A power supply module and a 3D model.

I have been working on a switching power supply module to replace the dated and tired LM317s that we've been using on our breakout boards. Because we run high voltage supplies to get the maximum speed of our stepper motors, we needed a module that could take the higher voltages. The current LM317s can handle 37V (although we push 'em past 40V) - but we wanted something that could handle even more for our larger MondoStep based driver systems. Luckily we found the Maxim MAX5090BATE 76V input, 5V@2A output switching regulator ICs.

Our first attempt at a circuit using one of these chips was a miserable failure. Probably a little too much Captain that night ;-)

Our second board was a success. We had a handful of PCBs made strictly for testing. The boards are approx 1" square. We are now in the process of intergrating that circuit into our breakout boards. We also decided that maybe some other people might want to use this circuit as a general purpose 5V DC-DC converter, so we cleaned up our board for mass production.

A few weeks ago, we stumbled upon a nifty little Eagle plug-in call EagleUP. This free ULP creates a script that runs inside of an included Google Sketchup plug-in that generates a 3D model of your circuit design. Here's a glimpse of what it can do:

I have been working on a machine vision system for our CNC machines, a pick-n-place robot that's been churning in my head, and an underwater robot based upon the OpenROV project that is coming to life in my basement. All of these projects are built around the BeagleBone Black. I am testing the Logitech C920 which features beautiful Carl Zeiss optics with auto focus, 1920x1080 resolution, and on-camera H.264 compression at 30fps. The on-camera compression should ease the load on the BeagleBoard significantly over the Genius F100 camera currently being used on the OpenROV robot. 

Who needs fancy plastics hiding the beauty of the inner circuitry? So of course I dissected the C920. Here are the pics for your enjoyment.

This camera works flawlessly (so far) with V4L2 and OpenCV on the BeagleBone Black running Debian Wheezy.