Category Archives: Engineering

LabVIEW routines for the MAKE Controller

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MakeController

As evidenced by a growing collection of projects, the MAKE Controller has great potential as a hardware platform enabling computers to really do things.

We won a MAKE Controller for our set of Halloween projects this year, and we’re just starting to play around with it. Having spent some pondering how best to communicate with the board, it’s clear that one of the barriers to more widespread use of this and other embedded systems is the lack, or perceived lack at least, of user-friendly software for programming and communication.

A number of open-source software packages, such as processing and Ruby, can communicate with the MAKE Controller using its OSC interface. However, there has been a noticeable absence of a suitable interface to LabVIEW, a program that is commonly used for interfacing to other similar types of hardware.

So, we wrote one. It’s a simple LabVIEW “vi” routine for issuing (most) simple commands and queries to the MAKE controller. We’ve also included some example routines to help you get your blinky lights going a few minutes sooner.
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Fixing a bad frequency fuse bit on an AVR

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ATtiny2313

This is a quick note on AVR programming with the AVRISP MkII programmer, with which it is possible to foul up your clock fuse bits. =)

(This might be plain as day to some out there, but *I* didn’t know about it, so I thought I’d jot it down.)

Minor problem: I was programming some AVRs when I thought I might try to change the clock fuse bits to use one of the low-frequency internal oscillators. Apparently, it is possible to change the clock frequency low enough that the ISP interface can no longer program the flash– at which point it *seems* as though the chip is lost. These are inexpensive chips, (around $2 each), but the cost can add up quickly if you don’t fix the broken ones. Besides, they’re made of plastic, so you can’t even recycle them into a trivet.
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Make a Computer Chip Trivet

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Computer Chip Trivet: Deployed and Ready For Action!

You’ve just finished cooking something tasty on the stove and now you need a place to set it down on your dining table. You could reach for that old cast iron trivet, or a simple cork trivet, or the even the trendy silicone one.

But, if you really want to impress your geeky friends, this is the one to whip out.

Here is a genuinely useful kitchen tool that you can make: a trivet built out of old computer chips.
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How to make high-tech LED decorations for the holidays

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CompletedOrnament   WhiteMenorah.jpg

Here we present two open-source, do-it-yourself, microcontroller-powered holiday electronics projects: A micro-readerboard Christmas tree ornament and a mini-LED Hanukkah menorah. Read on to see exactly what they do (Check out the video!), how they work, and how you can make your own.
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LED Holiday Project Kits

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Animated GIF of ornament

We have written instructions for building two sweet microcontroller-based electronics projects for the holidays: an alphanumeric LED christmas tree ornament and an LED mini-menorah (hanukkiah).

These are open-source projects; You can download and modify the source code, use it to program your own microcontroller, and solder the microcontroller to some LEDs to help make your own holiday decorations.

If programming microcontrollers is not your idea of a good time, we understand. Not everyone has (1) access to a microcontroller programmer, (2) the time and (3) the desire to modify the firmware of their christmas tree ornaments.

Low-cost open-source holiday project kits brought to you by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

In order to help our fellow citizens Evil Mad Scientists with their holiday projects, we have put together electronic soldering kits for these projects. (Updated: November 2007)

CompletedWhite

 

LED mini-menorah kits are now available at our new web store.

 

Lit up segments spell out the letter M

 

 

Kits for version 2.0 of the open-source LED Micro-Readerboard project are now available at the Make Store.

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Programming the Atmel ATtiny2313 in Mac OS X

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avrdevboard

For a recent project, I needed to control sixteen or seventeen LEDs with a microprocessor. The one that I chose was the Atmel ATtiny2313, because it has 20 pins, with up to eighteen outputs, can run without an external oscillator, and is fairly inexpensive at around $2.00 per piece.

Since I’ve got a Mac laptop and no real serial or parallel port, I opted to go with a USB-based programming solution. Furthermore, I wanted to program in C, not assembler, and use open source development tools. Since I was (eventually) successful in all of these goals, I thought that I should write up a few notes about it.
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