Forum member "Buzbot" has posted a cool video showing a digital clock he created based on John Boxall's clock code. Check this out:
Read more in our forum: http://forum.freetronics.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=187
February 21, 2012
February 13, 2012
Keep an Arduino-compatible board in your pocket: the LeoStick has landed
Our newest Arduino-compatible board is now available to the public after about 600 were distributed to hackers at linux.conf.au 2012 in Ballarat a few weeks ago as a sneak preview. It was a huge hit at the conference and we've since been inundated with questions about when it'll be generally available, so now with great pleasure I present the LeoStick:
The LeoStick is a tiny breakout board for the ATmega32u4 MCU that will be used in the forthcoming Arduino Leonardo. We're shipping it with a modified pre-release version of the Leonardo bootloader, so you can pop it into your USB port and load sketches right out of the Arduino IDE. The USB plug is part of the PCB so the whole thing is really tiny. It's hard to get a concept of how small it really is by looking at photos, but perhaps this will help give some perspective:
It's the size of a typical USB memory stick! I spent many, many late nights labouring over Eagle laying out the PCB trying to cram it all into the smallest space possible, and it's a seriously tight PCB. After long sessions working in Eagle with everything zoomed way in close I'd start to lose perspective on just how small it is, and every now and then I'd have to sit back, print out a hard copy of the PCB at 1:1 scale, and re-orient myself. Part of the reason for the cram-job was because we kept coming up with ideas for new features to add to it, so this isn't just equivalent to a full-size Arduino: it does more than a typical Arduino. Check this out:
We combined the power, TX, and RX LEDs onto different elements of a single RGB LED, which gives a really cool effect with the colour changing as you communicate with it via USB. We also replaced the normal single-colour LED connected to pin D13 with an RGB LED, so you not only get the usual red output on D13 but you also get green on D9 and blue on D10.
Then we added a Piezo module on the bottom so you can play sounds directly from the LeoStick without having to plug anything else in. It's ready to produce RGB light and sound output straight out of the box.
We're really proud of the end result, and there are already a bunch of people doing cool things with it. Within hours of them being distributed at linux.conf.au there were people using them to do things like play the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" theme on the Piezo speaker, and even to create a Morse code sender that takes text messages via the serial console and outputs them as Morse. We also saw one that had the connection to the Piezo cut and remapped to an analog input so it could be used as an input device to detect knocks and claps.
We can't wait to see what other things people do with the LeoStick, so please check it out and share your projects over on our forum!
February 09, 2012
Sneak peek: white 32x16 LED Dot Matrix Display panel for Arduino
Our red 32x16 LED Dot Matrix Display Panel for Arduino has been very popular, but we've always wanted to do other colours too. Unfortunately the economics of LEDs means that red is by far the cheapest to buy, and when each panel has 512 LEDs even a slight increase in per-LED price has a big impact on the build cost. Nevertheless we really want to do it, so we prototyped a few other colours including yellow, blue, green, and white.
We gave a white prototype to our friend John Boxall of Tronixstuff fame, and he's made a funky video showing how cool it looks:
In the YouTube description John says:
"This example is being powered by the Arduino and therefore at low brightness. It was too bright to film when using external power - my camera just couldn't deal with the sheer intensity of the display. You have to see it to believe it."
February 08, 2012
Playing games on the Dot Matrix Display
The always-inventive Chris Debenham has used our 32x16 LED Dot Matrix Display panels in a very creative way: he's linked them together so that one is up the right way and the other is upside down, and modified the driver library to support inverted displays - all so the cabling would be more convenient when mounting one above the other instead of side by side!
But that was just the start. To really knock our socks off, he then used the resulting enormous 32x32 array (that's 1024 LEDs) as a display for games running on an Arduino, including Snake, Pong, Breakout, and Race. This is amazing:
Wow, nice work Chris! Check out all the details on his blog:
February 07, 2012
Yard light controller replaced with an Eleven
The winner of the Tronixstuff January competition, Mike Rossetti, received a Freetronics Eleven as a prize, and today he wrote to the Tronixstuff Google Group with details of the project he used it for. From his post:
The synchro-motor-driven timer in my yard light controller burned out. So instead of spending $15US replacing the clock I decided to implement my own controller using the Freetronics Eleven! (With an ultimate cost well over $100US. But then a lot of that was acquiring some new tools and stocking my 'kit'. ;^) The cost for the parts actually used was right around $20US—not too bad!)
