The AVR STK500 has been Atmel’s standard AVR development platform for many years. Recently though, hobbyists have embraced the Arduino. [Alessandro] has decided to bring the two together so that you can use the Arduino environment with the STK500. Unlike the Arduino, it comes with 8 LEDs, 8 switches, a variable power supply, and variable analog reference. It’s a great way to get hardware you might already have back into service.
The CREATE USB Interface (CUI) was a project that came out of UC Santa Barbara around the same time the Arduino was being developed. It has a USB port, a PIC18F4550, and a prototyping area. It was designed to enable easy interfacing with the real would through many A/D inputs and general I/O ports. It supports both OSC and MIDI-over-USB natively. The biggest difference between the CUI and the Arduino is its USB support. The Arduino uses an FTDI chip to create a serial interface to its onboard AVR. The CUI’s PIC has native support for USB. That means you can have the CUI appear to be any USB HID device you want: keyboard, mouse, game controller, etc.
The Arduino has a friendly development environment and a large following though. CUI create [Dan Overholt] decided to add an ATmega168 to his board to get the best of both worlds, the CUIduino (scroll down). It can be programmed just like any other Arduino compatible device, but the having the CUI parent means your Arduino project can behave like a native USB HID gadget.
[Thanks Peter]
[John] has been working with several BlinkM RGB devices. He’s created a controller to talk to each of the BlinkMs wirelessly and change their behavior. The core is an old relay tester box used to test telephone circuits. Each of its four knobs are connected to the analog inputs on the Arduino. The signal is transmitted using RFlink devices. Each BlinkM is paired with an ATmega168 and receiver. The control box also has a switch to send the same signal to all of the devices at the same time. The transmit and receive code are available on his site. You can find a video of it embedded below.
Make has assembled a buyers guide for the many different types of Arduino devices. The Arduino is an open hardware platform designed to make prototyping easily accessible. The design allows for other people to modify, expand, and improve on the base, and many people have started producing their own versions. The guide features a lot of the hardware we’ve covered in the past like the LilyPad, Arduino Pro, Sanguino, Duemilanove, Ethernet Shield, and Freeduino.
Out of the pack, the Seeeduino (pictured above) definitely caught our eye. It’s a low profile SMD design much like the Arduino Pro. They’ve taken advantage of the space saved by the SMD ATmega168 by adding more useful headers. In addition to the ICSP, you get the pins in UART order and an I2C header. Vcc is switch selectable for 3.3 or 5volts. The reset switch has been moved to the edge plus two additional ADC pins. Our favorite feature is the new spacing on the digital pins. Arduino digital pin headers have an inexplicable 160mil gap between the banks. The Seeeduino has the standard row for shield compatibility, but has an additional row spaced at standard 100mil spacing for use with protoboard. At $23.99, it’s competitively priced too.
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have just announced the release of the Meggy Jr RGB, a fully programmable handheld console with an 8×8 RGB LED matrix display. Like its big sisters Peggy and Peggy 2.0, the Meggy Jr is driven by an ATmega168 microcontroller and is made up of a bank of fully addressable LEDs. Unlike its siblings, the device boasts six buttons and the ability to be mounted inside of a custom case (or “handle set”) constructed from plastic or wood, drastically altering the look of the console. Using the popular open-souce Arduino environment, users are able to write custom software for the device. While it works great as a game console, of the many possible configurations and suggested uses, we think “disco floor for your Lego minifigurines” is the most amusing.
The latest generation of Arduino hardware has been released. The Arduino Duemilanove (2009 in Italian) has the same form factor as previous generations. The specs are essentially identical to the Diecimila, but there have been a few changes to the hardware. The power source is no longer chosen using a jumper. A MOSFET and dual OPAMP have been added to the board to automatically selected between USB power and the external plug. Automatic hardware resets are optional now. Next to the USB port are two solder pads labeled RESET-EN. Cut the trace between them to kill the reset. If you ever want it back, just bridge the pads. The hardware was updated to correspond with the release of Arduino cofounder [Massimo Banzi]’s new book.
[Kyle Stewart] sent us this quick AVR project. He designed it to sit vertically on his breadboard to take up less space. It doesn’t use any surface mount components, to make the assembly easier. You can download the schematic, parts list, and eagle files for the project on his blog.
