[Vsergeev] built an echo pedal for a guitar or with other audio manipulation applications. He used an mbed microcontroller for the project. You may remember Hackaday writer [Phil] labeling the mbed an ‘Arduino on steroids’, and it certainly handles this audio processing quite well. We’ve included a clip of the echo effect after the break. During the design process, [Vsergeev] used LTspice to simulate the analog circuitry and make things right before committing to the physical circuits.
How’s this for a first microcontroller project: a ticker that pulls messages from the Internet and scrolls them on a set of numitrons. [David Barton] built this using an mbed microcontroller. Tapping an ethernet library he got this to pull data from his server by connecting directly to the cat5 cables. The display consists of three numitrons which are incandescent 7-segment displays. In the video after the break you can see him sending messages to it from his iPod touch. This is just a PHP form that writes the submitted message to a file for the mbed to read. As [David] points out, there’s obvious Twittering applications here, but we just like the way it looks! Continue reading “Internet Controlled Scrolling Numitron”
We were going to take a break from posting clocks. Really we were. This one came in the tip line today though, and we just couldn’t pass it up. [Alex] has built, what might be the most complicated clock we’ve seen. At least, it would appear that way initially. This Binary clock shows Hours, Minutes, Seconds, Days, and Months. He started with a picaxe, but eventually settled on an Mbed. Yes, he knows it is overkill, but it worked out pretty well.
As for the simplest, that came into our tip line as well. [Toby] sent this in, and agrees with us that it is hardly worthy of being called a hack. However, in light of the complicated one above, we didn’t see any harm in posting its opposite. Check it out after the break.
Continue reading “The Most Complicated, And Simplest Binary Clocks.”
Well no, but [Chris] needed something to remind him when to water the tree. Most folks would use their nifty iPhone to set up a calendar reminder, but why do that when you can purpose a 32 bit microcontroller to do it for you?
To detect a falling water level [Chris] attached a two-pin header to the end of a clothes pin clipped to the side of the tree stand. When the water level is covering the pins it completes a circuit, verified by a measurable current. When the water level drops the mbed microcontroller detects the loss of conductivity and through some creative code sends out an email and SMS reminder.
If you’re in love with your iPhone but not your living things, this will keep that tree kicking until after the new year.
mbed is a next-generation 32-bit microcontroller platform. It’s a prototyping and teaching tool somewhat along the lines of Arduino. On steroids. With claws and fangs. Other contenders in this class include the MAKE Controller, STM32 Primer and Primer 2, Freescale Tower, and Microchip’s PIC32 Starter Kit. The mbed hardware has a number of advantages (and a few disadvantages) compared to these other platforms, but what really sets it apart is the development environment: the entire system — editor, compiler, libraries and reference materials — are completely web-based. There is no software to install or maintain on the host system.
Continue reading “Review: Mbed NXP LPC1768 Microcontroller”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6kECR7T4LY&feature=player_embedded]
[Dan Ros] and the mbed team sent in their hack of a twitter talking Big Mouth Billy Bass. Originally the hack simply had an mbed micrcontroller and an SD card with some wav files allowing Billy to say classic quotes. Wanting to go further however, they used the mbed’s HTTPClient library to grab Twitter updates, and then have Billy say them out loud! Check out some other cool projects the mbed team has in the cookbook.
But wait, whats an mbed? We didn’t have a clue either!
Some researched reveals it is a powerful new microcontroller and prototyping board. With some features such as direct ethernet and USB connections right on the chip, as well as PWM, serial, analog, and more. What really stoked us is how it acts much like a USB thumb drive. Drag and drop your binary files, and it’s programmed! The only downside, at $100 it can be a bit more of an investment compared to an Arduino PIC. Could this be the next big prototyping tool that beats all others? Lets hear it in the comments!
[Update: The mbed can be had for a limited time pre-order price of $60 not $100 – Thanks Dan and the mbed team!]
