Screenshot of the Arduino Lab for MicroPython

Arduino Brings A MicroPython IDE

November 14, 2022 by 52 Comments

Both Arduino and MicroPython are giants when it comes to the electronics education area, and each one of them represents something you can’t pass up on as an educator. Arduino offers you a broad ecosystem of cheap hardware with a beginner-friendly IDE, helped by forum posts explaining every single problem that you could and will stumble upon. MicroPython, on the other hand, offers a powerful programming environment ripe for experimentation, and doesn’t unleash a machine gun fire of triangle brackets if you try to parse JSON slightly incorrectly. They look like a match made in heaven, and today, from heaven descends the Arduino Lab for MicroPython.

This is not an Arduino IDE extension – it’s a separate Arduino IDE-shaped app that does MicroPython editing and uploads code to your board from a friendly environment. It works over a serial port, and as such, the venerable ESP8266-based boards shouldn’t be be left out – it even offers file manager capabilities! Arduino states that this is an experimental effort – it doesn’t yet have syntax checks, for instance, and no promises are made. That said, it already is a wonderful MicroPython IDE for beginner purposes, and absolutely a move in the right direction. Want to try? Download it here, there’s even a Linux build!

High-level languages let you build projects faster – perfect fit for someone getting into microcontrollers. Hopefully, what follows is a MicroPython library manager and repository! We’ve first tried out MicroPython in 2016, and it’s come a long way since then – we’ve seen quite a few beginner-friendly MicroPython intros, from a gaming handheld programming course, to a bipedal robot programming MicroPython exploration. And, of course, you can bring your C libraries with you.

Walnut Case Sets This Custom Arduino-Powered RPN Calculator Apart From The Crowd

November 3, 2022 by 12 Comments

How many of us have an everyday tool that’s truly unique? Likely not many of us; take a look around your desk and turn out your pockets, but more often than not, what you’ll find is that everything you have is something that pretty much everyone else on the planet could have bought too. But not so if you’ve got this beautiful custom RPN calculator in a wooden case.

This one comes to us from [Shinsaku Hiura], who generally dazzles us with unique mechanical clocks and displays. This calculator solves a more practical problem — the dearth of RPN calculators on the market with the correct keyboard feel, specifically with the large keys and light touch he desired. Appropriately, the build started with a numeric keypad, which once liberated of its USB interface was reverse-engineered to figure out how the matrix was wired. Next up, a custom PCB to connect the keypad to an Arduino and a 20×4 LCD display was milled up, while a test case was designed and printed to check fitment. The final case was milled from a block of solid walnut and fitted with an acrylic window, for a sharp look with clean lines and pleasing colors.

As for the calculator itself, the demo below shows it going through its paces. The code is clever because it leverages the minimal number of keys available by hiding all the scientific and engineering functions behind a “secret silver key” that was once the equals key and obviously not needed in RPN. Hats off to [Shinsaku] for a handsome and unique addition to his desk.

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Driving Three-Color E-Paper Pricetags With An Arduino

October 28, 2022 by 14 Comments

ePaper pricetags are becoming popular parts in the hacker community as a cheap way into tinkering with the technology. [Aaron Christophel] got his hands on a 4.4″ model with red, black, and white colors, and set about programming an ESP32 to drive the price tag instead.

The protocol the display uses was reverse-engineered by prompting the display to update via RF and monitoring the signals sent to between microcontrollers on the display’s control board. Once the protocol was understood, one of the microcontrollers could then be removed and replaced with an ESP32 for direct control. Implementing this takes some disassembly and some delicate soldering, but it’s nothing that should scare off an experienced hacker.

With the right code flashed to the ESP32, as available on Github, it’s possible to run the display directly. The hacked code does a great job driving the display, showing crisp lines and clean colors that indicate the e-Paper display is running properly.

We’ve seen [Aaron’s] work before in this area, when he hacked simpler two-color e-ink price tags. He’s also gone so far as creating entire wall displays out of salvaged displays, which is quite the sight. Video after the break.

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One Of The Worst Keyboards Ever, Now An Arduino Peripheral

October 24, 2022 by 39 Comments

For British kids of a certain age, their first experience of a computer was very likely to have been in front of a Sinclair ZX81. The lesser-known predecessor to the wildly-successful ZX Spectrum, it came in at under £100 and sported a Z80 processor and a whopping 1k of memory. In the long tradition of Sinclair products it had a few compromises to achieve that price point, the most obvious of which was a 40-key membrane keyboard. Those who learned to code on its frustrating lack of tactile feedback may be surprised to see an Arduino project presenting it as the perfect way to easily hook up a keyboard to an Arduino.

