Parallax has revamped their tutorials for learning to program the Propeller in C. You can find a number of programming tips and examples as well as links to the SimpleIDE open source programming tool for use with Propeller C on the Learn.Parallax.C site. For more information on the SimpleIDE download their 33 page PDF User Guide.
It should be noted, however, that the number of C libraries currently available is far fewer than the number of Spin language or Propeller Assembly (PASM) objects available from the Propeller Object Exchange.
This project is about constructing a mono-color LED matrix display board that consists 320 LEDs arranged in 8 rows and 40 columns. The heart of this project is PIC16F1847 microcontroller which receives data from a PC through a serial port (or USB using an USB-UART interface), and display on the LED matrix with the help of five 74HC595 shift registers.
OLSFront is a Logic Analyzer client, currently supporting only the Open Bench Logic Sniffer. At the moment it’s still in alpha so it might have serious bugs and will suffer lots of changes until it will reach beta. It should work on Window XP and above, it’s free, it’s not opensource. The protocol parsers are written in JavaScript so anyone can roll their own. For now the API is undocumented.
Massimo Banzi announced it some minutes ago during his annual “The state of Arduino” presentation at Maker Faire Bay Area: Arduino Yún is the first of a revolutionary family of wifi products combining Arduino with Linux.
Yún means “cloud” in chinese language, as the purpose of this board to make it simple to connect to complex web services directly from Arduino.
I always like a challenge, so when I saw [simpleavr]s vusbtiny programmer, I started to wonder how small I could make an AVR programmer. All in all I’m pretty pleased with the result.
The schematic is almost the same as the original one. I only added a LED an resistor to indicate a proper power supply.
If you’ve tried to install GNU Radio from binaries without success, this video from NeedSec is for you. He demonstrates how to intall GNU Radio on Kali Linux from source, and confirms operation of the RTL-SDR dongle using GQRX radio receiver software. Continue reading →
Want a laser engraver for your workshop? Here’s an Instructable by ianmcmill on how to build your own.
If you have some old donated scanners and printers chances are you have most of the stuff needed to make your own DIY Laser Engraver. The main thing that all laser engravers have in common is a method of moving a laser or set of mirrors in an X Y pattern. Scanners and printers have motors and rails that can allow for accurate motion so all that is needed to be added into the mix is a control system, some motor drivers and the laser system. ianmcmill shows us how he did it using an Arduino and 90 € of other various parts.
After finally getting stencils working with my Cameo cutter, I wanted to try making chassis overlays. Over the years I have spent good money getting polycarbonate overlays (7 to 10-mil) with rear silkscreen for connector identification and such, a flood-fill color, backed with 3M 467 adhesive, and die-cut with all the openings and outer shape. It’s a great way to allow multiple overlays to work for different products using a single chassis with a flexible common hole pattern, but pricey.
You can now turn your favourite music downloads into playable records made from materials you have lying around the house.
Amanda Ghassaei, 24, from San Francisco has created the world’s first laser-cut wooden records using songs from Radiohead and Joy Division.
And the software engineer has made the instructions available to download, making it possible to create your own at home.
During this hands-on training, you will learn how to lower the power of your system designs using Atmel microcontrollers (MCUs) in conjunction with our wireless and touch solutions. Many of the lessons you’ll learn will be applicable to a wide variety of applications, such as process control nodes for monitoring and controlling systems used in factories, or general MCU systems requiring both wireless and touch user interfaces. Specifically we will focus on a mid-end thermostat that provides basic climate controls with additional sensing, control and interface capabilities. As part of the training, you will be able to walk away with an Atmel SAM4L-EK Evaluation Kit.
Mats continues his challenge of designing one PCB every week. In week 10 he came up with Trifluxx, a triangular PCB game:
I ended up with using resistor arrays instead of discrete 0805 resistors to save some space and the board can be used for both a sound reactive flasher or some kind of a 1/2/3-player game if the buttons are cut off and connected to the main board by wires. The center of the board will either have a 5mm thru-hole led for the game version or a condenser microphone for the flasher version.
The board is powered by a cr2032 coin cell mounted at the bottom of the board – all other parts are at the top.
Chris built a USB IR Toy free PCB. With the USB IR Toy you can use a remote control with your computer, view infrared signals on a logic analyzer, capture and replay remote control buttons.
If you build a free PCB we’ll send you another one! Blog about it, post a picture on Flicker, whatever – we’ll send you a coupon code for the free PCB drawer.
Pierre Villeneuve writes about his Dancing Lego robot project:
Its based on my Raspberry Pi, five servo motors, and Lego parts stolen from my son’s collection. The robot dances to some pretty groovy music, and there is a special appearance by Lego Batman.
Great turnout for the Get Your Stuff Made presentation! Ian talked about the ways open source is currently manufactured, and outlined the package we send to Seeed Studio to start a new project.
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If you are getting started with Cypress Semiconductor’s new PSoC 4 Pioneer Kit dev board here’s an interesting addition to the standard IDE. It’s a library of useful annotation components and macros by Cypkees, who describes: “The PSoC 4 Pioneer Kit component is an annotation component with active wire terminals to show how external devices should connect to the Pioneer kit. You can browse PSoC Creator’s library of annotation components and even make your own annotation components if we don’t have something you need. The above video shows the annotation component and some quick examples of how useful it can be.”
The PSoC4 Pioneer Kit library zip file can be downloaded here.
Here are some pics of the activities from around Bay Area Maker Faire. Some amazing new fire sculptures this year. More photos below the fold. Continue reading →
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