Parallax has announced the availability of the Propeller GCC/SimpleIDE programming environment for the Propeller chip. “Now you can program your Propeller based application in C or C++! Parallax is proud to announce that it is moving into the beta phase for Propeller GCC – Parallax’s new open-source, multi-OS, and multi-lingual compiler that targets the Parallax […]
Author Archives: the machinegeek
Spansion serial Flash sample offer
Spansion together with Avnet has announced a marketing promotion for Spansion FL Serial Flash memory. “Spansion FL Serial Flash memory offers a reduced pin count for lower system cost while providing optimal read/write performance for a variety of automotive, networking, consumer electronics and industrial applications. With read speeds up to 133 MHz clock speed in […]
Simple DIY EMG sensors
Eric Schmiedl writes, “See the signals that make your muscles move… all it takes is an audio recorder and $10 worth of foil, coax, and duct tape. Oh, and some sugar syrup.” Eric constructed these DIY EMG sensors which he interfaced with an audio recorder to record his muscle activity.
TI 2012 Little Logic Guide
TI has released their 2012 Little Logic Guide, containing product overviews, selection tables and information covering gate functions, buffer/registers, level translators and switches. You can download the 25 page PDF here.
CMU Sphinx open source toolkit for speech recognition
CMU Sphinx is Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) open source toolkit for speech recognition. The project has published this article on Sourceforge describing the automation of language model creation procedures as a complete C++ application. The article is the latest in a series posted on the Sourceforge page describing this ongoing open source academic research program. […]
Free webcast: Expanding the Capabilities of your Arduino Projects
O’Reilly is offering a free webcast on Expanding the Capabilities of your Arduino Projects. The one hour presentation is scheduled for Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 10 AM PT and features Michael Margolis, author of the Arduino Cookbook, 2nd Edition. For more information or to register visit O’Reilly’s webcast registration page. Via MAKE.
SNES FLASH/ROM runs custom Super Nintendo code
dext0rb from The Electrified Fooling Machine Company has just finished work on a project which allows custom Super Nintendo code to run on an SNES FLASH/ROM. He writes, “I wanted to make and play an updated version of NBA JAM an SNES hardware, so I made this device. Load a game ROM to the device […]
Contest: Changing the World with Android
Microcontroller Central is sponsoring a contest with the theme, “Changing the World with Android.” According to MC: To enter, submit a design proposal for an MCU-based device that uses an Android platform (tablet, smartphone, etc.) as the user/control interface, via the reader boards. The more detail the better, but entries should be at least 100 […]
ATARI POKEY player using DP QFP proto board
Markus Gritsch has built a dedicated ATARI POKEY chiptunes player using a DP QFP proto boards. “I successfully compiled the ASAP (Another Slight Atari Player) library for a PIC32MX795F512H. ASAP emulates a 6502 CPU and the famous POKEY sound chip used for example in the ATARI 400/800 and XL/XE 8-bit computers. To say it with […]
ROBOTC for Arduino public BETA released
The ROBOTC dev-team has released their first Public BETA of “ROBOTC for Arduino”. “ROBOTC is a powerful C-based programming language with a Windows environment for writing and debugging programs, and the only programming language at this level that offers a comprehensive, real-time debugger.” It has previously been released in a paid version for the the […]
Tutorial: Accurate Arduino ADC readings
The Hardware Hacking guys have posted this brief tutorial with tips on improving the accuracy of ADC reading with the Arduino. They endeavor to do this by measuring the internal 1.1V reference voltage (it is available for ATMega 168 and ATMega 328 only) and, then, by normalizing the ADC. Via the Arduino Blog.
Learn.parallax.com
Parallax has launched a learning resources site for hobbyists and students. Known as learn.parallax.com, it’s the online home for materials relating to the Parallax Board of Education microcontroller development systems and robotics kits for BASIC Stamp, Propeller, and Arduino. The site is in the development stage, and is being populated with links to tutorials for […]
TI 2012 Power Management Guide
Drone draws our attention to the TI 2012 Power Management Guide which is now available for download. This 121 page PDF version includes the National Semiconductor products as well. Via the contact form.
ADS-B sync and Manchester decoding in CPLD
P. Kusmierski posted an article on flipthatbit describing ADS-B sync and Manchester decoding in CPLD. The CPLD used is a Xilinx XC9536XL (which is the smaller version of the XC9572XL found in our CPLD Development Board.) Having put together my miniADSB I needed to extract the actual data from the Manchester encoded bit streams it […]
Parallax Propeller retro pocket mini computer
Jeff Ledger wrote informing us of a retro-style computer based on the Parallax Propeller described in this Instructable. It utilizes the Pocket Mini Computer Kit from GadgetGangster. This board is based on the Propeller chip and includes VGA, audio and PS/2 keyboard ports as well as a microSD card slot and Wii controller port. The […]
embdSocial team project weekend roundup
Christopher Armenio writes, “The embdSocial team just finished our 2nd ‘Project Weekend’ and we delivered some pretty awesome projects! Thanks for checking them out.” Check below the fold for project videos, links to details and more!
The Prototypers podcast
Here’s an interesting new podcast from our friends at GadgetGangster. It’s known as The Prototypers and covers various subjects of interest to electronics hobbyists. Episode 7 (the most recent) covers hacking smart parking meters with Joe Grand, the Commodore Plus Four and more. Check it out!
Decoding P25 with SDR#, DSD, and RTLSDR
This is another illustration of the amazing utility of the RTL-SDR and SDR# software. Here proct0r links the output from SDR# to a program known as DSD. DSD is an open source command line program originally coded in C by anonymous for Linux for the purpose of decoding digital protocols via a PC soundcard.
LALO.LI client-side short voice message service
We previously posted on Franz Enzenhofer’s project providing unofficial Google image search by drawing. Now Franz writes to inform us of a new project he coded up over the last weekend. He says, “last weekend I coded another prototype app Lalo.li, basically a 100% client side short voice message service. Some background information and code […]
Fedora pays M$ boot tax to access consumer’s hardware
According to an article posted on BoingBoing, Fedora Linux has agreed to pay Microsoft what amounts to an access tax which will allow Fedora products to run on MS locked down hardware. A quiet announcement from the Fedora Linux community signals a titanic shift in the way that the computer market will work from now […]