This tutorial from Parallax explains speech synthesis for the Propeller chip. The circuit is simply a speaker plugged into the audio jack on the Propeller Board of Education (though any Propeller dev board should work; the demo program assumes the speaker is connected to Pin 10.) The demo is known as SimpleTalk.spin and uses the […]
Category Archives: code
Netgear hack note
Lloyd Atkinson writes: I was recently researching the possibility of running OpenWRT on one of my Netgear Wireless access points. I came across a Netgear page that has available TAR files of source code for hundreds of their devices! So far, it appears that Netgear uses BusyBox Linux on their devices. I just thought some […]
Arduino voice control with EasyVR shield
If you want to add voice recognition to your next Arduino project, you might want to consider the EasyVR Shield by VeeaR. It’s based on the EasyVR module, and combined with supporting libraries provides up to 32 user-defined Speaker Dependent triggers (in any language) or commands and voice passwords. The shield makes available three controllable […]
MAKE How-To: Get Started with the BeagleBone
Matt Richardson from MAKE provides this introduction to the BeagleBone dev board. BeagleBone is an TI AM3358 ARM Cortex-A8-based microprocessor board that ships with a 2GB microSD card with the Angstrom Linux Distribution with node.js and Cloud9 IDE. It retails for $89 from MAKE and Adafruit.
Free Model Foundry: open source CPLD/FPGA simulation models
Here’s a site we found containing open source simulation models for system level verification of CPLD/FPGA devices. “Founded in 1995, Free Model Foundry (FMF) is dedicated to promoting standard modeling practices within the electrical engineering comunity. In particular, we support the use of VHDL, Verilog, and SystemVerilog modeling languages. They believe in free, open source […]
CORDIC for dummies
Drone writes: Here is a thread on the Parallax Propeller Forum discussing the downloadable document by forum user “Bean” called
$5.00 simple oscilloscope using Picaxe and VB
Patrick Cambria posts this simple oscilloscope project using a Picaxe-08M microcontroller and a potentiometer. The Picaxe is programmed in BASIC and the entire MCU program follows: main: READADC10 1,B0 SERTXD(#B0,10) goto main The output from a potentiometer voltage divider is fed into an ADC pin of a PICAXE 08M then serially transmitted to a Serial […]
Facepunch Reverse Engineering Challenge #1
Facepunch is conducting a software reverse engineering contest! “The FPREC is a week long challenge where you are provided with an executable to reverse engineer. There will be a goal, such as “access this website”, or “decrypt this file”. Hopefully, there’ll be rewards. To participate, go to the Facepunch website forum and follow the instructions […]
Remote controlled balancing robot using mbed MCU
Kristian Lauszus updates us on this remote controllable balancing robot project. In development of this project, Kristian created the PS3 Bluetooth Library both for Arduino and the FEZ Devices. However, not content with the performance of the FEZ, an mbed microcontroller, which is an ARM Cortex-M3 running 96MHz, has been incorporated into the latest design. […]
Propeller DTMF generator object
If you need to generate DTMF tones and have a Parallax Propeller chip handy, there’s an object for that! Thomas E. McInnes has coded up this DTMF generator object for the Propeller. Written in Spin, the object includes functions for dialing individual digits or a preprogrammed phone number, along with the required Synth object as […]
28C3: The Atari 2600 video computer system ultimate talk
Here’s something for retro video game enthusiasts. This talk by Sven Oliver (‘SvOlli’) Moll from the recent 28C3 conference in Berlin covers the history, the hardware and how to write programs for the Atari 2600 gaming console. The Atari 2600 Video Computer System (VCS for short) was one of the first popular gaming consoles back […]
Arduino automatic CQ caller for amateur radio
VK3YE likes to work CW (Morse Code) on the 40-meter band, but doesn’t like the monotony of hand keying CQ endlessly. He devised this simple project using an Arduino to tap out CQ and his call sign automatically at predetermined intervals. The keying was originally accomplished using a reed relay as shown in the video. […]
28C3: Hack the planet with Code Hero and Makerhoods
In this rapid fire lightning talk from the 28C3 Chaos Communication Congress held recently in Berlin, Alex Peake highlights the learning initiative known as Code Hero. “Code Hero, a game that teaches you how to make games so you can make games that teach everything else to make all knowledge playable.” (Well, that clears everything […]
Parallax Propeller encryption objects
Parallax has recently added two new encryption objects to their Propeller Object Exchange. Mark Tillotson has released his AES object. He describes it as an “efficient implementation of the Advanced Encryption Standard in PASM. Supports 128, 192 and 256 bit keys, ECB and CBC modes. All heavy lifting in PASM.” Mark also recently released his […]
Emulating pointers when the real thing is not allowed
Pete is porting Frodo, a free Commodore 64 emulator, to Microsoft’s Flash-imitator Silverlight. Frodo is originally written in C and uses pointers extensively. Silverlight doesn’t allow pointers, so Pete demonstrates how to emulate them. Simulating pointers in pointer-free sandboxed platforms is a bit unorthodox, but can make translating code easier…This isn’t something you’re likely to […]
New liquidCrystal Arduino library
Francisco Malpartida, an Arduino enthusiast from Spain, has posted a new liquidCrystal library for Arduino. The main differences are a claimed increase in speed of LCD operations and the ability to control the LCD display via an I2C bus expander or a Shift Register Extender in addition to the usual 4- and 8-bit modes. Via […]
28C3: Cellular protocol stacks for internet — demystified
Harald Welte presented this talk at the 28C3 Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. While we use packet oriented transmissions daily over cellular networks, unlike TCP/IP and Ethernet many even in the hacker community are not familiar with the actual protocol stacks for those cellular packet networks. The purpose of this talk is to give an […]
Octopart on standardizing partlist data
An engineer from Octopart asks about standardizing the format for partlists for easier automated processing and quotes. They are designing a new part information API and would like help with suggestions and ideas: If we can all come up with a good general purpose structured data format, it could be used for interchange between EDA […]
Tizen open source pre-release code available
The Linux Foundation Tizen Work group announces the availability of a set of pre-release tools to give application developers an early look at Tizen. “Tizen is an open source, standards-based software platform supported by leading mobile operators, device manufacturers, and silicon suppliers for multiple device categories, including smartphones, tablets, netbooks, in-vehicle infotainment devices, smart TVs, […]
Rhodes: open source HTML5 mobile app developer
Rhodes is a Ruby based open source cross-platform mobile app development tool and is part of the Rhomobile project. It allows you to develop HTML5 mobile applications on your computer with Rhostudio or in the cloud. If you’re new to mobile app development, the Rhomobile docs page is a good place to start. The tutorial […]