"I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success"
TED Fellows are an extraordinary group of innovators and iconoclasts. Today’s Fellows in the Field features Ayah Bdeir, founder of hardware startup littleBits. Hailed as LEGO for the iPad generation, littleBits are a set of open source, preassembed electronic modules that snap together with magnets to make larger, more complex circuits, allowing anyone to play and create with electronics. The goal: to demystify technology and help people of all ages and abilities understand the building blocks of the 21st century.
I did it, I finally found some down time to update JOS to work with current libraries from Adafruit. Below is a link to the new code on Github. A few notes to look at are listed below.
First, this is code for the Touch Shield, but it can easily be changed to the breakout board, and don’t forget to uncomment the ‘#define USE_ADAFRUIT_SHIELD_PINOUT’ line in Adafruit_TFTLCD.h file.
Also, this sketch has pin 3 setup as the backlight on the shield. This way you have PWM control over the backlight. You can accomplish this by cutting the VCC trace and soldering the PIN3 jumper on the back of the shield. You can read more on how to do that here.
This sketch has EEPROM settings, if you have not used them before, the values will be zero and need to be set. There are notes about this in the sketch on lines 92 & 93.
With hardware start-ups on the increase, countless gadgets funded via Kickstarter and a resurgence of interest in electronics as a hobby, it looks as though hardware is set become the new Web.
From the first public radio broadcast in 1910 to the home computer revolution of the 1980s, electronics served as the most visible face of technology in the 20th century. When for almost 100 years everyday lives were being transformed by a stream of new appliances, intrepid early adopters could get a slice of the action if they could solder, and electronics empires were being born in garages.
With the arrival of the PC and then the Web we saw a shift in focus, and while software requires computers and the Internet is built upon networking and communications hardware, these took a backseat position and applications and online services garnered more attention. All the hottest start-ups were online and many budding engineers took to software development rather than soldering.
As we move further into the 21st century it appears that the balance may be redressed, with attention shifting back towards hardware — or perhaps products that span both physical and online worlds. What follows is a brief look at some of the enablers, drivers and indicators of this shift.
I have a project built using the Atmega 328 as the core of the unit.
I have put together a proof of concept board and a starter program to run the device.
This device has multiple I2C I/O devices connected that the 328 needs to communicate with.
I am a Mechanical engineer by trade and education so someone that could help me track and organize these electrons would be very helpful.
I am located up in the Duluth MN area and do not need you to be up here to work on the project but it is a plus.
Payment : I will leave this up to you to request your terms.
I look forward to hearing from you.
We’ve had an EPILOG 35W laser for almost exactly 5 years. It’s been a wonderful part of our company, we launched a laser etching business, open-source’d the business model (many companies sprung up) we worked with makers to help them get their business/hackerspaces going and we use the laser every day to make enclosures and products for customers. But after 5 years the laser eventually loses power so we replaced it with a 60W version over the weekend. We upgraded it ourselves, the are 3 pegs that needed to be removed to make room for the monster laser and 2 power supplies are needed. Then we needed to calibrate it. It’s about 3 times faster, we love it.
Special thanks to Brian and Joe at EPILOG for set up help (And Ryan our laser rep). Pictured above, the 35W laser that got us here – it will be sent back to EPILOG and recycled. Good bye old friend.
MOST technological advances are actually just improvements. One thing builds on the next: from shoddy to serviceable, from helpful to amazing. First you had a carriage, then a car, and then an airplane; now you have a jet. You improve on what is there. Technological advances are like that.
Except for the one that involved landing on the Moon. When a human went and stood on the Moon and looked back at the Earth, that was a different kind of breakthrough. Nothing tangible changed when Neil Armstrong’s foot dug into the lunar dust and his eyes turned back at us. We didn’t get faster wheels or smaller machines or more effective medicine. But we changed, fundamentally. What had been unknown, was known. What had been unseen was seen. And our human horizon popped out 200,000 miles. Forever, we would see the Earth differently, because we had seen it from someplace truly foreign.
This is why Mars is important. When we get a human to Mars — in the next few decades, NASA has predicted — our horizon will expand 1,000 times farther, and it will never go back.
The 10 year olds walking around at Maker Faires today will be the ones that place the first footsteps on Mars tomorrow, Mars is there, waiting for all of us. It’s not a mystery, it’s a destination.
The arrival of the External Accessory Framework was seen, initially at least, as having the potential to open the iOS platform up to a host of external accessories and additional sensors. Sadly, little of the innovation people were expecting actually occurred, and while there are finally starting to be some interesting products arriving on the market, for the most part the External Accessory Framework is being used to support a fairly predictable range of audio and video accessories from big-name manufacturers.
