If you develop with Freescale components, including the Freescale Tower System, you should note the availability of free downloads of the CodeWarrior IDE. These are Special Edition verions, which are fully functional free download versions of the CodeWarrior Development Studio with code size restrictions on the build chain. Freescale indicates that “Special Editions are pre-licensed, […]
Author Archives: the machinegeek
Samsung’s NFC Tec Tiles
Samsung has debuted Tec Tiles. These NFC smart stickers (shown above at actual size) are designed to be preprogrammed with information of your choice and left to be read by other NFC equipped phones. In order to program a tag, you’ll need to have the Samsung Tec Tile app on your NFC equipped phone, then […]
Free Raspberry Pi ezine: The MagPi
The third issue of The MagPi, the Raspberry Pi community’s free-to-download magazine has been released. This issue includes articles on Debian essentials, GPIO interfacing for beginners, making ribbon cable and more. All issues of The MagPi are available for download from the MagPi magsite. Ash, Jaseman, Meltwater, Chris and The MagPi team are looking for […]
Octopart provides historical component pricing
Greg Shikhman from Octopart writes, “Hey DP, we just launched a new feature on Octopart that we think is really cool: historical prices on chips. We’re trying to bring transparency to the chip market and we’ve already discovered some cool stuff in our data. Check it out! The way it works is you search for […]
DIY USB OTG cable connects Flash disk to Android phone
Rohit de Sa has an Android phone with a feature known as USB On The Go (OTG), allowing the phone to act as either a host or slave. Thus, it can interface with various USB devices such as mice, keyboards, etc. Since in his region a USB OTG cable is not easily available, Rohit went […]
Prop EKG: simple heart rhythm monitor using Parallax Propeller
RaysLogic has posted his plans for a Parallax Propeller based heart rate monitor. Dubbed the PropEKG, Ray’s design uses an AD627 instrument amplifier and TC1029 dual op amp. Data is processed by the Propeller and relayed to a Windows PC using a Parallax PropPlug (normally used for programming a Propeller chip.) The circuit is isolated […]
Parallax Emic 2 text-to-speech module
Parallax has released their Emic 2 Text-to-Speech Module. The Emic 2 is a multi-language voice synthesizer that converts a stream of digital text into natural sounding speech. The module requires a 5 volt DC power supply at 30 mA, and interfaces with your project via 9600 baud asynchronous serial (TTL). The module is capable of […]
Nimbits 3.2 released
The Nimbits crew is proud to announce the release of Nimbits v3.2. It is now easier than ever to get started using the public Nimbits cloud. Nimbits.com is a free, open source platform for logging and visualizing data on the cloud. It is a service you can use out of the box to log changing […]
Video player using Nokia color LCD and 8 bit AVR
Vinod S. writes about his latest project, a video player using a Nokia color LCD, ATmega32 and SD card. “I am introducing my new video player made using an ATmega32 microcontroller and Nokia color LCD. I got a 65K color LCD from an old Nokia 6030 mobile phone. I directly soldered 10 thin enameled copper […]
PhoneGap cross platform development using HTML5 + cloud
“PhoneGap is a standards-based, open-source development framework for building cross-platform mobile apps with HTML, CSS and JavaScript for iPhone/iPad, Google Android, Windows Phone 7, Palm, Symbian, BlackBerry and more. Write a PhoneGap app once with HTML and Javascript and deploy it to any mobile device without losing features of a native app.” With PhoneGap you […]
CODEC 2 Open source speech coding at 2400 bit/s and below
What’s CODEC 2? In this video from the 2011 Digital Communications Conference held last September in Baltimore, MD, David Rowe, Australian Amateur Radio operator VK5DGR, detailed his work on an open-source, low bit-rate CODEC for Digital Voice for Amateur Radio. It’s presently in the Alpha testing stage. More information on this codec as well as […]
Microchip promotion – PIC24F microstick for $9.99
bearmos draws our attention to a quick deal! “If you’re interested in the PIC24F series (that DP uses quite readily) – MC is running a promotion where you can get a PIC24F microstick for $9.99 (excluding taxes and shipping) if you place an order today or tomorrow (6/29/12). It looks like a decent little board […]
AS3935 Franklin lightning sensor
Joe Desbonnet writes, “This looks like an interesting lightning sensor the AS3935 by Franklin. Available at Digi-Key for about $8 in single quantities. Unfortunately the eval kit is $300.”
Freescale ARM solutions guide
Freescale has made available their ARM Solutions Guide. This 86 page PDF provides an in-depth view of the Kinetis, Vybrid and i.MX product lines as well coverage of the Tower development system, MQX software solutions, and third party development tools. Download your copy here.
BTSwitch project controls devices with Android smartphone
Luca Dentella writes, “Hello! I’ve just published my latest project, an Arduino-based bluetooth switch you can control via Android App.” The design uses an Android smartphone app which communicates via Bluetooth with a Bluegiga WT11 module, which in turn communicates with an Arduino controlling a relay switch. Luca’s plans and code are available on his […]
Renesas RX210 demo board promotion
Renesas is making the RX210 promotional demo board available free to eligible registrants. This board is based on the RX210 ultra-low power, low-voltage Flash MCU. You can download the board’s schematic here. This promotion is open to residents of the United States, Canada, Mexico & South America. Other restrictions may apply. In order to qualify, […]
CircuitLab on iPad
We previously covered the CircuitLab circuit simulation software for the PC. The above video from Nerdkits demonstrates that the same browser-based CircuitLab schematic capture and circuit simulation tool now works on the iPad! UPDATE: As aptly noted in the comment, CircuitLab is a Javascript-based app and is available free for use on the iPad from […]
Ettus LiveUSB SDR environment
Ettus, manufacturers of the USRP line of SDRs, has announced the availability of a customized bootable USB drive for USRP/GnuRadio development. The LiveUSB SDR Environment is a 16 GB USB 3.0 drive with Ubuntu 11.10 (64-bit), USRP Hardware Driver (UHD), GNU Radio, OpenBTS and associated documentation preinstalled. Ettus notes that this drive is compatible with […]
AVR LCD name badge using ATtiny 2313
Erik Gregg (Hank) wanted a name badge using an 16×2 alphanumeric display for use at conferences, nerdfests, etc. He constructed this simple ATtiny2313 based badge which interfaces with the LCD with a minimum of components. This project is based upon this Instructable. He took the Instructable to the next level by moving from breadboard to […]
Arduino from the command line in Ubuntu 12.04
Martyn Davis is an Arduino enthusiast whose operations have outgrown the stock Arduino GUI IDE. “If you’ve done more than a bit of programming in the past, you’ll soon find the dinky IDE a little frustrating to use. For example, my preferred text editor, by far, is vim, and I find it quite jarring to […]