microcontroller

Hands-on with FEZ Mini, a .NET-powered microcontroller (+ robot kit)

Two reflective sensors are included in the kit (useful for line following and edge detection projects), and you can order additional components both from TinyCLR.com and other robotics sites. Many construction parts are included in the kit so it is very easy to attach additional sensors or other parts. As you can see on the picture above, I already added a Sharp IR distance sensor in front (so I can teach the robot to not bump on walls). I also added an Xbee expansion board on the back so one day I can control the robot remotely (and my Holy Grail is to connect the robot to Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio).

Continue Reading February 25th, 2010 Brian Jepson

Use digital I/O pins to measure analog voltage

Building a cool microcontroller-based project, and wish you had just one or two more analog inputs? Or perhaps you are trying to make something using the tiniest microcontroller possible, and don’t have any analog ports in the first place?

Continue Reading December 26th, 2009 Matt Mets4

Make: Holiday Gift Guide 2009: All-Arduino!

Arduino lovers have a whole lotta hardware to choose from nowadays. From Arduino clones optimized for a variety of different users, to an arsenal of shield attachments specially designed for nearly every type of project. We’ve got a lot to cover here, so let’s get started, first with the basics – (Read on for the […]

Continue Reading December 8th, 2009 Collin Cunningham8

Linear stepper motor controller kit

Linistepper is a stepper motor controller/driver for small to medium sized 5-, 6-, or 8-wire unipolar (not 4-wire bi-polar) stepper motors, featuring “ultra smooth old school linear microstepping” combined with active current regulation from an on-board PIC microcontroller. The folks at PIClist are offering both PCBs and full kits for sale. Linistepper

Continue Reading June 8th, 2009 Gareth Branwyn

Laser matrix projector for iPhone

Check out this iPhone-controlled 5×7 laser matrix built utilizing 35 laser pointers, a PIC16F722 microcontroller, some miscellaneous parts, and a custom iPhone app.

Continue Reading May 20th, 2009 Adam Flaherty

RoBoard, robot brains with PC aspirations

What do you get if you cross a full-featured PC with a microcontroller? Trossen Robotics is hoping you get a Roboard RB-100, a new breed of robot brains that is like a tricked-out microcontroller or an extremely svelte PC, take your… ah… PIC. The Roboard RB-100 is a new breed of robotics controller: a fusion […]

Continue Reading April 2nd, 2009 Gareth Branwyn4

New Arduino MEGA spotted in the wild!

A brand spankin’ new big brother to the Duemilanove, the first pic of a new Arduino board has surfaced. The Mega uses an ATmega1280 surface mount chip and offers a whole big bunch of new features – 128KB of Flash 4KB RAM 4KB EEPROM 53 IO 4 HW UARTs 14 PWMs I2C bus 16 Analog […]

Continue Reading March 16th, 2009 Collin Cunningham20