Category Archives: code

Low-tech Arduino based cell phone trigger

William Finucane of revoltlab.com posted this article describing a simple low-cost means of activating devices remotely via telephone. I wanted to be able to call my house and turn on the lights and television during nights when I was away on vacation. What’s more, I didn’t want to spend any money on cell phone bills […]

OSHW haptic interface

Diego Spinola writes, “Here’s a project I’ve just “completed” that I think you’ll like, it’s an OSHW haptic interface! It’s called VIMPHIN and it’s pictured in action above. Guess what logic sniffer I used to debug the actuator’s bus?” Our money would be on the open workbench Logic Sniffer! For more videos, info and links […]

DIY electomagnetic interference detector

Popular Mechanics presents this simple DIY electromagnetic interference (EMI) detector project. It’s Arduino based and requires only an 8-ohm speaker, 1-megaohm resistor and 3–5 feet of insulated solid core wire. Details on this easy beginner’s project can be found on the Popular Mechanics website, with links to the Arduino sketch on the author’s Github page.

PICAXE-08 raincounter

eclectica has posted a circuit for a PICAXE-enabled raincounter. The device employs a 1mm/pulse rain gauge to measure rainfall. Pulses from the gauge’s internal reed switch are read by the PICAXE-08 MCU, which in turn stores the running count in EEPROM and displays the resulting measurement on a serial LCD readout. While the exact type […]

Robotic motor control tutorial

Chris from PyroElectro has written a multi-part tutorial on building motor control firmware for a microcontroller, a PIC 18F252. This tutorial is based on his earlier robot chassis, but the principles relating to the use of a motor controller IC (SN754410) to move the motors at specific speeds and directions are of general application. If […]

Receiving Oregon Scientific sensors with RTL-SDR

Kevin Mehall got his RTL-SDR dongle and wasted no time in developing a decoder using GNU Radio for the 433MHz transmissions of Oregon Scientific remote temperature sensors (v1 protocol). These devices transmit on 433.9 MHz sending data packets containing the temperature data every 30 seconds. The transmitter uses On-off keying and the 32 data bits […]

Propeller object: solar position calculator and almanac

Here’s a unique Propeller code object providing the functionality of a Solar Position Calculator & Almanac. Written in Spin by Prophead100, this object takes input including date, local/solar time, latitude, longitude and daylight savings time status, and calculates “a good approximation of the position (altitude and azimuth) of the sun at any time (local clock […]

Wireless dual DC motor control system

Chris from PyroElectro writes: Here’s an article that explains how to build a dual DC motor control system, combined with a wireless receiver and transmitter (XBee modules) which tell the motors at what speed they should move forward, or backward. Standard and widely available parts are used so that anyone can follow along. The system […]

Printf style debugging over AVR-ISP pins

ihsan kehribar from the Little Wire project informs us of his recent work entitled “Printf style debugging over AVR-ISP pins.” He writes, “if you are breadboarding an AVR chip, you are already using the SPI pins for programming the device; therefore it would be nice to use that cable for low-level debugging also. I wrote […]

Using the STM32W-RFCKIT 2.4 GHz development board to sniff 802.15.4 traffic via Linux

Joe designed a 802.15.4 network analyzer for Linux with the STM32W-RFCKIT , by reverse engineering the Windows only closed-source application note AN3406. Summary: The STM32W-RFCKIT together with application note AN3406 is a nice low cost solution for diagnosing problems on a 802.15.4 (ZigBee, MiWi etc) network. Unfortunately the solution is Windows only and closed source. […]

Integrating the XSVF player into Bus Pirate firmware

Jean modified the Bus Pirate firmware to integrate the standalone XSVF player into it. The XSVF player is an alternate firmware for the Bus Pirate that allows it to program CPLDs and FPGAs via XSVF files. I have integrated the support of XSVF Player within the current 6.1 BP firmware as a new bitbang mode. […]

Graphing TI ez430 Chronos watch data in Processing

Chemicaloliver has written a short post describing how to graph ez430 Chronos watch data in Processing. His post includes links to the source code, which is an extension of the earlier Processing code by Sean Brewer. Originally written in 2010, this info remains relevant for newly minted Chronos hackers who’ve just received their TI packages […]

RTL-SDR APCO Project 25 (P25) receiver

Balint Seeber has done it again! In this video he shows how to take the RTL-SDR dongle and use it in conjunction with the open source OP25 project to successfully demodulate APCO Project 25 (P25) digital radio voice communications. P25 is a term used to refer to a modulation system used by many public safety […]

Update on the Little Wire AVR programmer

Little Wire is a ATtiny-based open source AVR programer, we wrote about it previously. This project should soon be available at Seeed Studio in kit form.  Here are some updates since our last post: I finished the C and C++ libraries. I created examples for C and C++ , doxygenreference page for C++, documented and […]

Replay your terminal sessions and share them online

PLAYterm is a site dedicated to storing, replaying, and sharing terminal logs. When replaying your session, the code is read line by line, thus providing a more intuitive way of reviewing your logs. PLAYTERM is intended to raise the skills of terminal  CLI users, share their skills and inspire others. PLAYTERM wants to push forward […]

Verilog project: Binary to 7-segment display

DJ Delorie was looking for an excuse to learn about Verilog and CPLDs. So he coded up this binary to 7-segment display converter. He provides links to the source code and says this project fits into the Xilinx XC9572 (the same chip used in our Coolrunner-II CPLD breakout board. You can get our XC9572XL dev-board […]