a light source but as a means for spacecraft propulsion.

First one I tried says they're getting more in 3 days: http://canada.newark.com/raspberry-pi/raspbrry-modb-512m/model-b-assembled-board-only/dp/43W5302?ref=lookahead

I've ordered several of them before from newark and never had to wait more than a week from order to delivery.

Actually, if you live in Canada, you can get one from Newark for $35 CDN. Which, with today's exchange rate is $34.94. So you can get it for less than $35. Plus shipping and taxes of course.

Locktite 401, comes in 1 lb (=450g) bottles. You can order it online.

Ok fair enough, it might be a fluke. I was just looking for a cheap Atom board to get some ballpark idea of what Intel might sell the Medfeld for. So I searched for someone actually selling Atom chips. Found them at Newark.com.

Now it looks like you can buy at Atom Z510 in bulk for about $27, so I'm off by about 7 bucks. But that's my first find and if I were to put more effort into it I might find a better deal somewhere. If Medfield tracks about the same, I'll bet you can get the chipset for...a guess....$25. That's doing some shopping and after the price comes down - I wouldn't buy these for a Raspberry Pi type project the same quarter Intel releases them in. Wait for the price to come down.

Add that to the "other half" of the Raspberry Pi board for about $15, and you'd have an x86 Raspberry Pi for $40. Maybe a little more depending on how much memory you bundle. Seeing as how the B model of the Pi is $35, it's in the ballpark. Maybe. If my guesses are close to the mark.

Newark is another good supplier.

The slow, painful death of Radio Shack is more than symbolic. I see it as completely parallel to the slow and painful death of intellectualism in our national culture.

Or, you know, that Internet thing: http://www.digikey.com/ http://www.newark.com/ http://www.mouser.com/

LaunchPad does.

I don't see why this hasn't gotten more fanfare or attention.
A full dev kit costs $4.30. Some of the Arduino stuff I've seen starts at $40. You get 2 chips, a USB programmer, dev environment AND.... a real C environment. Not another language.

It has a ton of other add-ons like the EZ430-CHRONOS watch. After growing up watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit, who hasn't wanted to unlock their doors with Shave and a Haircut.

And Newark has them in stock. We've been having a horrible time in the last year trying to find distributors that actually have stuff in stock, and end up buying small lots at high prices from frightening places, or pleading for samples directly from the manufacturers. Parts we've been using for years suddenly have 10 week lead times. I'm trying to source one part the manufacturer swears is in production and rolling off the lines but "nobody's buying" and distributors are showing a 30 *week* lead time. Gah. No wonder nobody's buying.

Whereas your average Arduino board is about $20-30 or so, an Arduino board with Bluetooth costs about $150.

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorial_info.php?tutorials_id=148

Yes, Bluetooth is that expensive. The ArduinoBT board uses an off-the-shelf BlueGiga WT11. Newark sells those for about $60.

http://www.newark.com/bluegiga/wt11-a-ai/class-1-bluetooth-2-0-edr-module/dp/15P4005

Mind you, this is a Class 1 (i.e. long range) transmitter, using BT 2.0 and not BT 2.1. Compare this to a standard RF transmitter and receiver, which is a couple bucks per chip...

Using the 'Spectrum Analyzer' features built in to most APs and wireless clients will only show you other WiFi traffic not noise (almost always true). Also, they are not very portable. The earlier post about asking you local Ham Radio club is a good idea if there is anyone available and many Hams don't have equipment to listen to 2.4 or 5 GHz. You can search on google and other places for a 'usb wifi spectrum analyzer' for less than $50 that plugs in to your laptop. Be careful and read the specs though as some required that you use them in DOS mode. This will let you look at the actual received power level across the whole spectrum. You can walk around with a laptop until you find the noise source. It is still a steep price to pay for a one time fix. If you are the crafty type you can get a ez430-RF2500 target board for $22 from Texas Instruments. You will need to search for a software load that make it a SA but the are many instructions online. If you don't want to roll your own and get a prebuilt solution you can use the Ubiquiti AirView2 for ~$40. This is a very nice tool. You could even split the cost with your neighbors or pool money or request the person with the noisy device foot the bill for finding it.

