This category contains experiments and tests, which for me usually means messing around and playing with a particular concept, technology, device or whatever. May or may not contain actual “lab” tests.
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 […]
Tape recorders, computers and capture cards all seem to be happy to accept a microphone input for adding audio or voice-overs, but very few have a “line input” to overlay music or any other “strong” signal source instead.
I’ve had a VC99 multimeter for a while, and one of the nice things about it, is that it can be hacked to give it RS232 output pretty easily. The hack is possible because the VC99 uses a rather standard DMM chipset that has serial-output capabilities built-in. You can check if the feature is there […]
It happens that I quite like scientific calculators, and lately I’ve been adding a few to my collection. Several calculators are CAS (“Computer Algebra System”)-capable, meaning they are powerful enough to do symbolic / algebraic processing, and thus are able to understand and manipulate algebraic expressions containing any mix of unknowns, operators and numbers, and […]
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 […]
It took me a really long time to do this second part of my Pi-based Logic Analyzer project, mostly because of two things; the first one being that at one point (after I had pretty much all the case design, extra hardware and software tweaking done for my RPi1) I decided to switch to a Raspberry Pi […]
It has become pretty common for me to have one or two unfinished projects on my bench or the shelf, because “I just can’t find the time” to complete them, or because I’m “waiting for something the project needs”. And both things happened in one way or another with a Linear Power Supply kit that I bought after […]
Not long ago I purchased this neat and compact DC to DC Buck Boost converter that performs reasonably well. It has a maximum output of 38V, 6A and has more than enough flexibility and features to be a secondary power supply in my lab. I recently found a review of this product by Julian Ilett on his channel (which […]
For a few months now (and after successfully using a cheap USB analyzer with my Pocket C.H.I.P) I’ve wanted to make a sort of standalone Logic Analyzer / mini linux machine that I could have on my bench. I originally wanted to use one of my C.H.I.P boards, but I soon stumbled upon a bit of a difficulty: It’s […]