I have been awful about keeping up with x0xb0x news as I am wrapping up the next run of x0xen (panels came in this week, yeah!) But I am completely stunned by this incredible x0xb0x casemod:

In fact I am so utterly entranced, I won’t say a thing about it. Just get your ass over to the website and order one of the limited editions. Is open source hardware awesome or WHAT?

Hard-working ladyada.net forum user SolidSilver has posted instructions for using a ‘upgraded’ Arduino with Linux. Excellent work!

If you have an Arduino project where the dev board is stuck inside a machine, or attached to the rafters or is inaccessible in some other way, a wireless programming/debugging link will save you tons of time. This tutorial is an extension on Rob’s version. In this version, no extra firmware or hardware (other than a capacitor) is necessary. Just use the default bootloader. I demonstrate it with a ‘classic’ Arduino but of course this can be easily adapted to any version or clone.

You will need 2 XBee adapter kits, 2 matching-protocol XBee modules, an FTDI cable (or other FTDI breakout board, if you can wire it up correctly) and a 0.1uF capacitor (although sometimes a 1.0uF capacitor worked better)

The big trick is turning on “Digital I/O passing” where the reset pin is wirelessly mirrored from one XBee to the other. I spent a few hours reading the datasheet to figure it out!

Check out this diagram, can you tell I spent 5 minutes on it?

Read the whole thing over here

I just wrapped up a little step-by-step on turning an FTDI cable into a Parallax Propeller programmer. The instructions can be applied to any FTDI breakout board, might be handy if you have a Propeller but no propplug kicking around.