To measure how flat a surface is, you typically will need a level of some sort. In this article, I will show you a digital level I made with an accelerometer. It is extremely accurate, capable of measuring inclination as small as 1/1000 degree.
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One of my recent projects was to build a POV display device. There are already many microcontroller based POV devices out there, but most of those I have seen use around eight LEDs and have fixed font types. So I thought of developing something that is larger (e.g. using more LEDs) and more flexible (e.g. can display both text and images).
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Whenever I setup a new web server, I always like the idea of keeping the Apache logs roated on a daily basis. While the procedures for changing the log rotate frequency is pretty straight forward, I have seen a lot of people having problems with it so I decided to document it.
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Well, there is an old saying:“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” After yesterday’s server upgrade, everything worked pretty well till sometime late this afternoon.
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I have finally got around to upgrade my web server. The server I have been using was an old Pentium III about 10 years old. It had been serving my website quite well over the years till recently.
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Standard Arduino boards use FTDI’s FT232RL to interface with computer’s USB port. Since FT232R is just a USB to UART converter, it is possible to build an Arduino compatible USB interface using other USB to UART chips.
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When I was doing the clock/stop watch project last month, I mentioned that I intended to add I2C (TWI) communication functionality so that I could get time from this clock and use it as timer signal to control other electronics.
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This is what I ran into for the first time: I was flashing the chip the other day and after many successful runs I encountered the following infamous avrdude error:
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DS89C430 and DS89C450 are two ultra-high-speed 8051-compatible microcontrollers from Maxim Integrated Products. One unique feature of DS89C430/450 microcontroller is that it has a ROM loader mode which can be used to program the microcontroller itself.
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Over the past couple of weeks, I have been experimenting with BQ3287, a real time clock module from Taxes Instruments. My ultimate goal was to eventually create a full fledged control platform based on this RTC module (more on this later). But first and foremost, I would like to explore its capabilities as an accurate time keeper.
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The Google PAC-MAN logo is actually a live game!
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The Arduino development environment is probably the preferred development platform for the majority of Arduino users. It is lean and relatively easy to use. Quite a few examples are at your finger tip and even for people without much programming experience, it is relatively easy to get started. You can write and upload your sketches (programs) without the need to ever leave the IDE.
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