Discontinuing this blog.

I am switching blogs to posterous.com they are a better format and I will be able to get out information quicker there. Please follow me at peterdavenport.posterous.com.

Arduino O-scope

How does one cope without an o-scope? If you have the SFE Color LCD Shield you do have an oscilloscope! Using a analog pin 2 (re-definable, just change the code: val1 = analogRead(2);), the screen, and the code I have written you have a very basic portable oscilloscope.

You can download the code here.

"It's an 8 Bit Christmas Charlie Brown!"

So to get in the Christmas mood this year I used math, a 8 bit processor(arduino), and SparkFun's Color LCD Shield! The result was, well, this thing:

Anyway, if you want to join the festivities you can pick up an Arduino and LCD Shield at SparkFun and you can download the code here.

LCD code and sumo-bots

Lately I have been working on a code library for the Color LCD Shield I designed. I finished it and wrote a manual for it, you can download them here. The library now supports line drawing, square drawing, and string drawing.

In other news, I have been working on setting up sumo-bot workshops with the Tacoma Robotics Society. Check it out here.

Old books are good books.

I have been reading some older electronics books lately and have found older books to often have better information than those that are newer. Notable on the list is Computer Architecture by Foster, the TTL Cookbook by Lancaster and Radar Fundamentals by Wheeler.
Most of these books are extremely outdated (i.e. Computer Architecture is before floppy disks and monitors) but they allow for the background to be learned and this is easily applied to modern systems.

Been away and got sidetracked from electronics.

I have been away from home for a week with my church so I have not been hacking awesome things lately. I did do some smithing though. I was inspired to make this knife. Basically I cut out the rough shape out with a plasma cutter, ground it into shape, tempered it, and finally added the handle.

Apple seems to like Make.

I was looking at ipod touch prices yesterday when I came across Make Magazine featured as a demo site on the touch. They seem to be moving up in the world.