Electronics-Lab.com Blog

ZPUino is a system-on-chip 32bit microprocessor FPGA core, that functions with a modified Arduino IDE. All the files regarding the core are open-source and downloadable from their site, and so is the modified Arduino IDE. [via]

Yes, that is true.
ZPUino 1.0 is now available for you to use and enjoy. Expect some updates on next few days – release cycles are about to change, we’re switching to release early, release often.  As always, direct any questions to zpuino @ alvie.com.

ZPUino v1.0 released - [Link]

dangerousprototypes.com writes:

Palma made a USB development board for the PIC18F2550. These chips are really popular, and there is a bunch of projects floating around the internet with them, even our own USB IR Toy, and USB LCD Backpack use them.

This board is basically a breakout board, with decoupling capacitors, and a USB jack. We like that all the broken-out pins are connected two 2 pins of the dual row female header, making it easier to connect one pin to a more then one external component.

You can also check out our PIC18F2550 Breakout Board, build in the “blade” style, having all the breakout pins on one side of the board.

PIC18F2550 USB development board - [Link]

Mint-Sized Success Meter (quit smoking!) with Arduino – [via]

There comes a time in life to put childish things behind and give up nasty habits. Some, like smoking, can be damn hard without constant encouragement. It was time for me to combine my favorite hobby with my driving goal and make this: The Quit Success Meter!

Mint-Sized Success Meter (quit smoking!) with Arduino  - [Link]

Measuring Battery Capacity with an Arduino. Dennis writes- – [via]

I needed a couple of AA batteries and found the display at the supermarket where they were all arrayed. Normally when I’m shopping in the supermarket, I tend to look at the price/kg or price/l when comparing similar products. In the case of the batteries, there was no such indicator. Fine, I thought, I’ll work it out myself. I grabbed a few different makes and scanned the packaging for some measure of their capacity. Nothing. Not a single one of the batteries had any indicator of how much energy they would provide. Instead, they all had terms like ‘PLUS’, ‘SUPER’, ‘ULTRA’ and of course had wildly differing prices. So, I decided that it was time for an experiment and bought one pack of every type I could find.

Measuring Battery Capacity with an Arduino - [Link]

Arduino Temperature Humidity Sensor @ PlastiBots – [via]

The projects I do tend to fall in one of two buckets – either proof-of-concept (so I can learn new stuff) or items that have some sort of functional use. The need for this project came about when my wife was prodding me about the humidity in the house and whether our humidifier was doing it’s job correctly. Most people would just go out and buy a temp / humidity sensor and be done with it. However, if you have a look around here, you will see that I don’t fit that mold. Instead, I decided to build an accurate temp / humidity sensor with a Sensiron SHT11 to read the values, a RBBB Arduino kit to process everything and an Adafruit 128×32 OLED to display the results – all wrapped up in… LEGO! Read on for more…

Arduino Temperature Humidity Sensor - [Link]

Autodesk announces updated 123D site plus what’s in store for 123D app suite! @ Ponoko – [via]

Autodesk CEO, Carl Bass along with Samir Hanna, VP of Consumer Products both spoke about Autodesk and the support of Makers. Carl spoke about the “Post-Industrial Manufacturing and the Future of Making” explaining he has been a maker for over 30 years making things in his shop and then showed some great examples and research going on in the future of manufacturing including a 3D printer that prints building and another that can print human organs. Carl also mentioned the Consumer Products from Autodesk “are really aimed for kids 7-70 years old. Samir Hanna spoke about the changing in the role of consumers and design and how Autodesk is providing powerful yet easy to use tools for people to unleash their creativity as everyone has some ability to be creative and Autodesk wants to enable that with the growing 123D products.

Updated 123D site plus, 123D app suite! - [Link]

Go Free Range build outstanding software for the web.. lazyatom writes – [via]

We’ve built an open-source distributed software system for making it simple to produce really great looking content on little printers like that in the IoT printer kit. Take a look here: http://gofreerange.com/printer. I strongly suspect that it would be trivial to get this working with the IoT kit itself. Anyone fancy giving it a go?

Hello printer open-source distributed software system - [Link]

Run Away Brainz: Audio: Crystal cMoy Freeform Headphone Amp – [via]

Well the time has come to pour the clear casting resin .I have say I have been putting this off for some time ,but it all turned out well in the end as you can see below

Gorgeous crystal cMoy Freeform Headphone Amp - [Link]

Tenty LED Brake Lights. Pete writes – [via]

I Purchased a motorcycle about two weeks ago. Interestingly, whenever I tell someone this news, they immediately proceed to tell me the most gruesome injuries and stomach turning plights that they or someone they know, has fallen victim to while motorcycling. In some cases, these raconteur’s briefly pause to look over their shoulder, presumably scanning for small children or otherwise offendable ears, before delivering the goriest details.

One commonality in these stories, aside from the macabre and arguably poor timing involved in telling them to me is that many accidents come down to a lack of visibility of motorcycles and their riders. Less than Argus-eyed motorists often pull out into the path of a motorcycle and with insufficient time for evasive action, that quickly an accident has occurred. Other times, drivers may focus on the car ahead of the motorcycle and in the event of stopping at a red light or similar, fail to leave enough room.

Tenty LED Brake Lights - [Link]

Every once in a while something comes along that changes the way you look at things. A project posted last week by Dmitry Grinberg was such a thing for me. The project in itself is already pretty strange: porting a 32-bit operating system (OS) to an 8-bit microcontroller lacking most of the features needed to actually run the OS. Why would you want to run Linux on an AVR? “Because you can”, would answer George Obama (or was it Barack Mallory?) and now also Dmitry. Yes, apparently you can (I didn’t try it myself), it only takes two hours to boot Linux on the AVR, with an effective clock speed of a dazzling 6.5 kHz. It is fun as in academic demonstration.

Yet for me this demonstration, working or not, useful or not, shows more. Emulating one platform on another more powerful platform is common practice these days, but I had never thought about doing the opposite. Emulating a 32-bit ARM processor on an 8-bit microcontroller is actually quite a cool idea. Maybe Dmitry is not the first to have done this, I don’t know, but it is an excellent example of thinking the other way around, outside the box. The result may be useless for now, but who knows what one day may come from this? [via]

Run 32-bit Linux on an 8-bit MCU - [Link]