301 Moved Permanently

Posted March 18, 2012 by Chris

“It’s a simple hobby project using 11 Parallax Basic Stamp microcontrollers (12 by the time you read this). These “computers” are connected together for hardware/software clustered parallel processing. It’s a fantastic learning tool and can control 176 peripherals/sensors. One application is for the more rapid development of robotic sensors and software.”

Posted March 17, 2012 by Chris

“This code is for a simple RGB LED controller for 1 RGB LED using a PIC12F675 (or PIC12F629). The pattern is determined by the data in the EEPROM. When the PIC needs a new target for the PWM, it loads it from EEPROM. Pin 4 (GP3) is pulled high because it is used to switch between displays.”

Posted March 16, 2012 by Chris

“Making a circuit with a microcontroller, battery, and LEDs connected by copper tape.” No secrets here, just a very unique way to use hot glue and copper tape to build your own circuit board on a piece of wood for the world to see.

Posted March 15, 2012 by Chris

“This project shows the process of choosing parts, building a schematic, connecting the hardware and writing the hardware description (VHDL) to control a HD44780 LCD interface and output a few characters to the 16×2 LCD screen. To make things a little easier, we’ll use a familiar board, the CPLD Dev Board that I introduced a few years ago. It’s dated but still a good learning platform! ”

Posted March 14, 2012 by Chris

“Basically, a card stripe contains a certain sequence of magnetic fields which the reader detects as you swipe the card through it. The basis of all the card-spoofing circuits is to make some kind of electromagnet, put it next to the read-head and manipulate the magnetic field in just the right way to mimic a card.”

Posted March 13, 2012 by Chris

“The battery-powered Levitating Digital Scale electromagnetically levitates a load platform, and uses a linear hall-effect sensor to measure the magnetic field strength to determine the weight of the platform. The levitating platform is embedded with a permanent magnet that opposes the magnetic field of a solenoid (the electromagnet). When a load is placed on the platform, the levitating platform will settle to a new height.”

Posted March 12, 2012 by Chris

“A small group of high school students launched a high-altitude weather balloon with a small payload. In addition to a video transmitter and GPS transmitter, they decided to include a simple transmitter built from scratch. This is the story of the project, with emphasis on the simple transmitter’s design, construction, implementation, and reception (which surprised me, being detected ~200 miles away and lasting the entire duration of the flight!)”

Posted March 11, 2012 by Chris

“A retro-style computer that functions like the Altair 8800 and can run original, unmodified software. The simplest Altair configuration that could run 4k BASIC was the 8080A CPU board, at least 4K of RAM, and a serial IO interface. The 6850 UART was used in the 88-2SIO serial interface boards. This project has evolved over time, resulting in a series of different versions.”

Posted March 10, 2012 by Chris

“Turn an old digital camera into a time lapse camera using an arduino, a relay, and an open source software program called makeAVI (windows). To modify the camera I disassembled the camera cover and removed the button that activates the shutter.”

Posted March 9, 2012 by Chris

“To estimate its orientation, Bullet integrates readings from the gyro and accelerometer using a complementary filter. To balance, the angle estimate is fed through a PID loop (with no integral term). The loop runs at 625 Hz. The output from this stage determines the duty cycle of a 1.22 kHz PWM signal, which is connected to the H-bridge. The code was written in C, and is in the public domain.”