If Kickstarter is nowadays best place to find new (or upcoming) toys to dream about, Gameduino is probably one of the most amazing pieces of hardware I’ve seen hosted there. The shield mounts its own FPGA able of 80ies style graphics and sounds for creating old-school, 8-bit video-games, pre-loaded with numerous sprites and set up for easy connection to a VGA display.
Gameduino is a game adapter for Arduino – or anything else with an SPI interface – built as a single shield that stacks up on top of the Arduino and has plugs for a VGA monitor and stereo speakers.
The sound and graphics are definitely old-school, but thanks to the latest FPGA technology, the sprite capabilities are a step above those in machines from the past.
video output is 400×300 pixels in 512 colors
all color processed internally at 15-bit precision
compatible with any standard VGA monitor (800×600 @ 72Hz)
background graphics
512×512 pixel character background
256 characters, each with independent 4 color palette
pixel-smooth X-Y wraparound scroll
foreground graphics
each sprite is 16×16 pixels with per-pixel transparency
each sprite can use 256, 16 or 4 colors
four-way rotate and flip
96 sprites per scan-line, 1536 texels per line
pixel-perfect sprite collision detection
audio output is a stereo 12-bit frequency synthesizer
Sensebridge is a little board that logs up to 61831 heart beats, about 14 hours of data. It is based on a atmega 168, a Real Time Clock, and 512 Kbit EEPROM. And it’s released open source.
The Heart Spark is a heart-shaped pendant which flashes little lights (light emitting diodes, LEDs) in time with your heart beat. A polar chest strap with transmitter (sold separately) is used to measure your heart beat, which is transmitted wirelessly to the pendant. An arduino-compatible circuit captures each beat as it happens and flashes LEDs (later versions will log data to an onboard EEPROM – see below). The pendant is carefully designed to maximize its visual appeal, including symmetry and optionally a high-gloss epoxy coating (as pictured to the right). A CR2032 coin-cell battery provides 8+ hours of battery life. Two small switches on the back allow selection of operating mode:
Amazing Accordion sending MIDI under 100$ (instead of 6,699.00$), as [Dmitry Yegorenkov] shares on Arduino Forum and published on GitHub.
I like to play accordion & have a dog. People say dogs are singing with squeezeboxes and some people find it funny. Not for me. I know that my pet hears note harmonics much better then me & suffers from high pitches very much. I could not really practice at home just because of humanennes. That sucks. I like to play accordion. Programmers see cycle here. Let’s get out.
THIS IS IT. It plays to headphones, produces MIDI output, etc. etc. It costs $6,699.00 on e-bay (buy now offer) on November 17, 2010. In the US I can buy Peugeot Partner for the same price. In Ukraine where i live both are 1/2 times more expensive. For that money i’ll get beautiful device to practice at home and no service centers available within 400Km radius. Weird.
[DaveAK] shares his latest (uncompleted, never really complete, are they) CAN Shield.
Now I understand that there are a few CAN implementations out there, but the more the merrier, right?
This one uses the MCP2515/MCP2551 chips like most of them do. It has a switchable CS pin so that you can use other SPI shields with it that might have hardwired D10 as CS. It has a switch to draw power from the CAN Bus if desired, if you wanted to add a WiFi or Bluetooth shield for example. And for newbies like me it’s an entirely through hole design making it an easy DIY project.
I’ve also written a library that’s a complete implementation of the MCP2515 SPI command set. It doesn’t yet have any wrappers for filters or masks, but these are all accessible through the read and write commands. I have a simple Init function that takes a bus speed and clock frequency and calculates out all the necessary bit timing parameters, which makes it pretty straightforward to setup and use.
Great Tutorial from TronixStuff about the less known Arduino AREF Pin. First: what is resolution?
We measure resolution in the terms of the number of bits of resolution. For example, a 1-bit resolution would only allow two (two to the power of one) values – zero and one. A 2-bit resolution would allow four (two to the power of two) values – zero, one, two and three. If we tried to measure a five volt range with a two-bit resolution, and the measured voltage was four volts, our ADC would return a value of 3 – as four volts falls between 3.75 and 5V.
What is AREF?
AREF means Analogue REFerence. It allows us to feed the Arduino a reference voltage from an external power supply. For example, if we want to measure voltages with a maximum range of 3.3V, we would feed a nice smooth 3.3V into the AREF pin – perhaps from a voltage regulator IC. Then the each step of the ADC would represent 3.22 millivolts.
[Humberto Evans] and the team at Nerd Kits posted a nice Christmas project about making a xylophone and solenoids triggered by a microcontroller (they share the project).
