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Open Source Ecology

On our way to the bank, while listening to the radio (which we don’t usually do unless like when our FM transmitter is dead), something caught our attention and it ain’t Lemmy singing Ace of Spades. It was about Open Source Ecology which is exactly like Open Source Hardware but in a bigger scale and has an aim for: [blockquote cite=”http://www.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Open_Source_Ecology”]developing and testing a set of tools to build replicable, open source, modern, off-grid resilient communities[/blockquote] .

They have come up with a very complete wiki that includes 50 different industrial machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts! If you are used to reading wiki on how to build some open source circuit board, get ready to build some open source tractor, steam engine, wind turbine, and 47 more industrial machines all in the open source way. Take a look at their introduction video:

Now, we need to find some space to park the tractor! 🙂

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Upcoming Product – TraLog – GSM-GPRS-GPS & MicroSD Combo Shield

Things has been pretty quiet lately on Rocket Scream camp lately. This is because we are working around the clock to bring up new products. Apart from working on the open source PID controller with Brett Beauregard, we are finishing a few products which we hope will be on the shelf very soon. We always wanted to make the best possible products and kinda stay away from the FISI philosophy. So, it takes some time for us to release anything although at times certain products went for 5 revision but yet to be seen on the shelf. Read more

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Cortex-M0 Microcontrollers in DIP28, TSSOP20, TSSOP28, and SO20 Packages

Things are getting very interesting lately on the 32-bit microcontroller market segment. 32-bit microcontroller’s attempt to get into the application area currently occupied by 8-bit microcontroller is even more possible now as NXP has just announced the availability of  ARM® Cortex-M0 microcontroller in SO20, TSSOP20, TSSOP28 & DIP28 package (QFN16 package is also offered by other vendor). Just image that 32-bit Cortex-M0 microcontroller sitting on an Arduino board instead of the ATMega328P! We have been toying with some M0 chips on some custom boards for a while now and we believe the availability of the breadboard friendly DIP28 Cortex-M0 chip is definitely welcomed by the maker community. Read more

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New Arduino Boards

It seems that the month of September will always be the month full of surprises and excitement. The Open Hardware Summit and Maker Faire New York that takes place on the same weekend provides many surprises and news that the community crave for. The Arduino team has revealed several new boards and also the new Arduino 1.0 IDE. Read more

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From the Mailbox

One of our customer Ken McClain from US, mailed us on how the Reflow Oven Controller shield has turned out for him. Ken wrote:

Well it’s all hooked up…. And I did my first lead reflow… It worked! The default code for unleaded profile worked out of the box!!! Beautiful curve with no change!

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