Posted December 7, 2014 by Chris

"In deciding on a project we looked for a challenge that would have a good mix of hardware and software problems. We ended up primarily concentrating on looking at unusual display technologies and decided that a persistence of vision(POV) display would be a good balance."

Posted December 5, 2014 by Chris

"LCD2USB is a open source/open hardware project. The goal of LCD2USB is to connect HD44780 based text LCD displays to various PCs via USB. LCD2USB was meant to be cheap and to be made of easily available parts. It is therefore based on the Atmel AVR Mega8 CPU and does not require any difficult to obtain parts like separate USB controllers and the like."

Posted December 4, 2014 by Chris

"This weekend didn’t afford me enough time for personal projects, but I did have a few moments to solder connections onto the LED system on the RC police car I’ve been modifying."

Posted December 3, 2014 by Chris

"I’ve simply connected the UART of the bluetooth module to the built-in UART module in ATTiny2313 so they can communicate directly with one-another. A portion of PORTB is used to control the various functions in the model car. The ATtiny2313 firmware goes through a loop which consists of reading the UART, and then setting the outputs and servo position."

Posted November 26, 2014 by Chris

"For independent study in MAT this quarter I sought to implement the Open Sound Control protocol on the mbed. This involved getting UDP send and receive working on mbed and then setting up a parsing / callback system that can take an incoming message and delegate it to the proper subsystem. "

Posted November 25, 2014 by Chris

"Like the Arduino, the USB6 allows you to control robots, make electronic instruments, talk to sensors and interface with the internet. The main difference is that you *buy* an Arduino. You make a USB6. This is good for people who are more interested in the hardware side of things. For example, would you like to learn what capacitors look like? Would you like to try out some board etching techniques, especially alternatives to Ferric Chloride, like Hydrogen Peroxide, etc?"

Posted November 24, 2014 by Chris

"To put it simply, it’s a robot arm that copies you. Think motion capture, but the results you see in real time on hardware…I did not build this thing in mind with any one specific application. What I wanted was an intuitive interface for controlling a robot. This robot could then be sent out into situations that humans can’t or shouldn’t go. "

Posted November 21, 2014 by Chris

"OK, it’s made on more one board, but you get the point. Based on Grant’s 7-chip Z80 computer, it uses his modified version of the NASCOM computer version of Microsoft BASIC running from an 8K ROM. The remainder of the Z80’s 64K address space is taken up with 56K of RAM."

Posted November 20, 2014 by Chris

"Steno technology has existed for about a century, and has been compatible with computers for over 30 years, but until now the hardware and software necessary to write at 240 WPM has been restricted to professional stenographers. The Open Steno Project seeks to bring free software, low-cost hardware, and interactive learning tools to everyone who wants to use steno for their personal or professional pursuits."

Posted November 18, 2014 by Chris

"For the last several weeks I’ve been hacking together a small prototype of a microcontroller (ATTiny2313)-powered prime number generator. I can finally say that it is complete, functional, and elegant. The name says what it does, so I won’t waste time describing it."