We’re unlikely to replicate this machining process but the solenoids are another story all together. Starting at about 3:30 you can learn about designing, building, and using these little marvels. They’re basically an electromagnetic cuff with a metal slug in the middle. The solenoid seen above uses a body milled from HDPE and wrapped with magnet wire. The slug in the center is steel, with a few rare-earth magnets at the top. When you run current through the coil it repulses the magnets on the slug, witch then strikes the xylophone key. Using a MOSFET and a protection diode, actuating them is as simple as sending a digital high from your microcontroller of choice.
[Humberto Evans] and the team at Nerd Kits posted a nice Christmas project about making a xylophone and solenoids triggered by a microcontroller (they share the project).
We’re unlikely to replicate this machining process but the solenoids are another story all together. Starting at about 3:30 you can learn about designing, building, and using these little marvels. They’re basically an electromagnetic cuff with a metal slug in the middle. The solenoid seen above uses a body milled from HDPE and wrapped with magnet wire. The slug in the center is steel, with a few rare-earth magnets at the top. When you run current through the coil it repulses the magnets on the slug, witch then strikes the xylophone key. Using a MOSFET and a protection diode, actuating them is as simple as sending a digital high from your microcontroller of choice.
[Humberto Evans] and the team at Nerd Kits posted a nice Christmas project about making a xylophone and solenoids triggered by a microcontroller (they share the project).
We’re unlikely to replicate this machining process but the solenoids are another story all together. Starting at about 3:30 you can learn about designing, building, and using these little marvels. They’re basically an electromagnetic cuff with a metal slug in the middle. The solenoid seen above uses a body milled from HDPE and wrapped with magnet wire. The slug in the center is steel, with a few rare-earth magnets at the top. When you run current through the coil it repulses the magnets on the slug, witch then strikes the xylophone key. Using a MOSFET and a protection diode, actuating them is as simple as sending a digital high from your microcontroller of choice.
[Martin Nawrath] from Lab3, Cologne, made a nice ADC tutorial based on the 18bit LTC2400:
If the resolution of the Arduino is not enough for your application you have to try it with a better ADC. The LTC2400 gives you a resolution of up to 24 bit at a datarate of 5 samples per seconds and is quite simple to connect. With this device you can connect sensors which have only a low output level like thermo couples or force strain gauges. The high sensitivity can make the use of of an preamp needless.
[Martin Nawrath] from Lab3, Cologne, made a nice ADC tutorial based on the 18bit LTC2400:
If the resolution of the Arduino is not enough for your application you have to try it with a better ADC. The LTC2400 gives you a resolution of up to 24 bit at a datarate of 5 samples per seconds and is quite simple to connect. With this device you can connect sensors which have only a low output level like thermo couples or force strain gauges. The high sensitivity can make the use of of an preamp needless.
[Martin Nawrath] from Lab3, Cologne, made a nice ADC tutorial based on the 18bit LTC2400:
If the resolution of the Arduino is not enough for your application you have to try it with a better ADC. The LTC2400 gives you a resolution of up to 24 bit at a datarate of 5 samples per seconds and is quite simple to connect. With this device you can connect sensors which have only a low output level like thermo couples or force strain gauges. The high sensitivity can make the use of of an preamp needless.
[tronixstuff], who has wrote a ton of arduino tutorials, has posted a detailed guide to one of the most useful electronic components, used to trigger many low-voltage circuits: the Optocoupler.
It is a small device that allows the transmission of a signal between parts of a circuit while keeping those two parts electrically isolated. How is this so? Inside our typical optocoupler are two things – an LED and a phototransistor. When a current runs through the LED, it switches on - at which point the phototransitor detects the light and allows another current to flow through it. And then when the LED is off, current cannot flow through the phototransistor. All the while the two currents are completely electrically isolated (when operated within their stated parameters!)
LEGO is probably one of the best protyping tool ever made. The step to make it becoming a nice host for our electronic projects is quite straightforward. Nevertheless I haven’t seen so many projects working as deeper as [hexecute] did. His blog is a wonderful worklog of the experience. He took the effort to translate his posts in english. In his lates post he drives his Super-LEGO-Car with a Nunchuk. Amazing.
more after the break
Un magnifico progetto postato da [Hexecute] sull’utilizzo di prodotti LEGO per ospitare un progetto basato su Arduino, inventando così il gioco più flessibile, divertente e educativo di sempre. I post sul suo Blog sono in Francese ed Inglese, e spaziano dal momento in cui lui ha reperito i materiali fino all’utilizzo di un Nunchuck come controller senza fili.
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