Author Archives: the machinegeek

Connecting Arduino to Mathematica on Mac OS X

Mathematica is a comprehensive computational platform that purports to automate workflow involving computing results, “from building a hedge fund trading website or publishing interactive engineering textbooks to developing embedded image recognition algorithms or teaching calculus.” (It’s not open source, but a hobbyist license is available.) William J. Turkel teaches a course on interactive exhibit design […]

ALSE free IP cores for non-commercial CPLD/FPGA dev

Advanced Logic Synthesis for Electronics (ALSE) is a Paris based company providing product development, IP consulting and training courses involving HDL, ASIC and FGPA devices. They are making available a series of IP cores free for personal, non-commercial use. They state: For non-commercial projects only, we have taken the decision to offer some functions for […]

TCPDUMP-fu

While most of us are familiar with packet capturing/sniffing programs such as Wireshark, it’s not always the most convenient or appropriate tool to use in every network monitoring situation. Henry Van Styn has written an excellent how-to tutorial on the uses of the Linux command line utility TCPDUMP, and why it may be all you […]

Tutorial: play simple Arduino audio samples

David Mellis from the Arduino crew presents this tutorial on playing short audio samples using only the Arduino and a simple speaker. Using the PCM Library for Arduino, this project takes a short (4 second) audio sample of your choosing which you encode on your PC into MP3 format (down sampled to 8 KHz, 8-bit […]

MetroChange lets you donate leftover MetroCard balance to charity

Students at NYU are developing a project to allow users of New York City’s MetroCard magnetic transit cards to donate leftover funds to charity directly from the card. It’s known as the MetroChange project and uses commonly available hardware, including an Arduino and mag stripe reader. The group really took a serious approach to development, […]

Coobro Geo Kit: open source Arduino/GPS project

Tyler of coobrolabs writes about his latest open source project, The Coobro Geo is an Arduino compatible through-hole GPS kit that allows you to navigate using only LEDs for direction and distance. It is built around the awesome Fastrax UP501 GPS module (MediaTek MM3318 chip). It is completely open source, so all design files and […]

Mini Thermal Printer from Adafruit

If you need a hardcopy compact printer for your next MCU project, check out Adafruit’s Mini Thermal Receipt Printer Starter Pack. This device takes TTL serial data at 19200 baud and prints out data and images. The starter pack lists for $61.95 and includes 50′ of thermal printer paper, a 5V 2A power supply and […]

DIY Santa Claus Singer with Flyport

Stefano has completed work on a holiday project known as the DIY Santa Claus Singer with Flyport. It is built around an animated Santa Claus decoration with the control switch bypassed with an NPN transistor. The switch is controlled over the internet via the Arduino/ethernet shield combo which responds to Twitter messages. Part one of […]

Christmas Tree email alert

Matt Richardson from MAKE presents his take on the traditional CHristmas tree email notifier utilizing the Arduino and the Ethernet Shield. He says: “On a set interval, the Arduino will connect to a PHP-enabled web server which will, in turn, check for new email. The PHP web server will return the count of messages to […]

Get up to speed with First Spin podcast

If you are new to the Parallax Propeller MCU you may want to check out First Spin. It’s an audio podcast for that teaches how to use the Parallax Propeller to persons with no prior programming experience. You can listen to or download the pilot cast here, and follow the ongoing lineup of episodes at […]

Free download: Cory Doctorow’s MAKERS

If you’re looking for an open source read about open source this Christmas weekend, you might want to check out Cory Doctorow’s MAKERS. MAKERS is a cyberpunk novel set in Doctorow’s trademark near-future, covering the convergence of economic collapse and the open source/maker movement’s efforts to assemble the pieces to construct a New Work economy, […]

TIDeals on Stellaris dev board and Micrium OS textbook

TIDeals has announced two year end specials. “First up is the Stellaris Ethernet-enabled Intelligent Display Module with PoE RDK. Basically, this little number is the Stellaris Intelligent Display Reference Design Kit (RDK-IDM), and it offers a complete, open-tool graphical touch-screen user interface design solution for control, automation, and instrumentation applications. Included in the RDK-IDM is […]

ATtiny13 controlled LED Christmas lights

A simple example of a Christmas light project using store bought LED lights and components you probably have lying around the shop. Mark VandeWettering found a set of battery powered LED Christmas lights and decided to combine this this an ATtiny13 to make an MCU controlled lighting display. He explains: I found a set of […]

Vinciduino: an open hardware Arduino Leonardo clone

alb calls our attention to the Vinciduino open hardware project. “Vinciduino is a free open platform developed by members of the Spanish arduino forum. The board has been developed to be compatible with Arduino boards and has the same form factor of the Arduino Pro from Sparkfun. The main difference is that it supports the […]

Using Fixed Voltage Reference (FVR) for ADC in the PIC16F1827

Raj writes to inform us of his Embedded Lab tutorial with tips on using the Fixed Voltage Reference (FVR) module in enhanced mid-range 8-bit PIC microcontrollers for a precise and accurate A/D conversion. Raj demos how to use the built-in module of the PIC16F1827 that generates a stable reference voltage internally known as the FVR. […]