Retired scientist [Mark Howe] spent the last couple months making an animatronic movie featuring his LEGO lunar lander in a video recreation of the Apollo 11 moon landing (also embedded below). [Mark] is not only the producer, but serves as the technical director, set designer, and cameraman as well. He designed and 3D-printed a custom special effects […]
LEGO LUNAR LANDER ANIMATRONIC MOVIE RELEASED Continue Reading
[Andrew] wonders why the SerialUSB() function on the Cortex M3-based Arduino Due is so much faster than Serial() on the Uno or Nano, and shares his observations in this short video. He sets up an experiment with a simple sketch on both boards and uses Wireshark to evaluate the results. Data is sent in the USB packets in groups of
ARDUINO SERIAL VS SERIALUSB Continue Reading
FPGA guru [Max Maxfield] recently took a look at the XLR8 (pronounced accelerate) board from a company called Alorium. On the surface, it looks like another Arduino UNO clone. But instead of a CPU, it contains an Intel MAX10 FPGA that runs a softcore AVR processor. Of course, that’s only part of the story. If the board was
ARDUINO AND FPGA DONE DIFFERENTLY Continue Reading
If you are looking forward to the official Arduino Day live stream you will be pleased to know that it will start on March 27th at 4pm CET on Arduino’s online channels. “Everything’s in place and ready for the global celebration of Arduino’s sweet sixteenth birthday, including some amazing interviews, demos and talks” explains the
Official Arduino Day live stream March 27th at 4pm CET Continue Reading
Tiny OLED displays are an absolute must-have in the modern parts bin, so what better way to show your allegiance to the maker movement than with a pair of Arduino-compatible OLED glasses? Created by Arduboy mastermind [Kevin Bates], these digital spectacles might not help you see any better — in fact, you’ll see a bit worse
THE FUTURE’S SO BRIGHT, YOU GOTTA WEAR ARDUGLASSES Continue Reading
Since the ESP8266 came on the scene a few years ago and revolutionized the way microcontrollers communicate with other devices, incremental progress on this chip has occurred at a relatively even pace. First there was the realization that code could be run on the chip itself. Next the ESP32 was released which built more on
USB COMES TO THE ESP32 Continue Reading
We use electricity to move things with the help of motors and magnets all the time. But if you have enough voltage, you can move things with voltage alone. As [James] found out, though, it works best if your objects — ping pong balls, in his case — are conductive. He wanted to add a Van
MOVING THINGS WITH ELECTRICITY Continue Reading
The IoT Cricket (£16) is a small package based on the ubiquitous ESP8266 chipset, popular for its solid wireless LAN support. ESP microcontrollers are widely available and some can be had for just a couple of pounds, so it may come as a surprise to see a British-designed and made product introduced to an already saturated market.
Review: IoT Cricket Continue Reading
While early scientists and inventors famously underestimated the value of radar, through the lens of history we can see how useful it became. Even though radar uses electromagnetic waves to detect objects, the same principle has been used with other propagating waves, most often sound waves. While a well-known use of this is sonar, ultrasonic sensors
ULTRASONIC SONAR DETECTS HIDDEN OBJECTS Continue Reading
Many of will have marveled at the feats of reverse engineering achieved by decapping integrated circuits and decoding their secrets by examining the raw silicon die. Few of us will have a go for ourselves, but that doesn’t stop the process being a fascinating one. Fortunately [Ryan Cornateanu] is on hand with a step-by-step description of
REVERSE ENGINEERING SILICON, ONE TRANSISTOR AT A TIME Continue Reading
