In 2015 I tried to find some time to explore some things – here is a photo summary. I got to meet some friends, try out some things, and do some research from time to time.
The items here can be found in the various blog posts over the past year.
There was work on a Battery Simulator aka Project Morpheus, and I did some initial testing for it, programmatically setting voltages for a small load and examining the current monitor output. I need to get back to it, and finish it!
There was some experimentation with Infineon's DC Motor Control Board for Arduino - a really fantastic product.
There are many types of motors incidentally, and some were examined here - Motors blog.
A couple of the DC Motor Control Boards were used to build a Wheeled Platform for Robotics using XMOS and Raspberry Pi. It was also simulated using computer software.
A selection of Raspberry Pi GPIO based circuits and code (Python, C and shell scripts) were examined as well as how to improve real time performance by influencing process scheduling.
Next were some educational experiments with the Active Learning Module - a surprisingly good product.
I used it to also measure dynamic current consumption of the CodeBug (and also make a CodeBug into a clock).
On the educational theme, the Micro:Bit looks super interesting - looking forward to seeing the reviews of it next year.
A surprisingly odd product (just a personal opinion) was the OpenPi, check out the review here.
On the news front, there were some interesting uses of IoT for early cancer detection. There was an exhibition at the V&A about ways to be secret which involve TOR .
Exciting new silicon was announced - the XCORE-200!
In terms of build techniques, I learnt how to label front panels. For the lab, a Digital High Definition PCB Inspection Microscope was created, as well as PCB circuit board holders.
I visited a few places, including some shows such as Protection and Management 2015 and Maker Faire Bay Area and Cisco Live.
Back to Infineon, I really had a lot of fun with their RGB LED Shield (Getting-started guide from December 2014) - used it for several projects this year in standalone mode without an Arduino. I used it to build a white LED Lamp (dimmed by a variable resistor), and a 68-Billion-Color Lamp controlled by a rotary encoderBuilding a Full Color Lamp with the RGB LED Shield from Infineon.
In terms of software coding, there was some experimentation with process sceduling with the Raspberry Pi as mentioned earlier. I also looked at TouchDevelop, a very interesting language from Microsoft.
There was also some experimentation in using HTML to construct user interfaces for embedded applications including those without a display.
On the sensors front, the highly useful LDC1000 from Texas Instruments was investigated - it was so sensitive it could identify when the second-hand of a clock went past.
I'd not used PIC microcontrollers in a very long time, so was pleasantly surprised that it was very easy to construct a USB interface for projects. It was possible to send push-button press events to a PC, and in the reverse direction it was possible to remotely control an LED from a PC.
Staying on the USB theme, it was interesting to build a USB UART adapter .
In BeagleBoard world there was a brief examination of the and some X15 board documentation diagrams.
Also I had fun researching how to use the BeagleBone Black for creating computer sounds using FM synthesis and the history of it.
Staying on the history theme, it was interesting to briefly explore the History of AVO, a business started by the creator of the world’s first multi-meter.
Top Comments