I don't know if manufactures are conspiring to control people. They just want to make money. Many manufacturers, including Apple, adopt a strategy of figuring out what the minimum required functionality is to sell to their target audience. Apple additionally wants to make good on the "it just works" pitch. They do this by limiting what the device can do.

They don't particularly care if you don't want their product. you aren't their target. They aren't trying to tell you what you can do with an ipad since they aren't really selling it to you. they are selling it to people who don't want to tinker. they are selling it to people who just want to start it up and have it do some basic stuff.

There's probably a market for someone else to sell a device that is just a couple of microcontrollers duct taped to an oled screen, no os, and unlimited potential if you can figure out how to embed a linux build on it.

or better yet go here just build your own ipad.

I'd spend $.85 and buy a flashing led. Of course, that's because the flashing led would only be part of a circuit doing other things and it would cost more than $.85 of my time making it flash.

As an EE who started off with one of those 50-in-one kits when I was 8, I have a few recommendations. I had a 200-in-one, but the more impressive projects on it required so many wires it was nigh-impossible to get things to stay working. Put one in and two fall out.

You can start with one of those kits, but once you get to the point where you'll really learn what you're doing, go look for books and kits separately. Look for books by Forrest Mims III and Don Lancaster (TTL Cookbook and CMOS Cookbook are classics). Check their sites out as well.

As for parts sources, for online shopping, I'd recommend Digi-Key. Jameco is a little pricey, but they have some really interesting parts, including a lot of older stuff. All Electronics is a place I used to buy from a lot; they have a lot of manufacturer surplus parts, so it's kind of like shopping in a flea market or surplus auction. Another surplus shop is MPJA. Newark and Mouser are good places to look when you want some specific part that Digi-Key doesn't have.

For starters, you'll want to buy a modular breadboard, and one of the pre-cut wire kits for them. Or, if you want to blow some more dough, you might want to get one of the Analog Design Lab or Digital Design Lab things that has a bunch of things like power supplies, LEDs, and switches integrated into it already. Also look for parts assortments, like resistor and capacitor assortments (e.g. Digi-Key items RS125-ND and PHD1-KIT-ND). If you're going to be doing digital work, you'll probably want to get lots (20 or so) of 10K resistors (for pullups) and 0.1 uF capacitors (for decoupling).

Radio Shack is where you go as a last resort. Their selection is lousy and prices are worse.

While Z80s are cool, some people prefer microcomputers with RAM, ROM and I/O integrated on the IC. For example:

Microchip or
Atmel

or a small board level device like:

The Basic Stamp

A very cool supplier of microcontrollers and accessories is:

Sparkfun

And the usual suppliers:

Digikey
Newark
Arrow
Mouser

why a memory card when you can get much cheaper memory storage.

You don't even need to solder the adapter on. The 2 NES' that i've repaired this way you just take them apart and yank the old connector off the motherboard (provided you have all the screws pulled out). Now, after that's done clean your game cart contacts then take care to NOT DO THE BLOW TRICK ON THE GAMES! You can get the adapter here from MCM

Or forget blowing in there, and just fix it yourself I did this, it took only about 30 minutes, and the NES works like the day I got it.

Here's some background info on the sensors. Agilent was one of the first companies that made these types of parts (as I remember). Currently, I'm sure there are a couple of other manufacturers out there.

http://we.home.agilent.com/USeng/nav/-536893499.0/ pc.html
[click the "Optical mouse sensor" link in the middle of the page.]

I'm sure you can buy development kits, but they're sure to be reeeeaaaaallly expensive, plus they might start redirecting you if you ask to buy a handful of these. On the other hand, you might be able to sweet-talk a couple samples of they're willing. ...couple minutes of seraching...
I just remembered that http://www.newark.com/ electronics distrubites a lot of Agilent stuff, and a little searching results in:
http://www.newark.com/NewarkWebCommerce/newark/en_ US/endecaSearch/searchPage2.jsp?N=4&Ntk=gensearch_ 001&Ntt=adns&Nty=1&specialorder=on
And bingo, you can get the plain chip for $5 to $10, given 40-150 days lead time in quantites of 20 or so. It's an answer, but I doubt its the one you're looking for.

