Posted July 12, 2011 by Chris

DIY Rotating displays, sometimes called POV’s because of their use of persistence of vision, have become more common and are a very fun project to build. This article shows the process of building a quality rotating led display on a PCB with pictures, video, software and the hardware schematics of the project.

Posted July 8, 2011 by Chris

It’s a great time when DIYers around the world can easily build their own replica of an early commodore 64 or apple IIe. This wooden laptop uses a Picaxe processor, some flash memory and a host of I/O (including a keyboard of course) to make a DIY laptop (version 2). The article has all the details you want to see, including the guts of the computer and it’s assembly instruction set.

Posted July 5, 2011 by Chris

This robot, while still a seemingly perpetual work in progress, is a real throw back. Started in 2002, it’s basically a desktop computer on wheels with some wicked control circuitry. The author spits out everything about the design and software used to make the robot go. It’s a fun read, but I wouldn’t entrust my life to this two wheeled robot, no offense Ralph!

Posted July 4, 2011 by Chris

Encoders are a form of sensor feedback that tell you how far something has moved. As seen in my tutorial: The Digital Tachometer encoders can be based on line-of-sight, reflect off black and white encoder wheels or they can even detect magnetic field changes as a form of movement tracking. This article goes through these types of encoders and explains how you can use them in your robotics projects.

Posted June 25, 2011 by Chris

If you have ever wanted to learn how SD card interfacing words, this a great article to read. It covers the very basics of connecting a PIC to write and read from an SD flash memory card using SPI. The article has tons of pictures, the code, the schematic and more than enough details to help you make your own.

Posted June 24, 2011 by Chris

This article demonstrates how easy USB interfaces on a PIC can be using the 18F4550. While USB in itsself is rather complex, microchip’s USB framework kit, which was used here, makes things at very least tolerable. The article includes schematic drawings and example pictures of the system completely built and working. Checkout the action video!

Posted June 21, 2011 by Chris

This article is fairly similar to my own Digital Tach except it goes a bit above and beyond. The 99k Digital Tech uses an Atmega microcontroller and amplifying hardware to get clean counter signals back from a wireless tachmeter. The article explains the details indepth with schematics and project pictures.

Posted June 16, 2011 by Chris

Here’s a rather novel creation, a DS-DSLR. A high quality camera controlled by a portable Nintendo DS game system. The article explains how it was done with some guidance for people wishing to do similar work. No source code from this project, but many pointers for doing your own DIY-DS work.

Posted June 13, 2011 by Chris

Detecting a person’s heart rate using electronics is not as hard as it might sound. Using an infrared emitter LED, photo transistor and some knowledge about light reflectivity we can detect blood flow in a finger! Read the article for more info about how it is done and how you can build your own.

Posted June 12, 2011 by Chris

USB seems to have taken over the mouse and keyboard protocol scene which means there’s a ton of ‘leftover’ PS/2 mouse and keyboards abandoned in offices and schools. Today’s article gives you the understanding of the PS/2 protocol needed to put these abandoned I/O devices back to work without as much software overhead as is required for implementing USB.