brainwagon

My cat Scrappy decided it was time to film a brief progress video of my Arduino/Gameduino satellite tracker. I completed the basic port and testing of my Plan13 implementation to C++ for the Arduino, and got it running pretty well. It doesn’t seem to be much more compact than Bruce Robertson’s qrpTracker code, but it […]

Okay, I got about half of the Plan 13 code ported to C++. It’s a fresh port of the original BASIC code, but modularized into objects better, and with a few bits of tidiness that C++ provides over basic. I estimate another hour or so to finish the code, if I work carefully and efficiently. […]

The other day, I showed how the Arduino could be used to generate PWM audio and send it over a very short distance using an LED. In my ever increasing pile of parts, I had some small 5mw red laser diode modules. These modules are supposed to be driven by direct connection to three 1.5 […]

I haven’t had all that much time to work on the Gameduino between holidays, visiting family and a business trip, but I have been meaning to put together a simple “button box” for the Gameduino, basically consisting of just four buttons (L/R/thrust/fire). I suppose I could have included hyperspace too, but 4 buttons was sufficient […]

I was having some difficulty with doing screenshots using the code that was on the Gameduino website, so I posted a message on answers.gameduino.com asking for help. James came back in just a few hours with fresh code that now works perfectly. For example:

Without explanation or screen dump, here’s a little program I hacked together. Update: The syntax highlighter I was using is munging this stuff. So, here’s a link to a zip file containing the code. [sourcecode lang=”C++”] #include #include #include unsigned char h, m, s, f ; static PROGMEM prog_uchar pacman_img[] = { 0, 0, 0, […]

I am going to be trying to post some code examples and demos using the Gameduino over the next few weeks. I have an idea for a crazy little demo project that I should be able to hack together in a few hours. I’m curious though: who else has got one, and what are you […]

Awesome. I’ve been having fun with my Gameduino for the couple of days I’ve had it, so I’m glad to see that Seeed Studio has picked them up to offer for sale. The cost is $53, which is identical to the price of the original Kickstarter offering. No need to kick yourself for missing out: […]

Okay, so yesterday I did some sprite animation and learned a bit about how color maps work on the Gameduino. I didn’t have a lot of time to tinker with the Gameduino tonight, but I did want to test my understanding of sprites, so I made a simple little program to display my brainwagon logo […]

Well, the other I2C based breakout board I got from Sparkfun was for a Microchip MCP4725 DAC. It’s a 12 bit device, and will eventually do duty controlling the voltage controlled oscillator in my beacon transmitter. For tonight though, I just wanted to make sure I could program it, so I soldered on some header […]

In considering the long term accuracy of the RTC chip that I was playing around with, I did some additional thinking and reading. My understanding is the error comes from the accuracy of the crystal oscillator: the 32.768Khz timing crystal probably has an accuracy of 20ppm or even larger. My guess is that this is […]

Okay, this is no big deal: lots of people have done it before. But while I was watching TV, I soldered some header pins to the DS1307 based real time clock board I got from sparkfun.com , and coded up this simple program to read the time from it. I’d never really used the Wire […]

Hajos dropped me a quick email to thank me for helping him in his Arduino project that uses an Arduino to monitor tweets using an Ethernet shield, and then translating messages that contain #morse or #cw into Morse code. Glad I could be of some minor help! Hajos Kontrapunkte: MorseTweeter V 0.7 is running.

Over on the Arduino Blog, they have mentioned a bunch of interesting new developments in the Arduino-verse. These include two new Arduino models, with some changes in the USB interface, new logos, new packaging. It all sounds good to me! Check it out. Arduino Blog » Blog Archive » Dinner is Ready.

Wikipedia is an amazing resource. I suspect there are a lot of you out there who are Wikipedia critics, but I think that on the whole it is an awesome resource that can provide a lot of people who perhaps can’t afford a real, dead-tree encylopedia with a lot of knowledge for very low cost. […]