Posted April 24, 2013 by Chris

“One of the great aspects of the logic is the speed and the full control of what happens at every single clock cycle….In this short post I will walk thru our current test setup with an FPGA, the Spartan 3E, controlling a 18-bit 7″ 800×480 TFT display.”

Posted April 20, 2013 by Chris

“One of the first projects I published online a couple of years ago was about how to put together in a prototype board a simple circuit to interface a 10BaseT ethernet controller with a Microchip PIC18 microcontroller running the TCP/IP stack developed by Microchip. I called this project the PIC10T.”

Posted April 15, 2013 by Chris

“The Keyglove is an innovative new way to interact with your technology. A wearable, wireless, open-source input device, the Keyglove provides unprecedented flexibility and convenience for gaming, design, art, music, data entry, device control, 3D object manipulation, and even inexpensive telepresence.”

Posted April 13, 2013 by Chris

“The PICkit™ 2 Programmer/Debugger is a low-cost development tool with an easy to use interface for programming and debugging Microchip’s Flash families of microcontrollers. The full featured Windows programming interface supports baseline, mid-range, PIC18,8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit microcontrollers, and many Microchip Serial EEPROM products.”

Posted April 6, 2013 by Chris

“…when you have to program many chips, repeatedly reconnecting the programming cable quickly becomes a chore. So when I found an article about constructing a programming pen that would help solve both of these problems, I decided to build one for myself…”

Posted April 5, 2013 by Chris

“My code uses some features of the Arduino software suite and some of the low-level hardware code derived from the PIC headers. This allows rapid development of the slow user-interface parts of the system (control input and score display) whilst allowing the video generation in real time by using the low-level hardware controls.”

Posted March 31, 2013 by Chris

“When I first saw Crispin Jones Tengu, I was sure, I must have one. If you don’t know tengu and don’t want to follow the link, it’s a small face, made of LEDs, that reacts to music and sound.
It did not take long until I decided to clone this funny little device. All it needs is a microcontroller, an LED matrix and a sound sensor.”

Posted March 30, 2013 by Chris

“I noticed that most LED Matrix drivers on the market use shift registers to give a microcontroller the ability to control more LEDs than would be possible. Last year I came across the MAX7219 from Maxim Integrated. This cool little IC does all the work for you to drive a LED Matrix or LED Segment display.”

Posted March 19, 2013 by Chris

“I will show you how I made the cube on the Flower protoboard, and finally the code to make it shine. You will see the point-to-point wiring is very clear.”

Very similar to our own "Building An 8x8x8 LED Cube" project.

Posted March 8, 2013 by Chris

“Deadly, yet adorable, this plush turret from the game Portal talks and responds when you play with it. It senses when you pick it up, knock it over, or walk in front of it. The stuffing and soft fleece skin make it super cuddly, too!”