Simon explained in detail on how to update the Bus Pìrate from firmware v3 to v5 easily.
Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors Adafruit, Open Source Control Systems, and eHaJo.
The USB Universal LCD backpack controls LCDs with up to 16 interface pins at 3.3volts or 5.0volts. This includes common HD44780 character LCDs and larger graphical LCDs.
This open source project was developed collaboratively in the forum. See it come to life here, and check out the design history and work-product on the wiki.
Available now for $15 at Seeed Studio. Each purchase at Seeed keeps the prototypes coming, thanks for your support!
Overview
The Universal LCD backpack is a dumb USB IO board, the computer does all the work of bitbanging data to the LCD. The back pack itself doesn’t have any intelligence and can’t control a display on its own.
This project is different than “smart” LCD backpacks that have a simple serial interface. Serial displays are easier to use, but the Universal LCD backpack is more flexible and can support many different displays. We designed it with common chips (FT232, 74HC595) so the parts are inexpensive and readily available.
An FT232 provides the PC-side USB connection. The FT232’s bitbang mode is used to send serial signals to the logic chips, and the logic chips put parallel output on the LCD pins. The 74HC595 is a more rugged interface to the LCD than the FT232 alone, and we get twice as many IO pins. The extra FT232 pins interface a backlight control with 500mA current limit.
The first batch is tested and available now for $15. PCBs in the first batch will be yellow.
Read more
This practical USB engineering guide provides examples of how to make USB devices and embedded USB hosts.
Thanks McZ!
robots has been up to some fun FPGA hacking. He implemented a ZX Spectrum classic computer using the ZX Gate open source project:
So i had this sparkfun FPGA board laying around. I needed to build some ram and interface boards to make it work. In mean time (while gathering all the ideas), my friend gave me TFT-LCD display from an old notebook. (1024x768x18bit 15inch) …
If you put all the pieces together, add some wires, PCBs, loads of time, you will end up with ZX spectrum with TFT display :-).
Via the forum.
Here’s a thought provoking patent abstract, a “System and Method for Intra-body Communication,” US patent application number 20100305437 Among other concepts it refers to using the unique audio frequencies produced by teeth clicks as a means of communicating through the musculoskeletal system with a wireless wristwatch device!
Here Collin’s Lab at Makezine explores the use of microcontrollers as USB host controllers. Very instructive and worth a look by anyone wanting to learn more about USB and its integration with microcontrollers.
Here is the paper James Bowman presented at EuroForth 2010 detailing his project to build a small 16-bit CPU core Forth machine on a Xilinx FPGA. This 200 lines of Verilog code could be helpful to anyone studying FPGA project design.
The goal of this tutorial is to use the ATC-1000M with the Arduino. Our ATC-1000M came integrated in a TCP/IP to serial shield. This shield can be used by an Arduino to connect to a LAN or wireless router.
Continue reading “HOW-TO: ATC-1000M TCP/IP to UART Arduino shield”
Travis Goodspeed studied the MSP430 FET debugger, and redesigned it with a bunch of improvements:
A FET is any Flash Emulation Tool containing an MSP430F1612, including the FET UIF and EZ430 debuggers.
I am happy to announce my own variant of the MSP430 FET debugger. My variant is compatible with a patched version of the original firmware, but my goal is to eventually have open firmware as well.
Read the whole series to see how Travis reporposed the origional FET and designed his own.
New to the MSP430? Check out the MSP430 quick-start guide.
Evilmadscientist.com gives instructions on how to build a Hanukkah Menorah using an Attiny2313 and LEDs.
Scratch4arduino (S4A) is a graphical IDE based on Scratch from the MIT Media Lab. It’s designed to assist programming newbies in developing code for the Arduino board. With downloads for Windows, Mac and Linux (deb) this freeware program by Citilab currently works with the Duemilanove and Diecimila versions and includes modules for working with sensors, servos and other external devices.
Make the extra 16 channels of the Open Logic Sniffer 5volt tolerant with a buffer wing. Read about the design at the Gadget Factory.
Seeed has the Open Logic Sniffer buffer wing in stock and shipping now for $15.
Arthur sent in his USB infrared decoder. It uses a PIC18F2550 to process the IR signal and send it to the PC as keyboard commands.
Via the contact form.
We took the next-gen USB IR Toy v1.1 circuit and rearranged it into a through-hole PCB. It’s the basic Infrared Toy with a couple additions:
The Open Logic Sniffer is currently sold out at Seeed Studio, but a new batch of v1.04 is nearly complete.
Logic Sniffer v1.04 has a different ROM chip than the first revision, the new chip is cheaper and more readily available. Back orders are being accepted, and v1.04 hardware will ship on a first-come-first serve basis.
Order the Logic Sniffer at Seeed Studio for $45, including worldwide shipping. Seeed now has probe cables for $6 each.
In this project, Oh-zap uses a Picaxe 08-M along with a Sony protocol remote to control the movement of a servo with attached webcam.
The new processor quick start guides were a big hit. Maff^ contributed a basic guide to the AVR, and Dpropicweb greatly expanded the PIC guides. We finished the MSP430 guide, and added new guides for the Coolrunner-II CPLD and Spartan 3 FPGA (in progress).
Check out all the guides, and add one for your favorite processor.
Now there are Android and Iphone apps for Digikey! More than just a marketing tool, this app is useful for checking on what package types a component is manufactured in and includes an instant link to datasheets.
Tayken posted an updated Bus Pirate pinout sticker for v2go in the forum. Source document available for editing.
Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors Adafruit, Open Source Control Systems, and eHaJo.
Electronicseverywhere demos a project using a cellphone interfaced via an MT8870 DTMF decoder with an Atmega16 to operate servos controlling a robotic car.
