Ben is inspired to refurbish an old drill press he received as a hand-me-down. The thirty four year old press is in rough shape and is in need of some cleaning, greasing, and has to be completely rewired. With Felix's help, Ben gets the drill press in working order and makes it look shiny and new.

Ben has used his Agilent handheld oscilloscope many times to troubleshoot projects and was curious what he could do with some of the other scopes out there. He takes a trip to Madison Area Technical College to visit their electronics lab and get his hands on the high end scopes they have. He has three problems he's looking to solve with help from the oscilloscopes.

Ben is always looking for tools and processes to help with all the projects he builds. He's got a CNC mill, laser cutter, and a 3-D printer, but hasn't found a way to whip up a PCB at his shop. He's hand wired many circuits, but this can be tedious. He's designed PCBs in Eagle and sent them off for production at a board house, but this doesn't help when he wants a PCB the same day. In this episode, Ben experiments with three methods of PCB etch...

Farnell element14 has launched the EcoCable and EcoFlex range from Alpha Wire. Utilising the innovative 100% recyclable mPPE insulation found in EcoWire, EcoCable and EcoFlex are designed to be up to 65% lighter and 47% smaller, with up to 91% lower outgassing than traditional PVC cable and capable of handling temperature extremes to -50°C.

Designers using the Raspberry Pi for embedded applications can now go to element14 for the Raspberry Pi Compute Development Kit. The Module allows design engineers to use their own interface board that will host the compute module and deliver a smooth experience as they move from prototyping on the Pi through to shipping commercial product in volume.

In this article, Richard Curtin, Global Director of Strategic Alliance at element14, and Eddie Sinnott, VP Portfolio, Strategy & Marketing at Wolfson, discuss why the development of the recently launched Wolfson Audio Card demonstrates that the role of electronics distribution is being re-defined to support a new generation of innovation.

Find out more about the many products and services available from Farnell element14.

A self-powered sensor kit that enables designers and enthusiasts to get up and running with home and building automation is available from element14. The EnOcean Sensor Kit requires no cables or batteries and can be used with the EnOcean Pi for a wide variety of applications including switching lights, controlling blinds as well as acquiring wireless sensor information like temperature and window/door status detection.

Ben Heck can't believe another Steve Jobs biopic is being planned in Hollywood! He decides that the best way to pay homage to Steve Jobs is by tearing apart a Mac Classic and seeing what he can find. Will he find signatures inside the case? Will it have a hard drive? Join Ben as he removes the layers to find out.

Distribution is changing; customers are demanding more from the traditional component distributor from full end to end solutions with technical information, software and hardware support, components in a range of volumes and a variety of delivery options. The customer is changing too; the line between supplier and customer it blurring. Distributors are responding by changing their offering, creating solutions that support customers’ right t...

The use of low cost development kits has increased dramatically over the last few years. There is no doubt that these low cost plug-in PCBs are a great tool for the design engineer. The boards essentially demonstrate the capabilities of the specific device for which they are designed. However, there has been much debate around their status in respect of the RoHS Directive and, more importantly, the impact of the RoHS Recast 2011/65/EU and the imp...

Farnell element14 and Atmel have launched the SAMA5D3 Xplained evaluation kit, a low-cost fast prototyping and evaluation platform for microprocessor-based design. The board, which is based on Atmel’s SAMA5D3 ARM Cortex-A5 processor-based MPU, comes with a rich set of ready-to-use connectivity and storage peripherals, along with Arduino shield-compatible expansion headers for easy customisation.

Raspberry Pi has Hi-Fi. Farnell element14 has launched the Wolfson Audio Card which allows Raspberry Pi owners to use high quality audio capabilities as the inspiration for their latest Pi innovations. The card brings both line-in, line-out headphone and headset support, on-board stereo microphones, and digital audio S/PDIF functionality to the Raspberry Pi for the first time.

Chris Stanton from element14 demonstrates the features of the new Wolfson Audio Card with the Raspberry Pi.

element14 and RIoTboard.org have launched the official community website for the RIoTboard.It will serve as the launch pad for innovative open source projects to enable the Internet of Things (IoT). Designers will be encouraged to join the RIoTboard revolution at the site, where they can buy, design and register their projects. 

Ben continues his work to create the OUYA portable his viewers challenged him to build. In this part of the process, he opens the controller to see how he can mod it for his device. After deciding on a plan, he builds the controls for his device from the hacked OUYA controller. Now that the electronics are ready, he can get to work designing a cool case.

Ben has been challenged by many viewers to make the OUYA into a Heck-style portable gaming device. For the first part of the project, Ben mods an LCD and the OUYA to be as thin as possible. After removing any unneeded components, he works to wire up the HDMI and get the screen and OUYA working as one. He'll sketch-up an idea for how the project will come together in the next episode before calling it a day.  

Ben shows you how to solder surface mount components with his home-brew solder reflow oven. He goes through the steps of placing parts with solder paste and shares his know-how along the way. After the board comes out of the oven, he demonstrates how to fix solder bridges and other imperfections. He adds some through-hole components and goes over the pros and cons of both methods of soldering.

Farnell element14 and Atmel today (February 25) announced the launch of Atmel’s new SAMA5D3 Xplained evaluation kit, a low-cost, fast prototyping and evaluation platform for microprocessor-based design. The board, which is based on Atmel’s SAMA5D3 ARM Cortex-A5 processor-based MPU, comes with a rich set of ready-to-use connectivity and storage peripherals, along with Arduino shield-compatible expansion headers for easy customisation.

Farnell element14 is today exclusively launching an open source, single board platform designed to run Android operating systems. The Revolutionising the Internet of Things (RIoT) board features a high processing performance/low-power consumption processor with a broad range of peripherals and display capabilities.