PyroElectro - News, Projects & Tutorials » software http://www.pyroelectro.com PyroElectro.com brings you cool projects & tutorials that you can do at home. Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:15:06 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Video Production Module for DE2 Dev Board http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/02/05/video-production-module-for-de2-dev-board/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/02/05/video-production-module-for-de2-dev-board/#comments Sun, 05 Feb 2012 18:15:58 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3992
“In this project we turned an Altera Cyclone II FGPA into a simple video production unit with the help of a Sony Handycam and a PC for serial communication. The main focus of the project is the ability to provide a green screen effect, most commonly seen with weather news. We would extract the green regions of the video based on a threshold and display a background image, such as a weather map.”

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/02/05/video-production-module-for-de2-dev-board/feed/ 0 Tic-Tac-Toe Playing Robotic Arm http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/23/tic-tac-toe-playing-robotic-arm/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/23/tic-tac-toe-playing-robotic-arm/#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:49:00 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3915
“Our project is a twenty four and half inch aluminum frame robotic arm with four degrees of freedom. In our project we made the arm the second player in the classic game of Tic-Tac-Toe to demonstrate its repeatable motion. The arm consists of five servo motors, four to control the motion and one to control the end effecter (gripper). The arm moves tic-tac-toe pieces onto a board for its opponent and itself to give the user interactive control over the arm.”

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/23/tic-tac-toe-playing-robotic-arm/feed/ 0 PACKit – Serial to Ethernet Development System http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/16/packit-serial-to-ethernet-development-system/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/16/packit-serial-to-ethernet-development-system/#comments Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:07:28 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3863
“The idea of building an RS232 to Ethernet bridge seemed like a great way to begin learning about embedded system design. Having created a working sample, though it was left with my teammate after graduation, I decided to recreate the project with more features and higher reliability. The project was later renamed from 'STEDS' to 'NI-1' (Network Interface 1) and finally 'Pack-it'. Pack-it is based on a Motorola MC9S12 MCU and a CS8900A Cirrus Ethernet controller.”

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/16/packit-serial-to-ethernet-development-system/feed/ 1 PIC18F4620 Embedded Websockets http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/15/pic18f4620-embedded-websockets/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/15/pic18f4620-embedded-websockets/#comments Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:30:48 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3858
“This project enables your MCU to communicate in real time to a web browser. I started this project after seeing a similar implementation on hackaday from mbed.org. Their implementation uses their own device, the mbed Cortex-M0 beta. I've been a hobbyist microchip PIC developer for a few years, so I set out to write my own version for microchip's 8bit pic devices in C. The microcontroller used is a microchip PIC18F4620.”

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/15/pic18f4620-embedded-websockets/feed/ 0 Arduino code for IMU Guide algorithm http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/24/arduino-code-for-imu-guide-algorithm/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/24/arduino-code-for-imu-guide-algorithm/#comments Sat, 24 Dec 2011 21:42:21 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3660
“This article introduces an implementation of a simplified filtering algorithm that was inspired by Kalman filter. The Arduino code is tested using a 5DOF IMU unit from GadgetGangster – Acc_Gyro . The theory behind this algorithm was first introduced in my Imu Guide article.”

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/24/arduino-code-for-imu-guide-algorithm/feed/ 0 Light Reading: Build A Kilobot Swarm http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/18/light-reading-build-a-kilobot-swarm/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/18/light-reading-build-a-kilobot-swarm/#comments Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:13:20 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3592
“The robot design allows a single user to easily oversee the operation of a large Kilobot collective, such as programming, powering on, and charging all robots, which would be difficult or impossible to do with many existing robotic systems. The researchers demonstrate the capabilities of the Kilobot as a collective robot, using a 29 robot test collective to implement some popular swarm behaviors.”

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/18/light-reading-build-a-kilobot-swarm/feed/ 0 DE0 Nano Intro Tutorial http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/15/de0-nano-intro-tutorial/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/15/de0-nano-intro-tutorial/#comments Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:00:15 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3571
This article gives a quick intro to how you get started using the DE0 Nano development board with a simple example program. All you need is a DE0 Nano and a laptop, and you can get started building and programming your own FPGA logic.

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/15/de0-nano-intro-tutorial/feed/ 0 Wall-Climbing Ceiling-Walking Robot http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/05/wall-climbing-ceiling-walking-robot/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/05/wall-climbing-ceiling-walking-robot/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 20:00:03 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3495
“The goal of this project is to construct a digital controller for a w all climbing micro-robot. There are two kind of wall-climbing micro-robots in the lab. One is called 'Flipper', the other is called 'Crawler'. The restrictions such as small size, light weight and low power consumption must be complied when designing the miniature robot.”

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/05/wall-climbing-ceiling-walking-robot/feed/ 0 TYMC: Album Artwork http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/01/taming-your-music-collection-album-artwork/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/01/taming-your-music-collection-album-artwork/#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:00:30 +0000 Ben http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3471
“In this article we are going to use the Last.fm web service to grab the last piece of data we need to make our music collection perfect: the album artwork. We're going to use the same techniques we've used in the past articles to expand the functionality of our application to do something new. With the concepts we employed in the previous articles, the possibilities are nearly limitless.”

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/01/taming-your-music-collection-album-artwork/feed/ 0 Fractals on Xilinx FPGA http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/11/22/fractals-on-xilinx-fpga/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/11/22/fractals-on-xilinx-fpga/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:55:23 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3417
“The project intends to accomplish all computational tasks for the fractal sets using the embedded PowerPC 440 RISC CPU, ultimately for characterization of the CPU-based processing performance. If, in the end, the computational performance lacks significantly for the intended application, selected computational tasks might still be offloaded from the CPU to hardware-based processing.”

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