[Dirk] posted a video (you can see below) titled, “Mystery Retro Project Start.” That turned out to be the first of a multipart series on his Altair 8800 Again simulator. The front panel appears to be laser cut and in some future video episodes, we expect to see him simulate the CPU with a Teensy. There […]
ALTAIR 8800 AGAIN PROJECT Continue Reading
I have in my hand a distance laser sensor with high precision and speed. It is used in industrial environments for object positioning or detection applications. According to technical documents, I found it can communicate with other devices via RS485. I spent the weekend to learn it and find ways to communicate with cheap CPU
RS485 – ARDUINO AND INDUSTRIAL DISTANCE SENSOR Continue Reading
The developmnet team over at Seeed Studio has this week announced its Wio Terminal now supports the CircuitPython programming language created by Adafruit. CircuitPython is an open source derivative of the MicroPython programming language targeted towards the student and beginner an is a software implementation of the Python 3 programming language, written in C. The
SeeedStudio Wio Terminal now supports CircuitPython Continue Reading
Decades of post-apocalyptic Hollywood movies have taught us that once all the trappings of our civilisation have been stripped away, it’s going to be kinda cool. We’re all going to wear slightly dusty looking 1980s motorcycling gear, and we’re going to drive really cool cars. Except of course Mad Max is fantasy, and the reality is likely to be
COLLAPSE OS, AN OS FOR WHEN THE UNTHINKABLE HAPPENS Continue Reading
When one thinks of the Arduino Uno, one thinks of a capable 8-bit microcontroller platform that nonetheless doesn’t set the world alight with its performance. Unlike more modern parts like the ESP32, it has just a single core and no real multitasking abilities. But what if one wanted to run many threads on an Uno
RUNNING 57 THREADS AT ONCE ON THE ARDUINO UNO 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
In my first Instructable Motion Activated Automatic LED Stair Lights with Arduino I mentioned the use of “Cooperative Multitasking”. So what is it and why is it helpful? This Instructable attempts to answer the “what is it” and “why is it helpful” question with a simple example that step by step builds up into a more complex
Cooperative Multitasking on Arduino – With Pretty Blinky Lights! Continue Reading
This weekend marked the 49th anniversary of the legendary Intel 4004 microprocessor, and to celebrate [Erturk Kocalar] combined the old and new in this intriguing Retroshield 4004 / Busicom 141-PF calculator project. We have reported on his Arduino shield project before, which lets you connect a variety of old microprocessors to an Arduino so you can experiment with these
CELEBRATING THE 4004’S 0X31ST ANNIVERSARY Continue Reading
Do you need a microcontroller that runs at 1 GHz? No, probably not. But that didn’t stop [Visual Micro] from trying, and the results are pretty interesting. Not only did the plucky little chip not cook itself, it actually seemed to run fairly well; with the already powerful microcontroller getting a considerable boost in performance. According
TEENSY 4 PUSHED TO THE LIMIT WITH 1 GHZ OVERCLOCK Continue Reading
One of the most common clichés around here is that a piece of equipment chosen for a project is always too advanced. If a Raspberry Pi was used, someone will say they should have used an Arduino. If they use an Arduino, it should have been an ATtiny. And of course, if an ATtiny was
555 TIMER ON ITS OWN IN ELECTRONIC DICE Continue Reading
