Unbelievable that this is just the first year of Interactive Matter. But still there happened a lot of things.
Lets have a look on what Interactive Matter has managed to achieve.
The Beginning
It all started with the little idea of having a ‘time replay device’. How was your Day Darling was born. It samples the light levels during the day and if you take in your hand it plays it back.
The first prototype was still a bit rough but functional:
But soon it evolved in perhaps the nicest PCB I have done yet:
The final ‘How was your Day Darling‘ was nice, but till a bit week. I think this is a project I have to come back to.
Gravitron
After the first success of How was your day darling I did something very dumb. After some beers I promised to create some Cylon/KITT like device in half a ping pong ball. Of course the concept got completely out of hand. After thinking how to switch it on I realized that the ‘easiest’ would be to include an accelerometer and detect motion. But if you have a accelerometer in it you can also play around with gravity, implement some minimalistic physics engine and implement a ‘air bubble’ with LEDs:
The original KITT-like animation was just used to indicate that the device is going to sleep. But this design ultimately got me to SMT. First of all it was hard to solder the ADXL accelerometer. So I bought an hot air rework station. And after that I was able to solder nearly any SMT device. Which is way cool.
Long Term Goal: Space Invaders Button
The idea for my Space Invaders Button is very old. I existed before I started with all this electronics stuff. I promised a friend of mine to get here some button for her jacket, displaying space invaders characters. I thought that it cannot be that easy. In the end it was more complicated than I thought- but at the end I was able to achieve it:
It was a great success, I must admit. People love it so much that I am currently working on a kit. So stay tuned and see what will be coming along. This design has still a lot of potential. It should be still able to use the LEDs as inputs (e.g. to detect touch or ambient light level). And there could also be some easier way to download custom animations on it. Another design which I have to revisit if I got some time.
µTVBG
The µTVBG was just some kind of SMT exercise. I questioned myself how small can you go tu build an TV-B-Gone clone. Ther result was quite nice. A working TV-B-Gone on approximate 2cm²:
Surely you will be able to make it smaller. Lets see how this evolves.
Whats coming up?
There are still a lot of projects in the pipeline. They rank from funny simple pranks to full scale product ideas. Of course all of them are in a much to early state to talk about. But stay tuned. They will be coming.
Another big issue right now is creating kits. Interactive Matter will offer solder-yourself SMT kits for all skill levels. But this topics needs some time too to evolve.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello Marcus,
is it true that you are using a normal soldering iron from Ersa to make all this neat stuff? I’m mighty impressed if I may say so
I’ll try to build my first tiny SMD-kit over the weekend using my Tip 260 from Ersa. I wonder if this will work. At least I do have good solder from STANNOL and desoldering wick from amasan – hopefully better than the stuff you use.
Keep up the good work!
Greetings,
Mathias
Yes, you can build all the stuff with an ‘normal’ soldering iron. If the tip is medium thick you will have no problem. The key is to use small solder diameter – since you can control the amount of solder much better. And having good solder wick is a good idea too. I would do my first try with leaded solder – it is easier to work with for me. But please dispose it properly – it is very bad for the environment.
Actually I must confess that I bought myself a professional Hakko solder station on Ebay. You can get them comparable cheap and they are marvelous! But the only difference is that the soldering iron itself is much smaller and lighter and it keeps the heat better – since it got more power. OK, an adjustable temperature is nice too. But it was not that big step forward.
I always say: The biggest problem of SMT is that you are afraid of the size.
Hi Marcus,
thanks for the quick reply. I will use HF32-SMD S-Sn60Pb40 with 0.5mm diameter from STANNOL for my first try with SMT. The HF32 in 1.0 and 0.8mm was great for soldering strip boards and normal PCBs but I don’t want to try SMD parts with this stuff.
I do have a medium sized pencil type tip for my iron which should be good enough to get some first practise with SMT.
Time doesn’t matter for this project so I can always lay the iron away for a few moments in order to let it heat up again. But one thing is true and that is that the dimensions of those little resistors, capacitors, ICs etc. make me afraid – guess I’ll try not to drink too much coffee before I start to solder
Oh, and b.t.w. it’s not problem to recycle scrap parts in the area where I live. As I’m a hobbyist it’s free of charge for me to bring the waste to the local recycling plant.
Greetings,
Mathias
No prob,
you are welcome.
The reheating issue is not so much about time, but about soldering bigger pads or pads that are connected to ground planes and stuff like that. If you touch it with a week soldering iron the pad acts like a heat sink – and sinks a lot of heat. If the soldering iron is stronger it heats up the pad much more quickly.
But for normal parts & pads you should have no problem. Stick to your good old ERSA. There is always time and opportunity to upgrade your gear later.
0.5mm solder is great. I use constantly 0.4mm to 0.5mm (26-24AWG in Americanoland) – it is the perfect size for me.
But you are right SMT & coffee do not go well together. I can recommend to avoid any hard work some hours before you solder (makes your hand shaky). Some people recommend half a beer. On the other hand alcohol & hot irons do not go well together either
Hello Marcus,
well I was at Conrad in Mainz today and only wanted to see what they’d charge me for a soldering station. Then I saw a sticker on one still good looking ERSA RDS 80 and it read “Tip missing € 75″. That’s about half of what watterott electronic would charge me and they are not asking for too much money for such a fine device.
I walked to the counter immediately to ask Mr. Fischer if there was anything wrong with this tool and he said that the missing tip and clip was the only problem. He was also surprised to see that the price was so low.
To get a new tip was about € 5 and it also came with some little clip sufficient enough to hold the tip. When I came home I found the original tip inside the carton. The only thing I’d need will be a new clip
That’s a real Bang for your buck deal – BANZAI! Now I do have all the tools I’ll need to do some beginner’s SMT soldering.
Greetings,
Mathias
PS. I only drink non-alcoholic beer and usually a glass of good Scotch Whisky before I go to bed.