Posted August 9, 2014 by Chris

"Stepper motors are everywhere! They’re pretty easy to find in old abandoned printers. They come in a variety of configurations and number of poles but they all make great electrical generators! Any electric motor will also output a voltage when it’s freely spinning."

Posted August 8, 2014 by Chris

"The hardware is based on Microchip’s Low Pin Count USB Development Kit for the 1814K50. It is setup with 10 inputs, each with a pull-up resistor. The firmware is programmed with USB Human Interface Device Keyboard example from Microchip Solutions. It requires no drivers or special setup, it is plug and play."

Posted August 7, 2014 by Chris

Did you know that FPGAs and CPLDs allow you to design hardware inside of them that operate entirely in parallel? This week, we explore this topic in Lesson 7: Parallel Hardware as part of our new PyroEDU course: An Introduction to CPLD and FPGA. Here’s a short overview of the lesson:

"A powerful tool of CPLD and FPGA design is being able to create multiple modules that perform operations in parallel. Let’s explore how this is done and why it is so awesome. "

Posted August 6, 2014 by Chris

"Essentially, I wanted to be able to control a little robotic arm / turret using a PC with a serial port. I thought this was a worthwhile project because I could later adapt it to aim a webcam, Nerf toy gun, or maybe even a felt pen so it could draw pictures."

Posted August 5, 2014 by Chris

"From Dec. 11th to 21st, I had my first residency at STEIM. I arrived with a number of turntables and hardware equipment to go further with my idea of building an instrument consisting of 8 turntables that are controllable by one unit to use them as an instrument."

Posted August 4, 2014 by Chris

"Here’s a cheap way to build your own fully customisable infrared PC remote control. If you already have a suitable infrared remote control going spare you can build one of these for under £4, it will allow you to use most infrared remote controls to issue keyboard commands on your PC."

Posted August 3, 2014 by Chris

"This is development board designed by me for the ATmega8 microcontroller. It is a miniature ARDUINO. You can burn your bootloader and then use with Arduino IDE or you can simply upload your hex file using DAPA programmer circuit."

Posted August 2, 2014 by Chris

"This is development board designed by me for the ATmega8 microcontroller. It is a miniature ARDUINO. You can burn your bootloader and then use with Arduino IDE or you can simply upload your hex file using DAPA programmer circuit."

Posted July 31, 2014 by Chris

Timing and CPLDs is such an important idea that we dedicated a whole lesson to the topic. This week, we’re moving on to: Lesson 6: Design A Binary Timer as part of our new PyroEDU course: An Introduction to CPLD and FPGA. Here’s an overview of the lesson:

"We built a binary counter using all hardware components in the Digital Course, but now let’s build a binary counter by programming it using VHDL code."

Posted July 29, 2014 by Chris

"When i saw simpleavr’s implementation of usbtiny on attiny45 , i thought it would be cool if i make a kit version of this with a minimal form factor. Then i designed a PCB and sent for first prototype. Later on i thought, if i want to sell this, it would be much cooler ,and more suitable with “Open Source Hardware” concept, if i bring this project one step ahead. So i tried to fit anything extra to the device and this Little Wire project came out."