BeagleBone Powers This Networked LED Marquee

November 1, 2012 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

[Mahmut] calls this project SmartBox. It’s a BeagleBone controlled LED marquee which can pull down information off of the Internet.

The project started with the display itself. [Mahmut] used six 5×7 LED modules to populate a circuit board he produced himself. The low side of the modules is controlled by some MBI5026 constant current drivers, with PNP transistors on the high side. The display connects to the BeagleBone ARM board using a couple of IDC ribbon cable connectors. With that up and running he started working on the enclosure. The display board was modeled in Google SketchUp to ensure that the case design would fit it properly. The laser cut acrylic case is in two parts, the base holds the driver electronics, with a hinged section for adjusting the angle of the marquee.

So far there are a few different connectivity features which are shown off in the clip after the break. The BeagleBone has the ability to pull down Twitter feeds, notify about incoming email, and scroll messages.

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How To Build Your Own Dedicated Pandora Radio

September 20, 2012 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

This mix of modern and retro acts as a standalone Pandora client. It’s certainly a radio upgrade, falling somewhere in between the passive listening of traditional broadcasts, and the complete control of music players that use playlists.

Inside the wooden case a BeagleBoard does most of the work. It’s running Ubuntu 12.04 on which pianobar, a command line interface package for Pandora is running. Those components alone would make a pretty nice listening experience, but since Pandora rolls different music into the mix it’s nice to be able to see what you’re listening to. The four-line LCD is wide enough to display plenty of information. It’s being controlled by a PIC24 microcontroller which also monitors the controls on the top. As you can see in the video after the break, the user interface offers almost everything you could want. It’s easy to switch stations, and you can still register your preferences on each track being played.

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QR Code Opens Doors To You

September 17, 2012 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

[Jeremy Blum] wrote in to share his LibeTech QR Code Door Lock project. He developed it during his Senior year at Cornell University along with three of his classmates. It seeks to move away from magnetic card locks in favor of optical locks that authenticate based on a QR code.

The hardware he’s using here is definitely cost prohibitive, but we’re sure the concept could be greatly simplified. In this case a BeagleBone running embedded Linux monitors a feed from a webcam. When it detects a QR code it compares it with a database of approved keys and will unlock the door for you.

There are problems with this technique, one being that an attacker might be able to get a usable photograph of your key without you knowing. But the majority of hotel locks in use right now are even less secure than that. On the upside, the key to your room can be emailed to you for use on just about any device with a screen, or printed out on a piece of paper.

You can find [Jeremy’s] presentation video embedded after the break.

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Offloading VGA Generation Onto A Coprocessor

June 26, 2012 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

[Alessandro] sent us a link to his post about a PRU software VGA rasterizer. It’s not the easiest read, but we think it’s worth your time.

The gist of his background information is that back when his company was developing for an ARM9 processor he wanted to test his mettle with the coprocessor chips. The first iteration was to write a character LCD driver that pulled data from the main processor’s memory and displayed it on the screen. This makes for a low-overhead debugger display, it’s also very limited (32 characters over two lines doesn’t tell you much). And thus began his work on a VGA generator for the Programmable Realtime Unit (PRU is what TI calls this coprocessor) that grabs data in memory just like the original version. But with a much larger display area this becomes quite useful for debugging. That resistor mess is the R2R ladder he soldered together to perform the Digital to Analog Conversions. There’s a quick demo clip after the jump.

This work could end up being useful to you. [Alessandro] reports that the BeagleBone has similar hardware. A bit of porting could get his generator working on that board as well.

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Tricking The BeagleBone Into Outputting Video

June 26, 2012 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

[FlorianH] wanted to get video out working with his BeagleBone but he just couldn’t figure out how to make the kernel play ball. Then a bit of inspiration struck. He knew that if you plug in the official DVI cape (that’s the BeagleBone word for what you may know as a shield) the kernel automatically starts pumping out the signals he needs. So he figured out a way to spoof the cape and output video.

At boot time the kernel polls the I2C bus to see what’s connected. The DVI cape has an EEPROM which identifies it. Since the data from the EEPROM is available for download [FlorianH] grabbed the data he needed, then used an ATmega32 to stand in for the memory chip. When he got the chip talking to the BeagleBone he was able to detect the video sync signals on his scope and he knew he was in business.

Look closely at the breadboard on the right. We love that SIL breakout board for the ATmega32. Very prototype friendly!

Dot Matrix Printer Spits Out Any Tweet Mentioning @KWF

May 31, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 2 Comments

Earlier this month, [Kenneth] picked up an old dot matrix printer at the Silicon Valley Flea Market and subsequently found two cases of tractor feed printer paper. It’s a marriage made in heaven for a dot matrix twitter printer.

[Kenneth] used a BeagleBone – a tiny single board computer running Linux – to connect to the Internet and fetch any new tweets mentioning KWF every minute or so. The BeagleBone spits out these tweets over the USB port which is connected to the ancient printer by means of a cheap adapter cable.

Interestingly, [Kenneth] wrote the code for this project as a shell script. A lot of effort went into scrubbing the input of any escape characters, but he still implores his admirers to not attempt to break his project.

In case you’re wondering, at couple Twitter accounts announced this post’s headline to the Twitterverse when this story was published. This should have immediately sent [Kenneth]’s printer into motion, recording that harsh mistress that is sending a build log of a Twitter connected device into Hackaday.

After the break you can see [Kenneth]’s demo. Be sure to share this post on Twitter!

Teaching BeagleBone To Play With LIDD Displays

May 18, 2012 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

[Chris] hasn’t managed to get his hands on a Raspberry Pi yet, so he ordered a BeagleBone and got down to business. He was surprised to find that there isn’t much info out there about using LIDD type displays with the hardware. This protocol is used in many of the 320×240 smart LCD modules on the market, so he hammered out his own drivers and is sharing the details.

The system is designed to run a Linux kernel and [Chris] has chosen to go with Angstrom. His journey started by working out how to compile and patch the kernel himself. From there it was just a matter of getting the pin mapping right, and compiling a driver (it sounds way too simple when put like that).

Apparently he’s pretty close to getting the X desktop environment up and running. No idea what he plans for the hardware, but we’re all for people sharing their work to make it easier for others. Thanks!