Category: Electronics

  • Chicken coop door circuit

    So I’ve been updating my chicken coop lately. See here for one such recent upgrade: The latest upgrade is a two-fer design… Door State Indication I want to be able to tell, from a distance, that the door is either open or closed. This is both a convenience to the chicken ranchers and a safety…

  • Digital volume knob fix

    Digital volume knob fix

    The volume knob in my wife’s Toyota Highlander behaved weirdly.  As you turned it up or down, the volume setting would jump up or down, sometimes in the wrong direction and by an unpredictable amount.  It didn’t give a linear output as you would expect. What to do?  Why, take it apart of course!

  • Cordifying battery things

    Cordifying battery things

    In my house, we have a ton of “batteried” devices.  Having small children, in this modern age, one tends to collect a lot of toys, tools, crafts, and associated appliances that require an array of batteries.  Triple- and double-As are in high demand, though 9V and even the C cells are occasionally used.  Don’t even get…

  • Day 30+: a postlude

    Day 30+: a postlude

    (Copyright Vectorbelly Webcomics) While the rest of the world is preparing for super sportsing, I’m taking the opportunity to tinker. This post is a continuation of the GaSiProMo challenge I took part in a while ago. Today’s update brings in the next stage of that project with my OsRAM LED display: better packaging. The goal here is to…

  • Day 30: final day

    I’ve got most of the bugs ironed out in my display interface, but not all have been squashed in the driver portion.  In other words, the method in which I can input text into the OsRAM is working nicely (I’m using a serial port console), but the nuts and bolts of how strings are sent to…

  • Day 15: display testing

    So I have my display working sort of.  It’s definitely showing good old ASCII characters.  Here’s a quick video of it in action: You can see my code at GitHub. I’m quickly realizing that I will need a more sophisticated text parser to make this thing usable.  ‘Cuz sending a character at a time for…

  • Day 6: early firmware testing

    Day 6: early firmware testing

    Things are progressing nicely.  I have the display fully wired now to the Mega.  It’s a spaghetti mess, but it’ll work.I have the serial port on the Arduino working nicely for debug.  I also did a fair amount of thinking with regards to data and address packetizing.  It quickly became apparent that doing a bunch…

  • Day 3: Arduino setup

    Day 3: Arduino setup

    I’ve had a bad experience with Arduino.  But perhaps I was just cranky that night. I was also unlucky with a defective Uno. The good news is that for my new project (which has a deadline), my new Arduino Mega is not in fact defective.  I can attest its functionality tonight, at 10:45pm. This platform is…

  • Day 1: setup

    Day 1: setup

    I got the display mounted to a breadboard. How about that, it’s green! The display has a self test diagnostic mode built in, which is incredibly handy. Saw little cute LED bits flashing and twinkling. So the thing appears to be alive, after all these years!  Here is some video too: The majority of my…

  • GaSiProMo

    GaSiProMo

    I’m a notorious task-starter, and not a great task-finisher.  My garage is littered with old projects that are collecting more dust than accolades.  I can lean on the old, dependable excuses but really that’s lame.  If every moment is the new normal, then there aren’t any excuses.  Our hobbies define us, and I love my…