I’ve recently had to develop an application using the BLE Nano platform. The BLE Nano is a little module built around the Nordic nRF51822 SoC, along with a minimalist set of support components  including an on-board antenna for the bluetooth wireless connection.  The Nordic itself provides all the Bluetooth low energy functionality and hosts your…

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So you’re programming for a platform with a built-in RTC… cool.  Now what? Most (all?) XMEGA‘s have an on-board real-time clock, some can even be backed-up by a distinct battery (like the xmega256a3bu, shown below) which can be a real time saver (oh, the pun-anity!). The question then becomes how to best use it. I’ve…

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New versions of SerialUI and Druid4Arduino have just been released and include some neat new functionality. The two major improvements are: automatic variable/state tracking continuous streaming output Variable state tracking Using SerialUI, you may now specify and label a list of (global) variables.  Each of these will automatically be displayed and refreshed in the druid…

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I love the Arduino platform, especially for prototyping, and have been playing with the Atmel ATmega chips for a long while.  Once you’ve designed your project, some of the smaller derivatives (like the Ardweeny I’ve mentioned before) are cheap enough to leave embedded everywhere and, in any case, you can always move from an Arduino…

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SerialUI, the Arduino serial/terminal user interface, and Druid4Arduino, the automatic GUI for SerialUI-enabled devices, have both been updated and are available for download. SerialUI SerialUI has been expanded to include new functionality, the most important of which are: A “user-presence” callback.  You can now specify a function which will be periodically executed while a user…

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I’m pleased to announce that the first set of pages for the Bluetooth Smart/Low Energy Tutorial series have been published.  Within, you’ll find a BLE crash course, a DIY BLE module breakout board (including an Eagle library so you can use it in your circuits) and a complete universal bluetooth low energy client program– with…

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There are many instances when it would be nice to be able to send large amounts of data to an Arduino-based device.  A very obvious example is any kind of media player, where you’d like to upload files from your computer, but there’s also sending configuration, whitelists, sets of instructions… there are many cases where…

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The MaxThermo library has just been released under the LGPL! If you have a project that needs to know the weather (or at least the temperature, anyhow), then a thermocouple will come in very handy. Thermocouples are pretty sweet temperature sensors that fit into electronics naturally as they leverage the thermoelectric effect: conductors which are…

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Announcing the release of a new hardware project :) A.C.I.D. (the Aural Colour Identification Device) lets you hear all the colours of the rainbow, by converting any light it receives into a unique combination of tones. It may be used as a handheld device or as an input module to other components by providing numerical…

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I’m a big fan of Atmel AVR-based projects, Arduino stuff in particular.  Though I support the Arduino community by buying and using official parts, like the Uno, I also enjoy exploring spin-off projects such as the Digispark because they sometimes better address particular needs (e.g. space constraints). Also, I like to play. Here I’ll review…

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