Posted September 1, 2011 by Chris

SPI is one of the more prevalent serial communication interfaces for low speed devices like sensors, motor controllers and even LCDs. This tutorial shows you how build an SPI master using a PIC, and interface it to an SPI slave, also a PIC. The final system, is a simple Master-Slave relationship with LED flashing proof.

Posted August 9, 2011 by Chris

Braille has been the standard medium for blind people for a very long time, however with the advent of computers, the human-computer interface becomes trickier. The BrailleDuino attempts to bridge the gap by creating an interface that lets you type in braille ‘code’ instead of letters.

Posted July 28, 2011 by Chris

Wireless infrared systems are unique because of their ease in design and low cost. This week’s PyroElectro tutorial builds a system to transmit 9600 baud serial data from a PIC over IR to a receiving PIC. The wireless infrared link acts as if the Tx and Rx pins on the two PICs were connected with a wire. If you’re looking to make your own wireless system, don’t miss this article!

Posted July 27, 2011 by Chris

The FTDI USB to Serial converter chip has grown quite a bit in popularity recently for its ease of use in windows and linux. This article shows you how to use the FT245 to create a USB input/output interface with an 8 pin header off of a PCB and 4 control lines.

Posted June 29, 2011 by Chris

The PCI bus architecture has existed for a long time and as antiquated as the design is, it still works very well and exists in most modern consumer computers. But, haven’t you ever wanted to make your own PCI card? This article goes step-by-step through the process of building a PCI Interface using a Xilinx FPGA to do the heavy lifting. Verilog source code and hardware schematics are included with the article.