Posted August 25, 2014 by Chris

"An IR sensor is a device which detects IR radiation falling on it. There are numerous types of IR sensors that are built and can be built depending on the application."

Posted August 23, 2014 by Chris

"Traditionally, radio receivers were built using analog hardware, like capacitors, coils and quartz crystals for filtering, and a diode as a detector. However, by converting analog signals to digital ones, one can replace part of this signal processing by a computer program operating (i.e., doing calculations) on the digital signals."

Posted August 21, 2014 by Chris

This week we’ll take a look at a very cool effect – persistence of vision in Lesson 9: Handheld LED POV. This is part of our new PyroEDU course: An Introduction to CPLD and FPGA. Here’s a short overview of the lesson:

"A very fascinating effect called persistence of vision can easily be created by repeatedly telling a single row of LEDs to output a message. Let’s build a POV with a secret message!"

Posted August 19, 2014 by Chris

"When I was 8 my mother gave me the book – ‘And then the engineer said …’. It consists of many simple manufacturing related stories about technological issues and how to solve them. The book meant to teach kids the key principles how accomplish seemingly insolvable things. The book is lost, but here is what I learned and still use on every occasion."

Posted August 17, 2014 by Chris

"This project is based on Arduino Nano board that communicates with PC using serial protocol. Arduino Nano contains RS232 – USB converter, so the actual connection between the board and PC is made using standard USB mini cable. Stepper motor is controller using four data lines of Arduino board. These lines cannot control stepper motor directly. An additional stepper motor driver must be used."

Posted August 15, 2014 by Chris

"The Braille-O-Matic is a device that allows the blind and visually impaired to read digital text by generating Braille characters at the pace at which Braille is read. It is a rotating system that simulates the natural act of reading Braille by having the dynamically generated Braille characters roll across the user’s fingertips."

Posted August 14, 2014 by Chris

This week we’re moving onto a fun topic: Lesson 8: LED Dimming Via PWM where we’ll use PWM signals to control the brightness of some LEDs with VHDL code. This is part of our new PyroEDU course: An Introduction to CPLD and FPGA. Here’s a short overview of the lesson:

"We have used PWM in many other courses before, but creating PWM in an FPGA or CPLD requires a different way of thinking. Let’s make our own PWM output module to change the brightness of some LEDs. "

Posted August 13, 2014 by Chris

"This is my first post Related to Projects and today I will describe Propeller Display project. Me and my friend Rushi, we both made Propeller Display project during our under-graduation…The project uses Microchip PIC16F84A Microcontroller."

Posted August 12, 2014 by Chris

"I built a small FPGA microcomputer for the Papilio Pro board. I’ve ported a few operating systems to run on it. These 8-bit machines have very minimal features but (somewhat unexpectedly) I found they can run a multi-user, multi-tasking UNIX operating system."

Posted August 10, 2014 by Chris

"It’s been an awesome project to do, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I’ve still got some tidying up with cable routing, etc, but it has had it’s first run with a pen zip-tied to the Z-axis. The results are pretty good, and the accuracy is nice to see."