The reason for this lack of innovation is usually laid at the feet of Apple’s Made for iPod (MFi) licensing program. To develop hardware accessories that connect to the iPod, iPhone, or iPad, you must be an MFi licensee.
I work at the moment with Arduino boards in my projects, but I don’t know if for other ones an Arduino Uno might be unsufficient (complex robots, computer vision, etc.). How can we now in advance if our microchip or board of choice will be sufficient? Could we get some advice and directions of chosing the perfect board for our project, and to how do the jump between Arduino and, say, ARM chips?
This is a really great question and I am sure is one that most of us will end up asking. What determines the “perfect board” can be pretty illusive, and given that Digikey lists almost 34,000 microcontroller variations, choosing the right one is not an easy task. As Arduino is pretty much limited to the ATTiny45/85, ATmega8, ATmega168, ATmega328, ATmega32u4, ATmega1280, and ATmega2560 there might be occasions where none will fit the bill……although I personally have not hit this wall.
When I begin the design process for a new project, I create a list of all of the features I would like the project to have, then attach the necessary I/O and pin requirements to each feature and generate a pseudo-schematic. As I am most familiar with Arduino, I look at the available chips and see which one most closely fits the bill. I.E. If there are just a few more I/O requirements then say the 328 can facilitate, I will either consider adding a MUX to bridge the gap or move to another Arduino compatible chip with more I/O.
Now, if you happen to be working on a project that is going to the more of a resource hog, moving to something like an ARM might be in your best interest. This tends to be the case when you move more in the direction of human interfacing, image processing, embedded OS’s, etc.
I have found a few articles that should assist in further answering the question:
It used to be that the number of different microcontroller chips available to the hobbyist was pretty limited. You got to use whatever you could manage to buy from the mail-order chip dealer, and that narrowed down the choice to a small number of chips.
Choosing a PIC according to your needs is sometimes a headache. There are people of course that hate headaches and therefore they use just 2-3 types of PICs and that’s all. That is a solution of course, absolutely inefficient though.
[Lesson 1 is a] tutorial [that addresses] the fundamental features of microcontrollers, explanation of processing power and power efficiency variables and a comparison RISC and CISC devices.
When choosing a microcontroller there are many options, so which platform should you choose? There is little independent information available to help engineers decide which platform might best suit their needs and most designers tend to stick with the brand with which they are familiar.
Dr. Manuel Jiménez from the University of Puerto Rico details the difficult task of choosing the right MCU.
I hope this has helped answer your question and good luck with your decision! If anyone has more insight they would like to share, please feel free to leave a comment!
Don’t forget, everyone is invited to ask a question!
“Ask an Educator” questions are answered by Adam Kemp, a high school teacher who has been teaching courses in Energy Systems, Systems Engineering, Robotics and Prototyping since 2005.
On a new television game show known as Oh Sit!, contestants must overcome a variety of obstacles (as well as each other) in an extreme version of the old children’s game, musical chairs. Each chair has a specific cash prize associated with it, so it was vital for the producers to be able to track which contestants sat in which chairs. Which technology did they choose? Bing, bing, bing—radio frequency identification. Correct!
The show features an obstacle course encircling a set of chairs, with music playing in the background. Once the music stops, contestants must scramble for a seat, and the person left standing is then eliminated. In addition, a different cash value is associated with each chair, with the values hidden from players. The contestant sitting in the chair of least value is booted off the show as well.
Interesting read on the challenges of indoor tracking.
This tutorial will show you how to make a thermal cycler from scratch for about $85. In short, PCR(polymerase chain reaction) amplifies bits of DNA, creating millions of copies of a target sequence. You can use it to test a DNA sample for a specific gene, for instance, to check for genetic modification in food and for hereditary gene testing.
During PCR, a mixture of DNA, primer and DNA polymerase is cycled between three different temperature settings, over and over again. This project uses an arduino to control two high-power resistors to heat up the sample, a computer fan to cool down, and a thermocouple to keep track of the temperature. The design supports two samples at a time, though it could probably be extended to support more.
The parts are all off-the shelf, and the assembly should take a few hours. You will need access to a shop (at the very least a ban saw and drill press).
…Look at what the top stories are, and they’re all about raising money, how many employees they have, and these are metrics that don’t matter. What matters is: Are you profitable? Are you building something great? Are you taking care of your people? Are you treating your customers well? In the coverage of our industry as a whole, you’ll rarely see stories about treating customers well, about people building a sustainable business.
This tutorial is for our 1.8″ diagonal TFT display & microSD breakout board. This breakout is the best way to add a small, colorful and bright display to any project. Since the display uses 4-wire SPI to communicate and has its own pixel-addressable frame buffer, it can be used with every kind of microcontroller. Even a very small one with low memory and few pins available!
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