Geek Destinations: JB Saunders

I had some time off during winter and I had a free day all to myself so I headed up to Boulder to meet a friend and visit JB Saunders. This place should be on every geek's bucket list. Holy cow...

AVC 2012: On The Waiting List

Crap! I'm on the "backorder list" for the 2012 Sparkfun AVC!

That means several people have to officially drop out or I won't get to compete at all this year! I didn't see the announcement until a day after and apparently, by that time, all 50 slots had already been filled. I am in the top five on the waiting list, though, so there is still a glimmer of hope.

I don't know if I will get to compete but what is certain is that Data Bus development will continue and you'll read about it here.

Equally certain is that I will be hoping and praying that at least 5 other contestants fail miserably and give up... (is that wrong of me?)

LPCXpresso Surgery

I have an LPCXpresso now. The board breaks out a 120MHz LPC1769 to DIP form. Attached to the board is an LPC-Link, a JTAG debugger. To use both boards conveniently, they need to be separated. One of my readers, Nemo, suggests an Xacto hobby saw and mitre box to split the boards apart. He achieved very nice, precision cuts this way.

My approach for cutting apart the LPCXpresso and LPC-Link involved use of a plastic cutter and utility knife shown above.

• Use solder braid to remove the solder from the solder jumpers between both board halves.
• Then score a line with plastic cutter on both sides using straight edge and (gently) vise. 
• Score until you can't easily go deeper. 
• Continue scoring with the narrower utility knife to score a bit deeper
• Snap the board in half by hand without much effort. 
• Sand both edges.

Now mount male header pins on one side, female header socket on the other, et voila. Plus, no cables to deal with.