I started this project a while ago. My intention was to adapt a toy remote controlled vehicle into a generic robotic platform, which would enable me to do some experiments with robotics. To make the platform more generic, I came…
I was looking for some parts a couple of weeks ago and came across an old TV flyback transfomer, so I thought I would build a project with it.
After I wrote this guide on how to build an ultrasonic range sensor from scratch, I have received many comments and questions. A couple of readers have emailed me stating that this sensor works great by itself, but somehow when…
I am in the process of converting a remote controlled toy vehicle to an autonomous robotic platform. My initial thought was to just get rid of the existing circuit and add on my own. But after analyzing the control circuit…
I needed some ultrasonic range finders for my project. But most of the commercial sensors like Parallax’s PING sensor and other similar products are quite expensive, especially if multiple units are needed. So I thought why not building it myself?
It is fairly simple to build a digital metronome using an ATmega328 AVR chip and some minimal programming using the Arduino libraries. The main challenge though is to display the tempo information conveniently.
In my previous post, I showed a simple optical encoder circuit that is TTL compatible. The main drawback of the circuit is that it does not provide enough resolution since the encoder is only triggered when the mounted mirror is…
To detect wheel rotations in model vehicles, we would need to install some kind of sensors on the wheels to be monitored.
Modified sine wave is essentially just a pulse width modified square wave. It is a very useful waveform for power inverters. Compared with the simplest inverters with square waveform, inverters using modified sine wave can compensate the output voltage by…
I recently bought a TrendNet TK-207K KVM switch. After hooking up my mouse and keyboard, I was suprised to find out that the setting did not work. The mouse and keyboard would act strangely and sometimes one would stop working…
Continue with my previous article, let me first explain the code a little bit.
A signal generator can come in handy when working with digital and analog circuits. While most commercial grade signal generators offer more than just outputting a sinusoidal waveform, they are quite pricey for casual use. In this article, I will…
I just bought a Brother MFC-7340 multifunction laser printer to replace my old Lexmark Optra E310 which I have had for about ten years. Lexmark Optra E310 has excellent Linux support and I have been using CUPS to make it…
I built a rather generic I2C data logger a few weeks back. As I mentioned in my earlier posts, it can be used to log data from almost any I2C slave devices with relatively little code modification.
When working with micro-controller projects, it is often necessary to perform calculations in binary and hexadecimal forms. While almost all calculator tools (such as calc under Windows and gcalctool in Linux) can handle such tasks, they are designed for general…