This Lazy Old Geek is also an Arduino Geek. If you are an Arduino Geek, one of the common microcontrollers used by Arduinos is the Atmega328 chip. In order to use Arduino software, the Atmega must have bootloader software on it. Okay, so I bought some blank Atmega328-PU chips from Mouser.com. TIP: If you want […]
There is a lot of interest these days among hobbyists in controlling brushless DC (BLDC) motors, which have improved performance and better energy efficiency over traditional DC motors, but are more difficult to use. Many off-the-shelf products exist for this purpose. For example, there are lots of small BLDCs controllers for RC airplanes that work […]
This video is from a meeting of the Kids and Technology Meetup group in Washington DC. The youth who show up to these free meetings are eager to learn advanced uses of computers. The presenters were John Dukovich and Hugo Estrada.
Using the Mouse library, you can controls a computer’s onscreen cursor with an Arduino Leonardo, Micro, or Due. This particular example uses a five pushbuttons to move the onscreen cursor. Four of the buttons are directional (up, down, left, right) and one is for a left mouse click Cursor movement from the Arduino is always […]
The String functions charAt() and setCharAt() are used to get or set the value of a character at a given position in a String. At their simplest, these functions help you search and replace a given character. For example, the following replaces the colon in a given String with an equals sign: String reportString = […]
The blimp is controlled by a transmitter on the ground, operated by a human. There are three control levers– one for each motor, and one for the servo that rotates the axis they’re attached to. You push / pull to make the motors speed up or slow down; they’re controlled individually, it’s like driving a […]
An if statement allows you to choose between two discrete options, TRUE or FALSE. When there are more than two options, you can use multiple if statements, or you can use the switch statement. Switch allows you to choose between several discrete options. This tutorial shows you how to use switch to turn on one […]
The if() statement is the most basic of all programming control structures. It allows you to make something happen or not depending on whether a given condition is true or not. It looks like this: if (someCondition) { // do stuff if the condition is true } [Get Code] There is a common variation called if-else that looks like […]
Sometimes, one serial port just isn’t enough! When trying to communicate with multiple serial enabled devices, while also sending info back to the main serial window, a few extra RX/TX ports can be a welcomed thing. This example makes use of one of Arduino Mega’s 3 auxiliary serial ports, routing any incoming data read on […]
This is my second instructable. I just had a mood of making a digital watch. But wanted to make it a learning process. I already had a sanguino i could have easily used that Atmega644 chip. it would have been more than enough. But i wanted to try burning a Arduino bootloader and see if […]