Still, like KFG says, it's easier to rip apart a mouse. They've done all the optical work already, which is likely to be difficult part. If you think getting small quantities of electronics is bad, try getting small quantities of optics. $15 for a bloody *!@#@#* lens isn't unheard of.

hjames

Here's some background info on the sensors. Agilent was one of the first companies that made these types of parts (as I remember). Currently, I'm sure there are a couple of other manufacturers out there.

http://we.home.agilent.com/USeng/nav/-536893499.0/ pc.html
[click the "Optical mouse sensor" link in the middle of the page.]

I'm sure you can buy development kits, but they're sure to be reeeeaaaaallly expensive, plus they might start redirecting you if you ask to buy a handful of these. On the other hand, you might be able to sweet-talk a couple samples of they're willing. ...couple minutes of seraching...
I just remembered that http://www.newark.com/ electronics distrubites a lot of Agilent stuff, and a little searching results in:
http://www.newark.com/NewarkWebCommerce/newark/en_ US/endecaSearch/searchPage2.jsp?N=4&Ntk=gensearch_ 001&Ntt=adns&Nty=1&specialorder=on
And bingo, you can get the plain chip for $5 to $10, given 40-150 days lead time in quantites of 20 or so. It's an answer, but I doubt its the one you're looking for.

Still, like KFG says, it's easier to rip apart a mouse. They've done all the optical work already, which is likely to be difficult part. If you think getting small quantities of electronics is bad, try getting small quantities of optics. $15 for a bloody *!@#@#* lens isn't unheard of.

hjames

Nice links. And here's some karma whoring (not that me needs it).

Creative people and projects:
- http://www.diyaudio.com/ (DIY audio equipment forum)
- http://sound.westhost.com/projects.htm (audio stuff schematics)
- http://headwize.com/projects/index.htm (DIY headphone stuff)
- http://www.hauptwerk.co.uk/pedalboard.html (DIY MIDI pedalboards, just add keyboards and software and you have a MIDI organ)
- http://www.diysubwoofers.org/ (what it says)
- http://www.plasmatweeter.de/eng_plasma.htm (DIY ionic tweeter)

Places to buy stuff:
- http://www.newark.com/ (major electronics retailer)
- http://www.mouser.com/ (major electronics retailer)
- http://www.tubesandmore.com/ (components for vintage electronics)

Getting stuff made:
- http://www.olimex.com/ (cheap PCBs)

Your idea of using surplus is only good is you have whatever said surplus already laying around. I don't happen to have any of the old parts you mention (gameboys, zip drives, scanner, etc.) lying around, or you have a large enough surplus supply (electronic goldmine, ocean state electronics, ebay but prices get whacked quickly) on the market.

Experimenting with cheap 8-bit microcontrollers such as Microchip's PIC or Atmel's AVRs is quite cheap, and typically all you need is a chip and one (really cheap if want) device - a programmer to transfer the (binary/hex) programs from your PC to the microcontroller's flash memory.

You will quickly outgrow Radio Shack unless you need a part right now and you don't have the right one in your own stock pile, often referred to as a "junk box" regardless of actual physical size. You should be getting the free catalogs (or CDs) from Digikey, Mouser, Newark, and Jameco. These all have usable online ordering systems and reasonable minimum order & shipping fees. UK geeks check G3SEK's UK Component and Tool Suppliers web page.

Many useful projects can be made for less than $100 even if you need to buy all the parts. After you build a collection of common parts (common resistors, capacitor values, PIC 16F628, AVR AT90S2313, red & green LEDs, 2N2222A, 2N3904, 2N3906, 2N4401, 2N4403, 2N4416, 4N25, 1N4148, 1N4001, 1N4007, etc.) and tools this cost will go down.

