Posted November 13, 2012 by Chris

“The device works by sweeping a grid of points and assembles the image piecewise. The output consists of two images: [1] an acoustic images which tells the distance to the objects in view and [2] a thermal image that gives the temperature of the objects in view. I use gnuplot to assemble the images.”

Posted November 12, 2012 by Chris

“This page outlines the complete design for Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) controlled robot that exhibits light following, sound sensing, and object detecting abilities. The robot uses an Actel 1020B FPGA to control all of its logic behaviour while external analog circuitry provides the sensory inputs to the FPGA. The purpose of this design is to demonstrate how an FPGA can be effectively used to control a robot.”

Posted November 11, 2012 by Chris

“Pretty much every time I tried to work with some sort of digital interface I run into some kind of trouble where a logic analyzer would have saved me hours of blind debugging and posting to various forums….It was the first time I worked with SPI on a pic32 and as expected nothing worked for the first try.”

Posted November 10, 2012 by Chris

“What if you had the audio control panel, the dialog in most PCs where you fiddle audio, right next to your PC in physical form? With analog controls, VU meters and input/output selection present for instant access on your desk, you will have the pleasure of controlling them by hand.”

Posted November 9, 2012 by Chris

“This project provides a general purpose library which implements read and write support for MMC, SD and SDHC memory cards. It includes: low-level MMC, SD and SDHC read/write routines, partition table support and a simple FAT16/FAT32 read/write implementation.”

Posted November 8, 2012 by Chris

Last week, we released the second lesson of the first PyroEDU course: An Introduction To Modern Electronics. This week we’re introducing the first and most basic circuit component: The Resistor. The resistor is the first fundamental component that anyone studies when they start learning about electronics. Ideas like what is an insulator or a conductor are introduced and related to electrical resistance.

Posted November 8, 2012 by Chris

“In this article, we’ll be constructing the Club Jameco Kit: The 8x8x8 LED Cube and providing an informal critique of the kit. In this way, you’ll be able to see both, how it has all the parts you need to build an 8x8x8 LED Cube, but also how to steer clear of the many pitfalls that exist when building a project of this complexity.”

Posted November 7, 2012 by Chris

“Some time ago I was working on my cnc lathe and got tired of my options to cut stock, so I decided I needed a mini table saw before continuing. Proxxon micro table saw seemed to be exactly what I needed, but I chose to make my own instead!”

Posted November 6, 2012 by Chris

“The i2c-tiny-usb project is an open source/open hardware project. The goal of i2c-tiny-usb is to provide a cheap generic i2c interface to be attached to the usb. It is meant as a replacement for those simple and cheap printer port to i2c adapters. A USB solution has several advantages incl. the built-in power supply and a more future proof interface.”

Posted November 5, 2012 by Chris

“The idea of this project was to design and construct a robot that consists of a body and two wheels that would be able to balance on its own. This behavior is similar how a segway (a new mode of transportation) works. Our goal was to have a working finished product – a robot that, without human interaction, could balance on two wheels.”