The Ware for March 2013 is shown below. Click on the image for a larger version.

Thanks to Patricio Worthalter for contributing this month’s ware! The PCI Matchmaker from AMCC brings me back. I used one of those as part of my Master’s thesis, back in the day when FPGAs accessible by mere mortals couldn’t do PCI directly. Man, it was (and still is) a pain to properly obtain the official PCI bus specs…PCI is a member’s-only club, with a $3k annual fee. Ain’t nobody got dime fo’ that!

The Ware for February 2013 is the Worldsemi WS2812. It’s a digital-to-light converter — add +5V, ground, and shift in a digital code word, and out comes PWM RGB light. The chip also features a digital output for cascading multiple LEDs in a row. It’s an extremely versatile chip that was brought to my attention by Dave Cranor during the Shenzhen geek tour in January — one of those things that you just keep a stock of at all times because it’s a dirt simple way to add a beautiful-looking LED into a tight spot. You can buy ones mounted on a little PCB from Adafruit.

I’ll give Randy the prize this month, since he was the first to correctly identify the entire packaged ware, and also gave a link to a datasheet (which I had also been looking for). Thanks, and email me for your prize!

The Ware for February 2013 is shown below.

For what it’s worth, here is a close-up of part of the ware:

恭喜发财！

Last month’s ware was a machine for making custom card-edge connectors for game cartridges. The machine is made by AUK Contractors, a Taiwanese connector company with factories in China. AUK is on my short list of suppliers for volume quantities of connectors. Their ability to make highly automated machines like this is rare in China, and their extraordinary sophistication in automated manufacturing allows them to maintain quality while hitting price points many other manufacturers can’t touch.

Below is a video of the machine in operation (caution: the machine is very loud, I recommend adjusting the volume down before hitting play).

You can also watch in HD (24 MB).

I can stare and watch machines like this operate for hours. I’m particularly fascinated by the vibrating buckets that, through simple shaking motions, takes a random pile of connectors and lines them up. The vibration of the bucket is biased; if you put your hand on the edge of the bucket, your hand will also magically glide in the same direction as the connectors. There are a series of notches and ledges on the internal guide tracks that cause connectors in the wrong orientation to fall back into the bucket, such that by the time connectors reach the top they are all in just one orientation.

I believe that this machine is making the connectors used by the Leapfrog Leapster series of handheld educational game consoles. Arnuschky was the first to guess a game connector, and thus is the winner. Congrats, email me for your prize!

The Ware for January 2013 is shown below.

This is a ware I saw while doing the geektour of Shenzhen this past month. Try to guess what it makes! I will post a video of it in operation in the solution to the ware. It’s really fascinating to watch it run.