The real question is do they assume a general audience or do they assume a "knowledgeable user" is their target market? If the stuff is purely "cookbook" & kit building (AmQRP kits as an example) with little or no encouragement (and knowledge transfer) for the average Make reader to explore and expand it won't survive IMHO. BTW AmQRP kits on their own are pretty limited at expanding your knowledge, but combined with the AMQRP Homebrewer magazine and Conference Proceedings they do teach a lot. There is also the QRP-L mailing list which is very useful for technical questions (and has a rich archive)

I think it should be what Nuts and Volts magazine tries to be, but without the "legacy" dead weight and filler articles. A gentler introduction to most of the Circuit Cellar type stuff.

If people think this will recreate the Homebrew Computer Club, I expect they will be mistaken, but if you expect it to awaken the curiousity and encourage youth to learn about electronics, then I hope it is a brillent success.

In the end, I am curious and not quite sure what to expect of Make. It could be really lame if all it ends up being is computer geeks pretending to be electronic engineers (or electronic hobbyists). I hope that at least 10% of it expands what I know, which is more than I can say of books like Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks (O'Reilly) and Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your Warranty. I am more interested in reading stuff like Hacking the Xbox (An Introduction to Reverse Engineering) by Andrew "bunnie" Huang which starts simple but gets into FPGAs and reverse engineering.

Or Mouser, or Newark.

Digikey is alright, but I've had much better luck with Mouser and Newark, although Newark is generally easier to deal with if you can funnel your orders through a corporate ordering account.

LOL, that sounds like absolute bullshit, a power cord is one of the easiest and quickest things there is to repair, plus i'm calling bullshit since most CE i know of have the power cord plugged into them as well with a standard 3 prong, or some like my laptops power supply and my dvd player use a 2 pin one.

LOL, that sounds like absolute bullshit, a power cord is one of the easiest and quickest things there is to repair, plus i'm calling bullshit since most CE i know of have the power cord plugged into them as well with a standard 3 prong, or some like my laptops power supply and my dvd player use a 2 pin one.

How does it not have a line out? Your not gonna find a portable player with RCA jacks, but does it not even have a headphone jack? My archos player has a headphone jack and a line out jack thats a standard 1/8" just at a fixed volume. Just use a 1/8" to RCA cable.

I have had good luck with NEMA 4 fiberglass enclosures (no window), I generally purchase the optional backplate and under that I put some 1/2" closed cell foam insulation. Mount the AP or whatever inside on the plate and put the box on the North (shady) side of whatever you attach it to. For cold weather try using a small light bulb inside the enclosure for heat (may be thermostatically controlled) Enclosure source here

Arithmetic Controller The ACE1101 (Arithmetic Controller Engine) family of microcontrollers is a dedicated programmable monolithic inte-grated circuit for applications requiring high performance, low power, and small size. It is a fully static part fabricated using CMOS technology. The ACE1101 product family has an 8-bit microcontroller core, 64 bytes of RAM, 64 bytes of data EEPROM and 1K bytes of code EEPROM. Its on-chip peripherals include a multi-function 16-bit timer, watchdog/idle timer, and programmable under-voltage detection circuitry. On-chip clock and reset functions reduce the number of required external components. The ACE1101 product family is available in 8-pin TSSOP, 8-pin DIP and 14-pin DIP packages.

• Fairchild Semi product page
• PDF Datasheet
• Newark product page ($2.47 each)
• Great page on the WebACE server and WebACE II
• Ace resources

Newark Electronics sells them...

Here's your fuse

Phil

You can get 7400s at Newark Electronics here. Hurry, I think they have only 10 million left in stock.... I they run out I have a couple in my junkbox.

I don't really have any suggestions for disk drives and monitors. But conformal coating will get you started in putting a standard desktop computer on a yacht

-James Jefferson Amateur Radio Station KB0THN

(Unfortunately, Newark's online catalog is poorly organized, the print version is much easier to follow, IMO).