We know, we’ve been down this road before with the ARISSat-1, but this time they say it’ll work. Test transmissions from ARISSat-1/KEDR are scheduled to begin four days prior to deployment at 19:15 UTC on July 30 and then continue until 1430 UTC on July 31. The satellite will be connected to an external antenna […]
Author Archives: the machinegeek
Infrared serial link using PIC18F452
Chris from PyroElectro writes us with this useful project to communicate serial data over an infrared link. Here’s an article that explains how to create a wireless infrared transmitter using an IR LED and a wireless IR receiver using a phototransistor to make a communication system. Asynchronous serial is transmitted over this link at 9600 […]
Tutorial series for new Arduino PID library
To assist in understanding and using the new Arduino PID Library, Brett Beuregard has put together a tutorial entitled Improving the Beginner’s PID – Introduction. Via DIY Drones.
Advanced Parallax Propeller robot big brain
Humanoido from LetsMakeRobots posted the above photo of a major project involving Parallax Propeller chips. Advanced Robot Big Brain 1-year in the making. Over 100 Parallax Propeller chips and over 100,000 enhanced chip processors. Controls 3,200 robots or I/O. SuperMicroController. Theoretical speed over 16,000 MIPS (left brain) and over 1 TeraFLOP (right brain). Only one […]
GNU Radio conference 2011
The GNU Radio project has announced plans for their first conference, to be held September 14-16, 2011 at the University of Pennsylvania. What is GNU Radio? GNU Radio is a free software development toolkit that provides the signal processing runtime and processing blocks to implement software radios using readily-available, low-cost external RF hardware and commodity […]
Gibson3d open source security software
Looking forward to the upcoming Defcon 19 conference, we note that Gibson open source software will be used there to monitor traffic. Dan Klinedinst, the project owner, writes: Some of you have seen the “Gibson” software, which models a network in 3D and shows security events on that network in real time. The code, as […]
Lattice announces Diamond release 1.3
Lattice Semiconductor has just announced Lattice Diamond® release 1.3, updating their FPGA design software environment. They write: This release further builds on helping FPGA designers reach their goals for cost sensitive and low-power applications. In addition to its industry-leading Power Calculator, Lattice Diamond 1.3 software now aids migrating a design to a lower cost device […]
FPGA bitstream security broken
Researchers in Germany have released two papers detailing how security of the bitstream on Xilinx FPGAs can be compromised. The first paper (11 pages) discusses power analysis attacks and extracting keys from Virtex-II devices. The second (3 pages) describes an analysis of the Virtex 4 and 5 bitstream encryption mechanism. Via Slashdot.
Rosserial library for Arduino released
Michael Ferguson and Adam Stambler have released the rosserial library for Arduino. This is a new library for connecting the Arduino platform to ROS, allowing an Arduino to directly publish and subscribe to ROS messages. There are also demos ranging from controlling servos to using an Arduino and rxplot as an oscilloscope to reading temperature […]
Video: DSP/SDR basics
Here’s Jeri Ellsworth’s latest video, explaining the basics of DSP and SDR for beginners, and how to build a digital direct conversion receiver (SDR) using sampling detectors and FPGA DSP processing. (If you want to skip the silly cat portion of the video, start at 1:25.) The links referred to in the video are below: […]
Pong on an Atmel 8535
Eric Milkie and Jomar Ochoco from Cornell present their EE course’s final project, Pong on an Atmel 8535. For our EE 476 final project, we wanted to make something that would be fun and also allow us to use many of the different embedded control techniques we have learned throughout the semester. We thought a […]
PIC power meter
Here’s an example of PyroFer’s DIY workaround to a problem: So, after Google killed the Google PowerMeter api I got the incentive to finish my own project using it. Odd huh. I wrote loads of code to hook into the Google API ages ago, but never got the hardware setup. Now After Google announce the […]
Radio Shack announces “The Great Create”
Radio Shack continues to pursue the DIY market: Welcome to The Great Create. We want to know what great creations you’ve come up with using RadioShack parts. Our goal is to gather the coolest projects from our most creative customers and share them here. So, show us what you’ve got and submit your project now. […]
CircuitBee schematic-tube
Ben Delarre writes to inform us of his new online library/archiving service for schematics: I’ve recently released CircuitBee which is a bit like YouTube, only for electronic schematics. It lets you upload KiCAD (or Eagle with the help of an export script) format schematics to our service, which then creates a web-embeddable version of them […]
Purdue underwater rover places in competition
Clayton Kleppinger writes: This website describes the mechanics, electronics, and code for the 2011 Purdue University Underwater ROV Project. We placed 2nd out of 26 other teams at the MATE ROV Competition in Houston, Texas at the NASA Neutral Buoyancy Lab. Via the contact form.
USRP 101: unlocking wireless PC locks (and freeing dolphins)
We’ve been interested in the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) SDR and the associated open source GNU Radio software for some time, but the $1500+ cost has kept the project on the back burner. Nevertheless, we always like a good story about RF hacking with the USRP. Corey and Max saw a wireless USB Proximity […]
SN754410 Dual Motor Control
Chris from PyroElectro informs us of a new project he’s posted on his blog. The SN754410 is a motor controller made by Texas Instruments. Don’t let its tiny size fool you, it is very capable, very simple and very powerful. This tutorial will use the SN754410 to show you how to control two motors independently […]
Easily measure inductance using Arduino
Moser from ReiBot has developed a simple project for using an Arduino along with an LM399 and several discrete components to measure inductance. He says: So you need to make or measure an inductor, but you don’t have an oscilloscope or signal generator? Measuring inductance with a handful of cheap common parts is certainly possible. […]
Pulse sensors for Arduino
Joel Murphy and Yury Gitman of pulsesensor.com are developing an Arduino compatible pulse sensor. “Pulse Sensor” is a well-designed plug-and-play heart-rate sensor for Arduino. It can be used by students, artists, athletes, makers, and game & mobile developers who want to easily incorporate live heart-rate data into their projects. After a few months of testing […]
Video: Hardware hacking for software guys
As the time for Defcon 19 nears we got to looking over last years videos and found this intro to Arduino for software guys. Dave King’s presentation is one of the better tutorials for programmers who want to learn the basics of the Arduino. An introduction for newbies, a refresher for the rest of us. […]