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 http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/19/fading-leds-via-pwm/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/19/fading-leds-via-pwm/#comments Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:00:36 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3886

A very neat feature that PWM (pulse with modulation) offers is being able to control the brightness level of LEDs. By varying the duty cycle percentage, we can control the exact brightness of any LED. This article takes you through a simple example design step-by-step using a PIC microcontroller. The end result is an LED controller that can set an LED to 100 unique brightness levels.

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/19/fading-leds-via-pwm/feed/ 0 http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/12/eece-343-final-fpga-projects/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/12/eece-343-final-fpga-projects/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:00:01 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3828

     The Altera UP2 Dev Board may be a bit antiquated but it still provides an awesome learning platform for under- grad university students.
     This week's article will introduce 4 of the final projects from California State University Chico's EECE 343 course: Computer Interface Circuits. Each final project has a video of the project in action as well as the FPGA source code available for download.

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2012/01/12/eece-343-final-fpga-projects/feed/ 0 http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/22/xbee-wireless-servo-control/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/22/xbee-wireless-servo-control/#comments Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:10:34 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3642

Today's article shows you how to build a basic wireless input and output system in the form of a single transmitter and single receiver. Communication is one way to keep things simple with two xbee modules being used for the wireless link. In the end, a small trimpot will control the movement of a servo motor.

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/22/xbee-wireless-servo-control/feed/ 1 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 http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/08/de0-nano-vga-via-fpga-reborn/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/08/de0-nano-vga-via-fpga-reborn/#comments Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:00:50 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3512

This article will look at how to build the same functionality that the Masochist's Video Card (built only with 7400 logic IC's) had, however this time we will use the DE0 Nano development board to complete the task, instead of wrist-breaking, pain-staking, masochist-loving wire-wrapping.

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/12/08/de0-nano-vga-via-fpga-reborn/feed/ 1 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 http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/11/17/taming-your-music-collection-id3-from-web/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/11/17/taming-your-music-collection-id3-from-web/#comments Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:00:41 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3401

“Most mp3 files have at least some ID3 tags filled in. Most commonly, the Title and Artist are filled in. We'll use these two bits of information to look up the rest of the information about the mp3 file (Track Number and Album).”

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/11/17/taming-your-music-collection-id3-from-web/feed/ 0 http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/11/10/taming-your-music-collection-filename-to-id3/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/11/10/taming-your-music-collection-filename-to-id3/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:00:30 +0000 Ben http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3333

“ The goal of this project will be to iterate over a list of files following our predefined file structure, parse each file's file path to determine its ID3 tag data, and save each file with its updated ID3 data.”

This is another great article dipping further into the software side of the world, showing you how to restructure your MP3 collection with Python!

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/11/10/taming-your-music-collection-filename-to-id3/feed/ 0 http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/11/03/taming-your-music-collection-file-structure/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/11/03/taming-your-music-collection-file-structure/#comments Thu, 03 Nov 2011 18:00:44 +0000 Ben http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3284

“This article will be the first in a series of software articles describing the process of organizing your music collection. I’ve decided to write the application in Python for a number of reasons: I’ve never used Python myself, Python has modules for reading and writing mp3 tags, and Python is easy to install and configure.”

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]]> http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/11/03/taming-your-music-collection-file-structure/feed/ 0 http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/10/27/simple-touch-screen-interface/ http://www.pyroelectro.com/2011/10/27/simple-touch-screen-interface/#comments Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:00:48 +0000 Chris http://www.pyroelectro.com/?p=3222

Touch screens seem to be the must-have innovation of the decade as they're seen in almost every new gadget and gizmo that comes out. But how exactly do they work and how can we use them? This PyroElectro article explains how a standard 4-wire resistive touch screen works and how to get the X/Y coordinates of a touched point using a PIC 18F452 microcontroller.

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