Synthesized speech was for a long time the Holy Grail of computing, and back in the 1980s when a 4MHz CPU made your computer the fastest machine in the neighborhood it just wasn’t practical for software to create intelligible speech. In those days the only sensible way to generate speech was to offload the task […]
Arduino is not restricted to receiving data from sensors only; you have the ability to also link a full-size PS/2 keyboard and type as you would on a traditional computer. Attaching a keyboard to an Arduino may seem strange (since it’s a small microcontroller), however, it should be noted that an Arduino has greater processing […]
O’K, after having some fun with stereo version of the VU meter I described in my previous blog-post, now it’s time to do a serious stuff. Studio grade VU meter !!! 24 steps, equally spaced every 3 dB, covering Extra wide Dynamic Range from -63 up to +6 dB. Single (mono) channel this time, no messing around, […]
One of the projects in Practical Arduino is the “Online Thermometer”, which combines an Ethernet shield with a number of DS18B20 1-wire temperature sensors to allow you to read multiple temperatures and make the values accessible using a web browser. In that project I chose a specific model of Ethernet shield that was available at […]
In theory, it is quite simple to perform sound localization by measuring the phase difference of signals received by two microphones that are far apart in space. The devil is always in the details. I have not come across any project made for Arduino like this before, and I am wondering if it is even […]
One of the frustrating things about developing and debugging electronic circuits is that you can’t look inside the circuit to see what is happening. Even with a circuit laid out before you on a workbench and powered up it may seem like you’re in the dark, unable to figure out why an input change or […]
The laser harp is a musical instrument made of light. A fan of beams shoots up from the floor into the night sky. The performer can create music by placing their hands in the beams. Not only does “breaking” the beam produce notes, but sliding the hand along the beam will also change the sound. […]
DAC is short for Digital to Analog Converter. In this article we play around the code Michael Smith created for a PWM based DAC. I modified his code so that other DAC options could be tried. I compare the 8-Bit PWM DAC with the R2R DAC at various numbers of bits. You might be surprised […]
4D Systems makes some really nice serial OLEDS. They aren’t hard to use, but the documentation for them is very scattered. This tutorial pulls together the various pieces i’ve found so that you can get up and running very quickly. Start by skimming through the user manual for your particular 4D OLED. µOLED-128-GMD µOLED-96-G1 µOLED-160-GMD1 […]
Recently I was reviewing one of my oldest project, and decided to “refresh” previous design by taking full advantage of the new arduino Leonardo board. Based on AtMega32U4, which include PGA (programmable gain amplifier), oscilloscope’s analog front end doesn’t require external OPA this time, end could be build in 1-2 hours on prototype board, using […]
