I'm having fun playing with the Arduino open-source electronics prototyping platform.
Now a software guy can have fun with hardware projects!
This first video shows a seven segment LED wired to the Arduino and simply counting. I think of it as a mathematically inclined "hello world".
This video shows a 4x20 character LCD display connected to the Arduino. I used the LCD4Bit library to control the HD44780 compatible display, but found it lacking support for the 3rd and 4th lines of the display, so I modified the source code of the library to support the extra lines.
I rewrote the LCD4Bit library's cursorTo() function to be much faster. In the following video I had to insert a 10 millisecond delay after each character, otherwise the pattern rendered too quickly.
At some point my projects will need to interact with the outside world, so reading an analog value might come in handy. ;) The next video connects the voltage from a potentiometer to the Arduino's 10 bit analog to digital converter, and displays the resulting value on an LCD.
Next up? I've started playing with a 3-axis accelerometer, with which I hope to make a handheld g-meter (good for acrobatic pilot bragging rights) and a self-contained backup attitude indicator (also known as "artificial horizon"). The Lantronix Xport will enable my Arduino to connect to the internet, so stayed tuned for gratuitous news/weather/stock tickers...
© 2007 Bob