TI’s CC3000 WiFi Chip Gets A Library

June 24, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 43 Comments

About six months ago, Texas Instruments released a simple, cheap, single-chip WiFi module. At $10 a piece in quantities of 1000, the CC3000 is a much better solution to the problem of an ‘Internet of Things’ than a $50 Arduino Ethernet modules, or even the $30 Electric Imp. All indications, especially the frequent out of stock status for the dev board on TI’s web site, show the CC3000 will be a popular chip, but until now we haven’t seen a CC3000 library for the Arduino or other microcontrollers.

[Chris] just solved that problem for us with a CC3000 WiFi library for the Arduino. He ported TI’s MSP430 CC3000 library to the Arduino, allowing even the bare-bones Arduino Uno to connect to a WiFi network with just a handful of parts. The code itself takes about 12k of Flash and 350 bytes of RAM, giving anyone using the CC3000 enough room left over to do some really interesting stuff. There’s even a slimmed down library that uses somewhere between 2k and 6k of Flash, making an ATtiny-powered web server a reality.

There are a few caveats in using the CC3000 with an Arduino; it’s a 3.3 Volt part, so you’ll need a level shifter or some resistors. Also, the chip draws about 250 mA when it’s being used, so you’ll need a beefy battery if you want your project to last an entire day of use.

Now that the library is out of the way, be on the lookout for a CC3000 breakout board. Here’s one, but expect some more on the market soon.

Lots Of Seven Segment Displays With A Single ATtiny

June 24, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

7seg

These days they’ve been replaced with character LCD displays or even brightly colored graphical displays, but if you’re trying to display data on one of your projects, there’s nothing like the classic red glow of a red seven segment display. [five volts] got his hands on a few ancient segmented displays, but controlling even one took up more microcontroller pins than he was ready to spare. The solution to this problem was to use a shift register and control multiple segment displays with an 8 pin microcontroller.

[volts] is using an ATtiny13 to control six seven segment displays. Each display is mounted on a hand-etched board, with a shift register and a handful of resistors soldered to the back. By having the microcontroller shift bits down the line, [volts] created an extremely easy to interface 6-digit segment display, and the entire device can be expanded even more.

The board files and schematics are available on [volt]’s project page. A great project if you’re just starting out to etch your own boards.

16 Core Computer Made Of ATMegas

June 24, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 25 Comments

Your desktop has two, four, or even eight cores, but when’s the last time you’ve seen a multicore homebrew computer? [Jack] did just that, constructing the DUO Mega, a 16 core computer out of a handful of ATMega microcontrollers.

From [Jack]’s description, there are 15 ‘worker’ cores, each with their own 16MHz crystal and connection to an 8-bit data bus. When the machine is turned on, the single ‘manager’ core – also an ATMega328 – polls all the workers and loads a program written in a custom bytecode onto each core. The cores themselves have access to a shared pool of RAM (32k), a bit of Flash, a VGA out port, and an Ethernet controller attached to the the master core.

Since [Jack]’s DUO Mega computer has multiple cores, it excels at multitasking. In the video below, you can see the computer moving between a calculator app, a weird Tetris-like game, and a notepad app. The 16 cores in the DUO Mega also makes difficult calculations a lot faster; he can generate Mandelbrot patterns faster than any 8-bit microcontroller can alone, and also generates prime numbers at a good click.

Continue reading “16 Core Computer Made Of ATMegas” →

What’s Happening At LIFE.hackaday Lateley

June 24, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 4 Comments

If you haven’t been over to LIFE.hackaday lately, maybe you should check it out.

You could be learning how to be a hero with a wine cork, or how to easily break string without scissors(or your teeth). Need new ways to mount your tablet? We’ve got you covered. However, the story that is probably most important right now is how to keep your ice cream from getting that freezer burnt section on the top.

Transformer Built From MIT Admissions Mailing Tube

June 24, 2013 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

mit-admissions-tube-robot It’s not quite on the scale of [Michael Bay], but that’s probably a good thing. We do think that this robot built from a mailing tube by [Will Jack] would be right at home in a Transformers movie.

The bot starts out looking like a normal cardboard mailing tube. But the seam at the middle splits to reveal the electronics inside. An Arduino Uno drives the device, monitoring that infrared rangefinder which is facing forward. Each half of the tube acts as a wheel, pushing against the at-rest mass of the internals to create motion. It can even pull off a tank-like pivot to turn in place by spinning he halves in opposite directions.

We were intrigued to hear that the admissions department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sent a single page acceptance letter in these silver tubes to those students accepted into the class of 2017. The letter invites the incoming class to hack the tube and send in their results. We’re going to have to dig through the submissions and see if there are any other noteworthy projects.

Continue reading “Transformer Built From MIT Admissions Mailing Tube” →

A 555 Player Piano

June 23, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 10 Comments

555_timer_automatic_music_player

From simple buzzers to an Atari Punk Console, the simple 555 timer chip is the foundation of a whole lot of interesting lo-fi synth projects perfect for beginners. [Steven] put together a great tutorial for using the 555 timer in a rudimentary synth, and even went so far as to build a simple electronic player piano able to play a song from a sheet of paper with punched holes.

The basic 555 oscillator circuit is very simple – just a few caps and resistors and powered by a few batteries. [Steven] built the simplest 555 circuit, but used a line of graphite drawn on a piece of paper for the resistor controlling the frequency. It’s basically a drawdio built on a breadboard, and easy enough to build for even the most neophyte electronic tinkerer.

Going one step further, [Stephen] drew a long thick line of pencil graphite on a piece of paper and mounted eleven wire loops attached to the circuit over his improvised resistor. After cutting a few holes in a piece of paper, he was able to create a simple player piano with his 555 synth. It worked well enough to play Greensleeves, and is the perfect project for the budding electronics hacker.

Continue reading “A 555 Player Piano” →

Hackaday Links: Sunday, June 23rd, 2013

June 23, 2013 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

Need to connect a male pinheader to male jumper wires? [Scoops] came up with a brilliant method using jumpers meant for dual-pin headers like on motherboards.

Atanua, a real-time logic simulator, was just upgraded for the first time in a few years. We’ve liked this one since way back. The changes mostly involve performance improvements.

You can see what’s inside of Google Glass without shelling out $1500 for your own hardware. [Thanks Itay]

Coding a Minecraft clone in x86 assembly is pretty impressive. We had to install nasm and qemu to get it to compile but it does work. If you don’t want to build the project just check out the demo video. There’s no sign of creepers but dig too deep and you’ll fall out of the world. [Thanks Dmitry]

Here’s a way to use multiple Google Drive accounts as a RAID array.

[Sick Sad] produced some really trippy photographs using long exposures with a laser line on a servo. The result is a photorealistic image of the subject (faces in this example) that looks like it was melted à la [Salvador Dalí]. If you’re just interested in using the laser for light painting check out Hackaday alum [Jeremy Cook’s] work in that area.

And finally, two monitors are better than one. [Bryan] put his both together in portrait orientation using a laser-cut mounting bracket of his own design.