Posted March 9, 2014 by Chris

"This January my daughter decided that she wanted to join in her brother’s cub pack’s Pinewood derby with a replica of Doctor Who’s TARDIS on wheels. Her design was pretty straightforward – balsa wood trim, poster paint, paper cutouts for the windows and sign, and her construction was quickly nearing completion…."

Posted March 8, 2014 by Chris

"For a long time, I was looking for a solution to the size of my stk500. Its big, fragile, and requires external power and a large USB to serial cable. It seemed like the solution was one of these, a tiny (haha) programmer based around an attiny45/48. Since I had the parts left over from The Secret Knowledge (more on this later) that would let me implement v-usb, and some attiny45 in my room, I decided to give it a shot. Along the way there were a few roadblocks:"

Posted March 7, 2014 by Chris

"We have discussed in the past experiments how to use a PIC microcontroller to do a variety of things from flashing an LED to driving a motor, etc. Today, we will see how to play notes of a song with a PIC microcontroller. Musical notes are simply sound waves of particular frequencies."

Posted March 6, 2014 by Syd

We are just one week away from publishing PyroEDU’s fourth course, An Introduction to Microcontrollers and we’re really excited to share it with you. Our friends over at Gadgetory.com are offering parts kits that provide all the materials necessary to complete the course. If you’ve bought a kit for a previous PyroEDU course, all you need is the Components Kit. If this is your first time buying a kit, you will want the Complete Kit.

Posted March 5, 2014 by Chris

"Last time I went through junk in the basement I found old ZX spectrum.This was the time I got the great idea. Have the ZX spectrum implemented in FPGA…..As for the hardware part I had this SparkFun’s Spartan 3 breakout board. 500k gate FPGA that should be big enough most home made projects."

Posted March 4, 2014 by Chris

"I have decided to do a small hardware project to get my feet wet, a project that I will fully document and discuss here with the hope to encourage and motivate others to do the same: Building an Arduino Robot."

Posted March 3, 2014 by Chris

"Inspired by Andre’ Michelle’s Tone Matrix flash applet I decided to make a physical version – i.e. a box with buttons, flashing lights and knobs to turn. I wanted 16×16 – the Bliptronic 5000 just doesn’t have enough lights."

Posted March 2, 2014 by Chris

"The Cramp uses an old HDD as its base, with the crane spinning around the main bearing that previously supported the platter. A system of spools and pulleys provides a reasonable range of motion to the rest of the build. Relocating the entire assembly, however, is evidently an unpleasant task."

Posted March 1, 2014 by Chris

"The goal is to get a ~100 Euro unit to do 10 million key guesses per second. This device is built for the fun of building it and to see what’s possible with current hardware."

Posted February 27, 2014 by Chris

Thanks to continued support and feedback from all of YOU, we are excited to announce that the 4th course of PyroEDU: An Introduction To Microcontrollers will begin next month! Here’s a preview of the course overview:

“This course is meant to create a pathway into learning about microcontrollers, for people who are scared of the hardware and software trickery that comes with it. A hands-on approach is taken in this course through a combination of lecture and experimentation to teach you about the different functions that microcontrollers have. Additionally, visuals are used throughout lectures like step-by-step schematic building and line-by-line code explanations.”

This course comes right on the heels of An Introduction To Digital Electronics and An Introduction To Analog Electronics and as such, it will use knowledge from both of those courses to further expand to the world of processors, microcontrollers and programmed devices in general. Also, thanks again to all of our kickstarter backers who originally got us started! Read more at the course page at PyroEDU