Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category
Arduino Pong Alarm Clock
The Matrixclock project This little project was born to build a present for my son’s birthday, I had a couple of components laying around and I decided to make something new. Goals build an easy-to-use alarm clock with a personal touch use only components I already had in stock use as few components as possible [...]
Category: Arduino , AVR MCU , Programmazione , Tech
View your web pages CSS in 3D!
I’ve just discovered that the latest versions of web developer FF extension supports 3D view of the web pages: super cool! Look at how nice is the OpenLayers vector layer stacked on to the background map layers.
Category: GIS , Programmazione , Tech , Web Development , WebGis
Controlling Arduino from OpenERP
Recently, I started learning OpenERP: what better occasion to develop a module to control an Arduino UNO Board? I’ve already blogged about PyFirmata (see: http://www.itopen.it/?s=pyfirmata), which is a python library to control an Arduino board flashed with Firmata firmware, this nice library integrates perfectly with OpenERP and let you read/write analog and digital values from [...]
Category: Arduino , OpenERP , Programmazione , Python , Tech
Goodbye KMail!
After more than ten years, today I finally said goodbye to KMail (and eventually to the whole KDE-PIM package). I started working on the italian translations of the KDE-PIM programs many years ago, that was my first contribute to the open source software (before I became a professional developer) and of course KDE and the [...]
V-USB on Attiny85
I’ve been recently fascinated by the V-USB project and its interesting applications to the ATtiny85 MCU. There are a couple of articles about its implementation on this tiny MCU but I’ve encountered many problems with the code and this is why I’m writing this notes. Most notable materials/projects I’ve found on the net are: V-USB [...]
Category: Arduino , AVR MCU , Programmazione , Tech
My first Arduino shield: Attiny programmer support
I was simply tired of all that wires on my breadboard and I had a small chunk of a stripboard left from another project. This small shield (a bit forced since Arduino has a wierd holes matrix and it’s not compatible with a standard stripboard or protoboard) speeds up the development integrating the hearthbeat led [...]
Shrinked Arduino: flashing an Attiny 85
I’ve just started to explore the Attiny 85 small Arduino’s brother. To program the chip I’ve successfully followed the guide Programming an ATtiny w/ Arduino 1.0 , just a few quick notes: you can use Arduino IDE 1.0, after uploading Attiny Arduino libs into your sketchbook/hardware folder in the Arduino IDE: load Arduino as ISP sketch from examples [...]
Category: Arduino , Programmazione , Tech
Arduino pong with 8×8 led matrix and MAX7219
Last night I had an hard time wiring a coupful of connectors to drive an 8×8 led matrix, my breadbord is now really a jungle of wires! Given that I had no datasheet for the led matrix, I tried several combinations of wiring schemes until I found the right one on http://arduino.cc/playground/Main/DirectDriveLEDMatrix. Wiring that beast is [...]
Category: Arduino , Programmazione , Tech
Driving a 7-segments display with arduino CD4511 and pyfirmata
My experiments with the Arduino platform continue with a small 7-segments common cathode LED display and a cheap IC (Integrated Circuit) CD4511. This IC is basically a BCD (Binary Coded Decimal) to 7-segments driver, you feed it with a 4-bit array and it lights up corresponding segments on the display, additional pins on the IC allow [...]
Arduino pyfirmata LDR semaphore
A few days ago I was experimenting with the firmata library on Arduino uno, the simple experiment I describe here is about a LED semaphore triggered by a Ligh Dependent Resistor (LDR). Firmata is a software library which implements the firmata protocol, better described in the website http://firmata.org/wiki/Main_Page : Firmata is a generic protocol for communicating [...]