Since I was using an Arduino I was determined to make two critical improvements in my yard light controller that the old synchro-clock could not accommodate:
- No need to reset the clock after a power-fail (courtesy of an RTC)
- No need to get down in the mud twice a year to adjust the clock for that blasted daylight savings time.
Ultimately, I was able to add one other major feature:
- Controllable using an old Sharp remote control.
Here's what I can do with the remote control:
- Display/adjust the current time
- Display/adjust the sun sensor level for turning on/off the lights
- Display/adjust what time the lights are turned off at night and on in the morning (as long as the sun isn't up)
- Display/adjust when daylight savings starts and ends (which Sunday of which month, i.e. DST starts 2nd Sunday of March)
- Manually turn the light on or off, overriding the sun and timer
In the picture here can see the original light control box on the left (with the cover removed). That circular opening with the clear tape on it is where the old synchro-clock was mounted. Beneath the black and yellow wires is a 20A solid-state relay I got for about $5 on eBay. I'd originally wanted (and tried like the dickens) to get everything into the original box but there just wasn't quite enough room, hence the add-on box on the right (that's the smallest Radio Shack had that would fit the Eleven). Below the 7-segment LED display can be seen the photocell and the I/R receiver. Back over in the old box is an unused Nexus S power wart. (I really wanted a smaller power supply! Doesn't anyone have such a thing? Something without a built-in plug?)
That's the project for which I put the Freetronics Eleven to good use. Thanks John and thanks Freetronics for all the fun!
Thanks for sharing the project with us, Mike! We're glad you found a good use for the Eleven.February 05, 2012
Clock One project by John Boxall
John Boxall has been working on another very cool project, this time using our Dot Matrix Display (DMD) panel, which is a 32x16 LED array. He's created a slick display that uses a combination of an "analog" clock face plus text for the day and date. Watch the video to see the clever border that steps along one LED every second. It really looks stunning:
Read all the details on John's blog:
http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/project-clock-one/
January 29, 2012
Arduino for amateur radio
Peter Parker VK3YE came along to the Mini Maker Faire in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago, and picked up a KitTen (an Arduino-compatible board in kit form) while he was there. He's already used it for a bunch of interesting experiments, including attaching a radio transmitter to turn it into a Morse-code CQ caller and as a fox-hunt beacon!
Check out his cool video:
January 24, 2012
Review of the DMD Dot Matrix Display by John Boxall
Definitely the most eye-catching device we have in our range is the huge new Dot Matrix Display panel, which comes bundled with a ribbon cable and an adaptor designed to fit standard Arduino headers to make it really easy to get started. It's attracted a lot of interest over on the Freetronics Forum, with new features being added to Marc's driver library very rapidly.
John Boxall (of Tronixstuff fame) has just posted a review of the DMD along with videos showing it in action. Check this out:
You can read his full review on the Tronixstuff site:
January 13, 2012
Arduino-driven Christmas light display
I don't know anything about this project other than what you can see in the YouTube description, but it looks like quite an effort. 7500 LEDs controlled using a custom 50-channel output board, synchronised to music using an Arduino. It's not clear whether it's done with an Arduino Mega (which is what the description says) or one of our EtherMega boards (which it would be if all the parts came from Jaycar, as the description also says).
Either way, it's an impressive bit of work! Enjoy:
December 16, 2011
The Maker Faire is coming to Melbourne!
For those of us isolated from the rest of the world by shark-infested oceans and 10-hour plane trips, seeing all the Open Hardware action in the US and Europe has left us feeling just a little bit jealous. Over the last few years I've looked enviously at pictures of the huge O'Reilly Maker Faire, wishing there was such a thing in Australia.
Now, thanks to the hard work of Paul Szymkowiak (@paulzee to his friends!) and his army of helpers, my dream is coming true!
Within a few hours the venue will be announced (it's all settled, pending some official paperwork) and the call for Makers to exhibit has already gone out.
The Mini Maker Faire Melbourne will take place on Saturday January 14th, 2012 to coincide with the start of linux.conf.au in Ballarat, so if you're coming into town for LCA you can drop in at Mini Maker Faire Melbourne first and then head on to the conference.
More details can be found at www.makerfairemelbourne.com.
