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…
How to roll your own programmable Arduino/AVR board
- by: Pat Deegan
- On
Arduinos are perfect for development: you just plug them into a USB port and all the old hassles of dealing with AVR chips (crystals for clocking, hooking up comm lines, regulating power…) are handled for you. But sometimes you need to roll your own custom solution. In real life–whether because of size, cost or power…
No Ferric Chloride? No problem: Home-made etchant to the rescue!
- by: Pat Deegan
- On
It was 11pm and I was on a roll. Having prototyped my little circuit and transferred the mask onto a copper board, I was ready to create a nice permanent PCB version of the module. Far from perfect transfer, but enough to do the job. The only problem? No Ferric Chloride anywhere in sight. …
Controlling High Voltage Loads Using a Microcontroller
- by: Pat Deegan
- On
A while back, I had a project that required high-side switching of a set of pneumatic valves by a microcontroller. Because the loads were inductive (solenoids) and required a good deal more voltage than the microcontroller supply to activate (24V), I needed some kind of middleware between the Arduino and the valves. I created a…
VaRGB, RGB illumination programming library, released
- by: Admin
- On
VaRGB, a powerful and rather fun bit of code, has gone public and is now available as OSS. VaRGB is an RGB illumination programming library. You tell it how you want your lighting to behave, and it handles all the details of updating red/green/blue values at the right time for you. The library works on…
How I Became a Programmer
- by: Pat Deegan
- On
I happened upon a questionnaire–How did you learn to program?–and chose to take a few minutes to fill it out. Doing so forced me to look back at the years I’ve spent coding, how I got started and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. I ended up spending a good while filling in my…
TinyBrite Arduino library first release
- by: Pat Deegan
- On
As mentioned before, I love me some LEDs and have a particular fondness for the MegaBrites, powerful RGB modules that are easy to chain together. The only issue I encountered in using the hardware was with SPI support or, more specifically, lack thereof. On certain Arduino’s, like the very tiny Digispark, there is no hardware…
Druid4Arduino Alpha Released
- by: Pat Deegan
- On
Druid4Arduino–an automatic/configuration-free graphical user interface for Arduino projects–has just been released as free software (under the GPL), with binary programs available for Windows and Linux. This software enables you to provide a GUI for your device or project without having to spend any time programming windows and buttons. You need only include the SerialUI…
SerialUI 1.4 Released
- by: Pat Deegan
- On
Quick word to mention that SerialUI version 1.4 has been released. From the programming perspective, this update involves only a single change (the addition of a showEnterNumericDataPrompt() method, to provide more precise feedback than always using showEnterDataPrompt()). The most important thing is that the library now supports a mode specifically designed to aid interaction with…
Adventures of a Linux guy building Windows programs
- by: Pat Deegan
- On
I have a little Arduino project for which I’m going to provide a nice graphical interface. As is my custom, I chose to implement everything using my Linux development environments but made it a point to choose powerful tools that are designed to be cross-platform. It’s a drag to do things over just because your…