"I wonder what happens if ..."
Voting has now closed on the "Which Arduino Shield Shall We Make Next" poll.
The winner is the 8-channel 12-bit ADC.
So, let's take a quick look at what we're going to be making.
Requirements for this shield are:
At last, the first batch of boards for the new version of the hexadecimal dislpay breadcrumb have arrived. And I must say they look even better than I'd hoped.
The black solder mask really makes them look posh and sleek, and the rounded corners just finish them off nicely.
Now it's all hands to the pump to start building them. As soon as I get some on eBay I'll post a link to them. Expected retail price at the moment will be around 7 pounds-ish (a final decision hasn't yet been made, but they want to sell for about the same price as the old version)
If you've ever done any work with an Arduino you will have used the Arduino IDE.
If you think that the Arduino IDE is good, then you can't have ever used a real IDE.
The Arduino IDE is the worst programming environment I have ever come across, and I have used quite a few in my time.
Let me just list some of its good points:
Ok, that's the easy part over with.
Now let me cover some of its bad points. (how long have you got?)
Now that stocks of the first version of the protoshield are running low it's time to look at redesigning it based on your feedback on the old one.
We have made a number of big changes to this version - in brief:
Most of the holes have been increased in size slightly to 1.2mm so that two wires will easily fit into each one. This should make wiring up easier.
In our last programming basics tutorial we took a look at how to use the while loop properly. Now, let's take a look at how you can clean up the structure of your program by using a switch construct.
Imagine you have a situation where you have a variable with something in. You want to do something different depending on what is in that variable.
The LED8HEX can be reprogrammed by you! What you need to do this is:
The new version of our 8-bit hexadecimal display breadcrumb is well along the route to being ready to sell. This replaces the old version based around the old MC14495P1 chips (which are like hen's teeth now), and is all surface mount!
Also, it's using a PIC16 chip as the core... and we're NOT hiding the fact!
You know what that means?
Yes, it's hackable!
I'm sure that by now you have all heard about the Raspberry Pi. It's set to wipe the floor with things like the Arduino, the Beagleboard, and other similar units.
Costing pretty much the same as an Arduino, and boasting enough power to run Linux, it's going to be quite an impressive bit of kit.
Eventually.
When it arrives.
Welcome to the first of my basic introduction to programming tutorials. In these tutorials I aim to introduce the beginner programmer (of such devices as the Arduino) to proper ways of programming.
All too often I have come across people trying to get to grips with programming in C or C++ who have just failed to grasp some of the basic concepts of how things work. One big example is the while loop.
When I wrote and published my library for the ChipKIT™ Uno32™ Real Time Clock I omitted to say exactly how to get the clock itself working.
So here is the definitive how-to for the RTC in this beautiful little board.
Everything you need for the clock is already there on the board itself, apart from one important little thing - a crystal.
Insulation from 0.6mm single-strand wire slides easily over most small component leads to stop short circuits when breadboarding.
