April Fools’ Day is celebrated in many countries on April 1 every year. It is widely recognized and celebrated as a day when people play practical jokes and hoaxes on each other. Lying is awesome way to get people fooled. Here is one idea how to avoid being fooled: use a lying detector. If you’re →
Taking DRM further than it’s gone before. DRM (Digital Rights Management) is something that we often just have to put-up-with in software and digital media files. Obviously DRM is a great tool for companies point of view to make sure we only use software and data as they intended, but outside planned obsolescence, there isn’t →
FemtoDuino is probably the smallest 328 based Arduino compatible board around. Those things are tiny: foot print is 20.7×15.2mm. They’re an Atmega328 that is arduino compatible. Hands on with the super tiny arudino: FemtoDuino article and this video give you an introduction to those interesting looking small boards. The downside of them is that they →
Solving a Rubick’s Cube with LEGO and popsicle sticks The user enters the cubes state into a python GUI, which the solves the cube using the beginners layer by layer method. It then sends the solution to the Arduino via (usb) serial, which then solves it. →
Logic Sniffer Java client is an alternative OLS-client provides a software client for the Open Bench Logic Sniffer logic analyser hardware (that is based on ideas from open source SUMP analyzer). Software works also with SUMP compatible devices and Bus Pirate hardware. When tested with the demonstration data the software seemed to work quite well →
Yesterday the temperatures were at -28 degrees Celsius in southern Finland. That’s really cold. This is so cold that is starts to cause problems in all sorts of devices. I had problems in starting my car. The battery felt weak. I planned to measure the voltage in it with a multimeter I have in my →
phatIO a different way of interfacing a computer with the world that you might be used to. I first saw phatIO uses file system to control external hardware article at Hackaday.com that mentioned phatIO. phatIO is an USB I/O device that uses a mass storage file system for control. Using mass storage for I/O controlling →
Netduino is an interesting dev board built around the .NET Micro framework with the goal of being compatible with Arduino shields. Netduino is an open source hardware platform that can run .NET Micro Framework 4.2 code. The Netduino is a dev board built around the .NET Micro framework with the goal of being compatible with →
H-bridge circuit is a very useful in electrical motor controlling. You can drive a DC motor easily at both directions with H-bridge, and if you add some PWM to driver circuit you can even control the motor speed on both directions. There are very many simple H-bridge circuit designs in Internet. Nowadays there are many →
Understand How & Why a Dev Kit Should Be Your Design’s Starting Point article tells that many electronics designs start with a development kit. That’s a very good point to start. The processor vendors usually offer them at very reasonable prices, or free in many cases. I think that another good starting point are many →