Monthly Archives: November 2011

Stand Alone Bootloader

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So I’m trying out the “stand alone” boot-loader-loader by by Bill Westfield (“WestfW”).  This is an amazing sketch that can load any program to another ATMEGA328 kind of like ArduinoISP except it is much, much faster and is not required to be connected to a computer.  AdaFruit industries sells a kit (with a nice tutorial) that comes with everything you need to turn your Arduino into an “optiLoader” (excepting a few wires and a reset button).

When I tried to use it for the first time the red led came on and the buzzer started screaming.  It didn’t sound good.  It turns out the “device signature” was wrong.  Changing line 5 of images.cpp to the code read off the chip (14 in this case, F in another, 300 in another) the program loaded in less than a second.  This takes over a minute the avr-dude way.

The next obvious step here is to be able to load any program from an SD card.

 


 

 

Grant Application: Arduino School Board

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Stefan Adrian is leading a team of Open Hardware developers on a Shield called the Arduino School Board for the purpose of teaching would be makers the joy of Arduino.  The unit has a lot of hacking potential.  The board hosts:

  • 1 switches
  • rotary encoder
  • 7 segments
  • 2*16 LCD display
  • nokia 1110 graphic display
  • RTC
  • micro SD card
  • 1 Wire thermometer
  • relay output
  • LED PWM adjustment
  • stepper motor command

Good luck Stefan!

 

BusNET, a wired network for Arduino.

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Rob Gray from RobGray.com has been developing a substaintial RS485 networking hardware for Arduino.

http://busnet.robgray.com/hardware/arduino-dongle/index.php

From the site:

“

BUSnet is a low‐speed control network designed to monitor and control devices incommercial or light‐industrial environment but equally suitable for otherapplications. It is a multi‐master point‐to‐point protocol using a ring topologywhere all nodes can transmit frames when they please.

“

Open Source Reflow (Toaster) Oven.

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Frank from the Circle of Current site has been working on a circuit to control a solder re-flow oven.  From the application:

”

Inside this guide is a design for a circuit that controls the temperature of the toaster oven. The firmware source code, bootloader source code, circuit schematic, PCB layout, are all open source. Everything is posted here http://www.instructables.com/id/Hack-a-Toaster-Oven-for-Reflow-Soldering/ along with pictures, videos, and all the files I’ve mentioned.

“

I think I rememeber seeing his Music Playing Alarm Clock from the Make Blog.

Wolum Innvovation Grant Application Keeps Coming

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Wolum Innovation Grant application keeps coming.

This one is from Bogdan Alexandru, a 4th year student at Technical University of Cluj Napoca, Romania.

This project is meant to create a product that will enable every developer (beginner or skilled ) to have quick access to a User Interface  platform that will enable Total interaction with his/her application (being developed).
For this purpose  Bogdan’s team is trying to pinpoint a cost effective solution (targeted between 45-75USD ERP ) that is capable of communicating via UART protocol to the host application (embedded or PC based). The main features are:

– LCD with incorporated graphics processor (QVGA to VGA resolution)
– Rotary encoder with push button  (effective INTER screen scroll and menu navigation)
– Touch Screen as an complement  to the rotary encoder (focused at ON screen menu navigation)
– SD Card to log data
– Easy and simple commands set between host and TUI (via UART in order to enable all UART hosts – Atmel/PIC/8051/ARM/ x86 etc.)
– USB Interface for easy connection to a PC and ability to be used as a peripheral device
– Easily upgradable graphics features (fonts, graphic buttons, bars, turn knobs, switches etc)

    The components is planned to  be assembled in such a way that the end product should be available at a very affordable price, and ready to be built by a mid skills level electronics enthusiast.

    – LCD with incorporated graphics processor (QVGA to VGA resolution)

    – Rotary encoder with pushbutton (effective INTER screen scroll and menu navigation)

    – Touch Screen as an complement to the rotary encoder (focused at ON screen menu navigation)

    – SD Card to log data

    – easy and simple commands set between host and TUI (via UART in order to enable all UART hosts – Atmel/PIC/8051/ARM/ x86 etc.)

    – USB Interface for easy connection to a PC and ability to be used as a peripherial device

    – Easily upgradable graphics features (fonts, graphic buttons, bars, turn knobs, switches etc)