First of all, sorry it’s been a while since my last post. More articles to come in 2016! Since then, I did manage to take the Magic Cooler and use it to run the Christmas lights on my house with some minor upgrades to the software and minor updates in the … Continue reading
Here’s another cool Lab that I worked on as part of the edX MOOC I mentioned before using the Texas Instruments TM4C123G Launchpad Eval kit. To learn more details about that course, please see the Lab 10 explanation. This time in Lab 13 I was tasked with developing a 4-button piano that … Continue reading
Welcome to Part 2 of the Magic Cooler project. If you missed Part 1, you can read it here. Thus far we have focused only on building the AC circuit that will serve to directly control the 10 switchable lights via 10 relays. Now, we want to hook up the … Continue reading
So I was getting ready to write my next blog entry for the Magic Cooler, when…. Well, Esquilo! (squirrel in Portuguese) anyway! The founders of Esquilo came to visit at work this week. They have a Kickstarter going on for their Esquilo Air board, a wifi-enabled development board targeted specifically to … Continue reading
Andres and I were finally able to complete the Magic Cooler project and present it at the Freescale booth at Austin Mini Maker Faire 2015! Now to document! This project started out as something to help educate kids in learning to control Christmas lights with music using a microcontroller in … Continue reading
MOOC Well, I thought I’d let you all know why I’ve been a bit behind on my blog posting. One of the 2 reasons… Early March, I decided to take an online MOOC course related to learning embedded microcontroller programming. That stands for Massive Open Online Course given online by an organization called edX … Continue reading
(Not an April Fool’s joke) Andres, Nikki and I at Freescale have submitted an entry for the Austin Mini Maker Faire 2015 based on the Music and Lights project exhibited here! Of course it since has been converted from using Atmel-based Arduino to using Freescale (Kinetis) based Teensy 3.1 !! The … Continue reading
At Austin Maker Faire 2008, I bought a simple board from LadyAda, aka Adafruit Industries, that exhibited Conway’s Game of Life. The so-called ‘Game of Life’ is a zero-player ‘game’ where a 2-dimensional grid with an initial state is defined and then time is allowed to proceed according to … Continue reading
Finally got Music and Lights program previously working on Arduino Uno ported over to the Teensy 3.1! (Did this the night before the SuperBowl, so had the NFL on the brain). The Teensy supports an add-on to the Arduino IDE (software editor) called Teensyduino. This permits taking the same Arduino … Continue reading
Ok, this really is a nanowonder! Admittedly, this chip came out by Freescale last year but I just received it in a business card like format: Did you miss it? That’s the MCU (microcontroller unit) there in the little window set into the card next to the lifesize image of … Continue reading
Speaking of little things making a big difference, I just got this little board called “Teensy” to try things on. Here are some basic specs as compared to some popular Arduino models: With its 256kB of Flash, 64kB of RAM, and 72MHz processor, it fits between an Arduino Uno and Arduino Due … Continue reading
Late last month I received my second Arduino, which took a bit longer than usual to arrive, and when it did, it came directly from China in a small package. There was not the usual colorful little box and package of stickers, which made me suspicious. Sure enough, looking more … Continue reading
Recently I had the occasion to repair a screen on an iPhone 5. I’ve done this kind of thing before and was looking forward to this one in particular as it was a gift for someone and the replacement screen was a good one. (Technically, the screen itself is fine, just … Continue reading
After a bit of a scramble late last week, we were able to get v1.0 of the Makerspace sign up at my sons’ middle school Friday morning! This is the conclusion to the project I mentioned before (Music and Lights), where an Arduino was used to drive a small speaker … Continue reading
Apparently, I didn’t get my fill of building up little Christmas trees— and felt the need to go big! Actually, a project I took on last week was out of pure necessity. The inevitable Ghost of Christmas Past that randomly appears in all homes as the boxes come out of attic: … Continue reading