bunnie writes:
The shanzhai of China are a tech trend to keep an eye on. Typically dismissed by popular press as simply the “copycat barons from China”, I think they may have something in common with Hewlett and Packard or Jobs and Wozniak back when they were working out of garages. I’ve heard quite a few stories about the shanzhai while on my most recent trip to China, some of which I will share here.
bunnie’s blog » Blog Archive » Tech Trend: Shanzhai
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Steve Chamberlin created an 8-bit computer from discrete logic and called his project the Big Mess o’ Wires.
The BMOW runs at 2MHz and has 512K RAM and 16K ROM. It is constructed with primarily 7400 series logic and over 1048 wirewrap connections.
The feature list is very impressive:
Here’s a video of a music test from his site:
I am completely blown away by this project. Has someone invited Steve to the Maker Faire?? I want to see this thing in person!
Check out his site and prepare to spend at least an hour looking at all of his plans and construction photos.
Totally amazing.
This is my 100th post to the blog.
When I started blogging in July of last year I wasn’t sure what I would post about or where all of this would go. Eight months later, the blog has exceeded my expectations in many (and many unexpected) ways. The major driving force behind this blog has always been my desire to share my projects and my passion for electronics with the world, in addition to (hopefully) inspiring some other people to do cool things with electronics as well.
My favorite post? Definitely the Arduino-based AVR High Voltage Programmer. I never expected such a simple circuit to help so many people. There has been so much ongoing interest in this project that I am putting together an Arduino shield kit based on the original design. The kit features a slick double-sided PCB and an integrated 5 to 12V step up converter so you don’t need an external 12V supply to use the programmer. More details very soon!
Tony created this awesome Google Sketchup model of an enclosure for my Wifi Radio project. After I made a very crude first draft, Tony took my design and turned it into something that is sort of modern, sort of retro. Perfect!
In other news, there is a Dorkbot SF meeting tonight at Parisoma at 7:30PM. Arrive early to get a seat! Details at dorkbot-sf.
Hal created a neat project by taking parts of my Wifi Radio project and repurposing them to do something completely different. His Standalone Weather Station changes the color of an LED based on the weather forecast for tomorrow. If temperatures are trending warmer, the color changes towards red. Colder – blue.
His project is very well documented and includes code for both the ATmega168-based circuit that drives the LED using PWM and the shell script on the router that communicates with Weather Underground to get the forecast.
Nice work, Hal!
Here’s a really cool Instructable about using a flexible copper-clad material called Pyralux to make flexible printed circuit boards. You could make some really cool business cards with this stuff.
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