Fri 24 Apr 2009
I had the good fortune of running into someone who read IC Friday, at random, and that reminded me that I have been quite delinquent in updating ublog. My work load has tripled over the past few months, so I have been busy, however, I will make every effort to keep this current. Below are my non-work-related engineering projects that are in various state of completion, hopefully I will create writeups for them and you will find them interesting.
- DJ Box — Mini-itx fanless system with wifi to encode and stream, on the fly, audio from my turntables. Welding a custom case (see below) and adding one or two analog VU meters.
- MIG Welding — Might not really be considered engineering, but at least it’s arc welding. My family got me a 140A MIG welder for my birthday in February and I purchased everything needed for steel and aluminum welding, so I will try to make something interesting. Maybe use it to destroy some solid-state relays (on video).
- Functional IC Decapping — IC Friday will not be continued in its former state where chips were bathed in acid and imaged. I think it will be better for everyone, especially myself, if I create fewer but higher-content posts. I am thinking of either decapping some analog circuits without destroying the majority of the package and demonstrating some optical glitching, for example. Another idea is to image the chips but write a clear post on the identification of various sub-circuits on the IC substrate.
- Sleep-State Staging EEG Amplifier — I am have been looking at the most simple method to create an EEG amplifier and LabView combination that is capable of discriminating sleep states. I am then planning to post some data from myself.
Feel free to post a comment if there is something specific that you want to see written up, hopefully I can get to it in a reasonable manner. It’s good to be back!
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Nico,
About the EEG amplifier: I would make a circuit with the EEG going to a programmable gain amplifier the output of which goes to a Labjack which goes to a PC. Of course, I presume that you want something quick and dirty. I tried doing something like this before — I strapped a 3-axis accelerometer to my body as I slept. The results were interesting.
Welcome back!
Peetr
http://www.labjack.com/
http://www.opencircuits.com/Programmable_Chip_EEG
i cleaning out bookmarks since you rather not post interesting posts nor any posts nor will you aprove any comments. i shall prune you from my list.
when you start posting email me.
Hi Pevo,
Thanks for the info. I almost completed DJ box and have not started working on the EEG amplifier yet. I am currently planning an INA116/INA121 differential input, some gain stage, some filtering, and using a National Instruments USB-6009 to acquire the data. I am now finishing a cross-country car trip so the photos will come before any of the circuits. Cheers!
Hello Nico,
I was wondering how far you were on your Functional IC Decapping text. I would like to see a post with some good pictures and tips on identifying different sections of the chips. I was also wondering if you had any recommended reading besides Silicon Zoo and Flylogic for reverse engineering chips?
Take care
Hi dbrock178, I am getting near the end of my graduate program so I am finding less and less time to do the things described in the blog. I have just now completed the djbox and have started writing it up. I think I have a working procedure for the functional chip uncap but I haven’t had time to test it. It involves removing some of the package over the die with an end mill and dremel and then allowing a drop of sulfuric acid to sit in the tiny cavity for extended periods of time at room temperature. This will hopefully eat the package enough to expose the die without doing any thermal damage to the chip. As for reading material, you could check out Travis Goodspeed (http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.com/).