Like many retrocomputing parts, the ZX81 ‘board has been re-manufactured, to the joy of many a Sinclair enthusiast. It’s thus readily available and relatively cheap (we think they can be found for less than the stated 20 euros!), so surprisingly it’s a reasonable choice for an Arduino project. The task of trying to define by touch the imperceptible difference in thickness of a ZX81 key will bring a true retrocomputing experience to a new generation. Perhaps if it can be done on an Mbed then someone might even make a ZX81 emulator on the Arduino.

We’re great fans of the ZX81 here at Hackaday, for some of us it was that first computer. Long may it continue to delight its fans!

Arduino hearing test device overview

DIY Arduino Hearing Test Device

October 23, 2022 by 18 Comments

Hearing loss is a common problem for many – especially those who may have attended too many loud concerts in their youth. [mircemk] had recently been for a hearing test, and noticed that the procedure was actually quite straightforward. Armed with this knowledge, he decided to build his own test system and document it for others to use.

audiogram showing the results of the arduino hearing test device
Resultant audiogram from the device showing each ear in a different color

By using an Arduino to produce tones of various stepped frequencies, and gradually increasing the volume until the test subject can detect the tone, it is possible to plot an audiogram of hearing threshold sensitivity.  Testing each ear individually allows a comparison between one side and the other.

[mircemk] has built a nice miniature cabinet that holds an 8×8 matrix of WS2812 addressable RGB LEDs.  A 128×64 pixel OLED display provides user instructions, and a rotary encoder with push-button serves as the user input.

Of course, this is not a calibrated professional piece of test equipment, and a lot will depend on the quality of the earpiece used.  However, as a way to check for gross hearing issues, and as an interesting experiment, it holds a lot of promise.

There is even an extension, including a Class D audio amplifier, that allows the use of bone-conduction earpieces to help narrow down the cause of hearing loss further.

There’s some more information on bone conduction here, and we’ve covered an intriguing optical stimulation cochlear implant, too.

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Classic DOS Games On An Arduino?

October 17, 2022 by 8 Comments

It has been a while since we’ve seen a 86Duino, but [TheRasteri] reminded us about it, with his video showing how to use one to run classic MS-DOS games. To be fair, the computer isn’t really an Arduino, it’s essentially a tiny 486 PC on an Arduino-style PCB.

If it were just running DOS games on a tiny PC, that wouldn’t be very newsworthy. However, the board by itself has no video card and, as [TheRasteri] points out, sound card compatibility is also a problem. A carrier board, however, has a tiny VGA card on it, and thanks to some work from another user, it is possible to add an ISA bus to the board if you want to plug in a legacy sound card.

The ISA hack was done neatly, but it is a bit of wiring. Instead of using a normal ISA backplane, it is possible to use a PC/104 backplane, if you have cards that will fit that bus — electrically, they are the same. The board was able to run DOOM and Quake at nearly 30 frames per second. Not bad. He did have problems getting a mouse to work, though.

Got a bit nostalgic watching him use QBasic to directly write to registers on an ISA card. If you want an old DOS machine and don’t want to tie up a lot of space, this could be the ticket. Especially if you need it to run some old piece of hardware that won’t work with modern computers. We have to wonder if anyone would make a USB to ISA adapter out of something like this. The drivers would seem to be the hard part.

We saw the 86Duino nearly 10 years ago when there were a few other x86 single-board computers around. Apparently, lots of people want to run vintage games.

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Simple CNC Gear Production With Arduino

October 10, 2022 by 21 Comments

We’ve seen plenty of people 3D printing custom gears over the years, but [Mr Innovative] decided against an additive process for his bespoke component. He ended up using a simple CNC machine that makes use of several components that were either salvaged from a 3D printer or produced on one. Using a small saw blade, the machine cuts gear teeth into some plastic material and — presumably — could cut gears into anything the saw blade was able to slice into, especially if you added a little lubrication, cooling, and dust removal.

If you’ve built a 3D printer, you’ll see a lot of familiar parts. Stepper motors, aluminum extrusion, straight rods, bearing blocks, and rod holders are all used in the build. There’s also a lead screw and the associated components you usually see in a printer’s Z-axis. Naturally, an Arduino drives the whole affair.

The saw blade was custom-made from a washer, grinding an edge and using a 3D printed template to cut teeth in it. We might have been more inclined to use a cut-off wheel from a rotary tool, but this certainly did the trick. An LCD accepts the gear diameter and number of teeth. The stepper rotates the correct number of degrees and another stepper lowers the cutting head which is spinning with a common DC motor.

As impressive as this machine is, the fact remains that a 3D printer can produce more complex designs. For example, a herringbone pattern can help with alignment issues. It has been done many times. You can even use a resin printer, although you might prefer to stick with FDM.

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