Weather Update – Feb 12 Meeting

Thursday, 11. February 2010 11:16 | Author:

With the area experiencing a bit of snowfall / nasty weather we’re probably touch & go for the meeting tomorrow. We’ll keep an eye on things and debate how the conditions look on whether to have the meeting and will update accordingly.

For topics – I don’t believe we have a tutorial set for tomorrow so we’ll do the Show & Tell / Work on your project details. We’ve got a new (old) logic analyzer and some other assorted toys.

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USB IR Controller

Monday, 1. February 2010 10:33 | Author:

Ian Lesnet, Bus Pirate creator, has a new project for working with IR signals – the USB IR Control. We’ve talked about how to handle IR a bit in our meetings, but this looks to let you get a bit more in depth if you like. The cool piece is being able to view the IR information as signals in the SUMP logic analyzer. Looks like Seeed is building some for about $20 each (likely delivered in March.)

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Introducing Pinguino

Monday, 14. December 2009 18:55 | Author:

logo_pinguinoPinguino is an Arduino-like board based on a PIC Microcontroller. The goal of this project is to build an integrated IDE easy to use on LINUX, WINDOWS and MAC OS X. Arduino is a powerful tool with some defaults. One of its inconveniences are a no native USB interface on the chip and its code length.

The IDE of Pinguino is built with Python. An integrated preprocessor translates specific Arduino instructions directly into C. This preprocessor reduces the code length and the execution speed. Pinguino hardware is based on a 18F2550. This chip has an integrated native USB module and an UART for serial link.

http://www.hackinglab.org/

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Christmas lights & Guitar Hero…

Saturday, 12. December 2009 22:41 | Author:

Apropos based on our Christmas lights discussion at the last meeting… enjoy -

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/12/christmas_light_hero.html

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SparkFun Free Day

Monday, 23. November 2009 13:28 | Author:

SparkFun continues to impress me – beyond getting really cool parts for a good price and quickly, now they’re giving away $100 of free merchandise to every order on Jan 7, 2010. The details are at http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/news.php?id=305 but basically this is a $100 discount where you pay shipping. There’s some other limitations but try not to miss out on this.

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Next Meeting

Friday, 20. November 2009 14:24 | Author:

Just a quick site modification – the Next Meeting will now be posted in a section to the upper right portion of the page giving the date / time. We will try to post an update accordingly for all you RSS readers out there, but in case it gets missed it should always be to the right.

And just in case – the next meeting will be Dec 11, 2009 at 6:00pm at Company|Dallas.

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TI eTech Days

Monday, 16. November 2009 13:25 | Author:

Short Notice, but if you haven’t seen it TI is providing a free e-conference tomorrow, November 17, with various tracks available depending on your interests. Go to http://e2e.ti.com/etechdays/ for more info or to register.

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Fun Interacting with the Serial Port

Saturday, 17. October 2009 22:44 | Author:

Thanks to everyone that came out last night – we’re all looking forward to these types of meetings in the future.  Posting this for anyone that saw the simple HTTP / Serial port demo.

First, the Arduino code (adapted from an example that I can’t remember where at the moment.)  I setup 4 LEDs (blue, red, green, yellow) off pins 3-6 and set the pin mode to OUTPUT.  I also setup the serial port for a 57600 baud connection.

 void setup() {
   // initialize serial communication:
   Serial.begin(57600); 
    // initialize the LED pins:
       for (int thisPin = 3; thisPin < 7; thisPin++) {
         pinMode(thisPin, OUTPUT);
       } 
 }

 void loop() {
   // read the sensor:
   if (Serial.available() > 0) {
     int inByte = Serial.read();
     // do something different depending on the character received.  
     switch (inByte) {
       case 'y':    
         digitalWrite(3, HIGH);
         break;
       case 'g':    
         digitalWrite(4, HIGH);
         break;
       case 'r':    
         digitalWrite(5, HIGH);
         break;
       case 'b':    
         digitalWrite(6, HIGH);
         break;
       case 'o':
         // turn all the LEDs off:
         for (int thisPin = 3; thisPin < 7; thisPin++) {
           digitalWrite(thisPin, LOW);
         }
         break; 
       default:
         break;
     }
   }
   
 }

The main part of this code is the switch statement that reads a single byte off the serial connection. If the character is a 'b', 'r', 'g', or 'y', the corresponding LED turns on. An 'o' turns off all the LEDs and any other character is ignored. Setting up this code and running it with the serial monitor will work exactly as expected. You can also type multiple entries at once and turn on multiple LEDs at once.

The 2nd part of the code is a Python script using PySerial and BaseHTTPServer.

import BaseHTTPServer
import cgi, random, sys, socket, serial


class Handler(BaseHTTPServer.BaseHTTPRequestHandler):

    def do_GET(self):
		self.send_response(200)
		self.send_header("Content-type", "text/html")
		self.end_headers()
		ser.write(self.path)
		try:
			# redirect stdout to client
			stdout = sys.stdout
			sys.stdout = self.wfile
			self.makepage()
		finally:
			sys.stdout = stdout # restore
		
    def makepage(self):
		print "<html>"
		print "<body>"
		print "<a href='/r'>Turn on Red</a><br>"
		print "<a href='/b'>Turn on Blue</a><br>"
		print "<a href='/g'>Turn on Green</a><br>"
		print "<a href='/y'>Turn on Yellow</a><br>"
		print "<a href='/o'>Turn off</a><br>"
		print "</body>"
		print "</html>"
		
PORT = 8000
ser = serial.Serial('/dev/cu.usbserial-A4001sM1', 57600)

httpd = BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer(("", PORT), Handler)
print "serving at port", PORT
httpd.serve_forever()

ser.close()

The do_GET method handles most of the work - when a GET request is received by the server, it takes the path element (basically http://<address>/<path>) and feeds it to the serial port where the arduino is connected. For example, it will take http://localhost/rgb and send "/rgb" to the serial port, in effect turning on the red, green, and blue LEDs. The makepage method actually generates the HTML to make it easy for the requests. The remainder of the code simply sets up the serial port and the web server handling.

I used python due to simplicity, but this can be done using any application capable of interacting with a given serial port. Let me know if you have questions!

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Location

Monday, 12. October 2009 5:55 | Author:

The workshop is held at the facilities of CompanyDallas. The doors to Suite 2000 will be open. That door is just to your right as you exit the elevator on the second floor. The building is located at 1701 North Collins Boulevard Suite 2000 in Richardson, Texas. There are 3 entrances to the building. Go to the largest one, which has a small circle in front of it.

CompanyDallas_front

The front door of the building locks at 6 PM. There are three ways to get in. First, someone can let you in. If you come around the starting time, we will be watching the door and letting people in. Second, there will be a sign on the door with a phone number you can call. Third, in decent weather, there will be a buzzer to the right of the door. The buzzer is attached to a post with magnets.
You can get a map of the location at Google Maps by visiting this link. CompanyDallas is owned by Language Computer Corporation and the map will refer to that company.

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Deal @ Seeed Studio

Sunday, 27. September 2009 19:35 | Author:

Seeed Studio makes some pretty interesting parts and have good prices on a lot of tools.  They’re on holiday from Oct 1 – Oct 6.  Use code “10160″ to get 12% off any orders during that time.

Seeed Studio

EDIT: It looks like they’ve simply made everything on the site 12% off.  Enjoy!

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