301 Moved Permanently

Posted March 8, 2012 by Chris

“In this article we will build an example system and use the basic tilt sensor as an input into a microcontroller. The microcontroller will read the data input from the tilt sensor and act accordingly to output the current state of the tilt sensor. Everything will be done on a breadboard to show how easy it is to assemble and use the system.”

Posted March 7, 2012 by Chris

“A PongSat is an experiment that fits inside of a ping pong ball. These ping pong ball ‘satellites’ are flown to the edge of space by balloon or launched in sounding rockets. The PongSats are then returned to the student. It’s an easy and inexpensive way to get students excited about science and engineering. There are endless possibilities for experiments that can fit inside a ping pong ball. PongSat’s can be as simple or complex as you want them to be.”

Posted March 6, 2012 by Chris

“The system tracks finger presses, which start and stop notes, and hand motion, which determines the loudness and octave of each note. The Musical Gloves are connected via a wireless RF connection to a host PC, which processes the finger presses and accelerometer readings in order to control the musical output. This project created and build by Steve Kranish.”

Posted March 5, 2012 by Chris

“The circuit is based around the Atmel AT90S8515. All but 1 of the I/O pins have been used: 15 for the display multiplexing, 1 for the buzzer, 3 for the input switches, 4 for the track lap sensors, 5 for the gantry lights (4 are dedicated to the ISP programming). There are a total of 32 display digits, each made of 7 segments and 1 decimal place. Hence there are 8×32, or 256 LEDs to control. The multiplexing is done by using 5 I/O pins to select the digit, and 8 I/O pins to select the segments”

Posted March 4, 2012 by Chris

“The Plushbot name illustrates the devices’ hybrid nature, which combines robotic parts like Arduino microcontrollers, conductive thread, a battery and various sensors with plush materials like stuffing and felt. The result: soft Plushbot toys that can be programmed to play music, change color (via LED lights) and move.”

Posted March 3, 2012 by Chris

“The clock is controlled by PIC16F628A from the PIC book . The idea was making a digital clock with hour, minute and second display. I just wanted to learn about microcontroller so the accuracy of the clock was not an issue (yet). However, I was trying to make it the most accurate as possible by using Timer1 Module of the PIC.”

Posted March 2, 2012 by Chris

“Mike Davenport has hand-built an 8-bit “arcade guitar” synthesizer as part of a DIY senior project for his studies at the University of Florida. Inspired by classic video game consoles, it uses an FPGA (field-programmable gate array) for logic and function, and has strings and a joystick for adjusting the pitch and LFO rate, and even has selectable oscillator waveforms and memory locations.”

Posted March 1, 2012 by Chris

“In this article we explore the flexibilty and capability of FPGAs and specifically CPLDs for creating an RS232 serial interface. Our main goal will be to send ASCII codes from a PC to our CPLD Dev Board and display them on a 7 segment LED for verification. ”

Posted February 29, 2012 by Chris

“After struggling with what to do with poorly adjusted RC helicopter that had sat in my closet in the guest bedroom for over a year, this was the best idea that I came up with so far. This project really combined several concepts that I used in some other posts such as how easy small wooden boxes, like the one I used in the “even more useless machine” are to come across, and how a RC car can apparently be recycled for just about anything.”

Posted February 28, 2012 by Chris

“This microcontroller project is another version of a persistence of vision or POV toy. It has 8 LEDs and it is powered by ATtiny2313 (AVR microcontroller by Atmel) operating at 2 x AA batteries. This is a tiny toy and it can be carried easily inside your pockets.”