Almost 3 years ago I developed and published ZEPPP, my Arduino-based, “Zero-External-Parts” PIC Programmer, and wrote about it here on my blog. From time to time I hear from people using it, and, sometimes I would also get questions about whether specific PIC devices are supported. Now, ZEPPP is pretty limited in scope, as it […]
So in my first adventure with the STONE displays I wrote a simple Arduino library to communicate with them, and ported the firmware-side of the included example to my library to make sure it was working properly. However, writing that library was not the end goal. I wrote it to make it to get familiar […]
Stone…what?! What is this “Stone LCD”, you ask? Well, to put it simply, it’s a LCD display with an integrated processor that will handle all the “User-Interface” (UI) for you. You only need to “design” the UI of your application in a PC-based editor, and then transfer it to the LCD. From that point onwards, […]
One of the things I’ve been interested in for the last year or so, is developing for the Atari family of 8-bit computers. I haven’t done a lot yet, but I’ve been slowly getting software, docs, and hardware to start writing code with all the tools I could possibly need. I had already built a […]
A couple of months ago I was asked if I could prepare a sort of workshop on one of my favorite topics: ASM Programming for PIC microcontrollers, which I of course accepted on the spot. Now, I wanted to include a couple of “hands-on” lab sessions in this workshop, and because of this, I needed […]
If you are using your Arduino’s PRNG (Pseudo-Random Number Generator) for anything more serious than flashing random lights for your Christmas decorations, there’s a chance you might run into some unexpected issues, as the random() function in Arduino seems to be somewhat broken. Why? Let me explain. Background Most basic random number generators in programming libraries and platforms are based on what is called […]
Like a year ago I made myself a nice little desk clock that has worked fine since then. But recently I revisited the project to do certain improvements. For starters I wanted a smaller board so I could fit it inside an enclosure. I also wanted to power the clock from a rechargeable 18650 battery and add […]
A while ago -and after a couple of trips to our local “flea market”- I managed to get my hands on a fully working vintage Atari 800XL. It took some tests and soldering work, but I ended up with a fully working 800XL with a XC12 cassette deck (I even got a defective cassette deck that it’s mostly […]
So in the sort of tutorial I wrote about ORC-KIT I mentioned that it was possible to use other boards instead of Adafruit’s friendly motor shield, and in fact, there was space in the board for a couple of very cheap and widely available L9110S Dual H-Bridges, which should give you more control over the build, and […]
Earlier this year I embarked on the journey of designing a simple but expandable robot that any electronics enthusiast could build. I knew several nice kits from brands like Lego, Makeblock, OWI Robotics, etc, but I considered them to be normally either too expensive or too simple and limited. There are also many generic unbranded kits on eBay which suspiciously […]