[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2Hn8No5oFQ]
[Spikenzie] has put together this nice kit for controlling a DC motor with RC servo signals. He’s using a PIC12F629 to convert the signal to PWM. As you can see in the video above, it seems to work quite well. It is in a neat and tidy package and available as a kit. We have to admit though, what caught our eye was the prototype. Even though it is a kit for sale, it looks as though they plan on releasing the PCB files and code.
The folks at Openschemes.com have written up an article on how to convert a USB serial port adapter to a low voltage serial interface for interfacing with microcontrollers. Though you can always just buy one, this is a fairly quick and cheap solution, especially if you are in a pinch or don’t have access to a retailer. The specific models you should watch for, are the ones with two chips, a microcontroller and a line translater.They go through the process of finding exactly where to patch in to add an extra interface. It only takes a couple wires and you are ready to go.
Not only can you use this as your serial connection to another microcontroller, but you can actually take control of the one on the board itself. If you load it with the drivers from TI, you gain access to the flash memory and can do whatever you want. They don’t go into much detail here though, stating that they’ll write another article on that.
We thought this little bugger looked familiar so we went digging through our archives. Sure enough, we found this system in action back in January of 2008.
[via Hacked Gadgets]
[Oleg] over at Circuits@Home has made a USB isolator for his hacking needs. This isolator separates the signal, ground, and power lines of a USB host device, such as a PC, from a USB device like a USB oscilloscope or logic analyzer. This might be useful for Keyboard sniffing, ECG, EEG or diagnosing the control system on the positive ground of your autonomous Ford 8N. What other applications can you come up with for this tool?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yabesdeGKJo]
[Fritz] built this 600 joule capacitive discharge spot welder in a case scavenged from a Lincoln plasma cutter. All of the circuitry was designed by [Fritz] and the schematics are available on his website. He has a few other welding related project also documented on his site that are worth checking out. While this isn’t the first homemade spot welder we have seen, it is definitely the first one with a case mod. If you are not up to the challenge of building one quite as complex as [Fritz]’s example, a microwave can be used as the donor appliance in simpler designs.
[atduskgreg] posted this interesting setup to flickr. He’s using two toy cars as a switch. He has wired into their metal undercarriages so when they collide, the circuit closes. We’ve seen some pretty nifty home made interface items, but usually they are posted with a clear purpose or a project. This one is a little puzzling. Does he intend to keep using the cars or was he just fooling around? Is he working on a toy that does something when they crash? Was he merely bored and wanted to see what he could attach to his Arduino. We may never know.
[Melanie] had some time this weekend so she whipped up a dual voltage power supply from parts on hand. This design plugs right into a breadboard and, unlike the last breadboard power supply we saw, provides two voltages at one time. 5v is delivered to one power bus while 3.3v goes to the other. Her design uses two linear low voltage drop regulators from the LF00 family (PDF datasheet) to accomplish this. Nice work!
Do you find that the capabilities of your current microcontrollers are holding you back when you try to take over the world? Moving up to ARM7 architecture will put your projects in the same arena with the iPod and the Nintendo DS.
The BlueBoard-lpc214x is a prototyping board with a lot to offer. It incorporates two RS232 connections, USB, VGA, SD card slot, piezo buzzer, JTAG, audio out, PS2 keyboard connector, and a 2-line character LCD. The processor is an NXP Semiconductor LPC2148 with 512KB of programming space and 32+8KB of ram. The board also includes a 256KB i2c eeprom. This is a lot of prototyping power, but the low purchase price knocks our socks off: $40.90! Sadly, shipping would cost us another $20.43 but that’s still a lot of functionality for around $60.
Sample code and schematic are available for download. All of the pins for the microcontroller have jumpers and there are rows for pin headers around the processors if you want to patch in your own hardware. We’ve seen other ARM boards that make use of pre-existing shields. We would love to see someone remove the processor and implement Arduino-like shields for different processors outside of the LPC214x series. Promo video after the break. Continue reading “Low-cost ARM7 Prototyping”
