tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-352838912009-10-23T12:21:42.912-04:00UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35283891.post-54145160302275843272009-02-18T20:21:00.003-05:002009-02-18T20:22:02.293-05:00

An article about the top 5 new features in Ruby 1.9. There's some really exciting stuff in there!Read it here.

UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35283891.post-63765604794629659472009-02-18T00:39:00.002-05:002009-02-18T00:41:33.716-05:00

Here is my review of the book Flex on Rails: Building Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex 3 and Rails 2. In short, it's a good book for any Rails programmer wanting to look at Flex clients. It'll get you on your feet and oriented in the Flex world.Be sure to read the full review.

UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35283891.post-71486010391656403182009-02-05T11:54:00.004-05:002009-02-05T12:03:21.575-05:00

Below are pictures of the Arduino flash chip programmer and reader. I'd built this last week, but was plagued by a nagging problem. It would only work on some chips, and wouldn't work on one chip I knew was good. Oh well, I thought, that chip must be broken. Well, today I set out disassembling the thing to solder together a shield, and I discovered the problem.When looking down at the ZIF

UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35283891.post-15763826728210343842009-01-28T10:58:00.003-05:002009-01-28T11:36:07.090-05:00

Well, I got my shfit registers and some more apt LEDs (that aren't 10mm blue LEDs) to play with. This is a step toward the Arduino flash programmer. I also have the ZIF socket I need and the stuff to make a shield, so really I'm all set to build it. But first, the shift registers.From Arduino Shift RegistersThe Arduino doesn't have all that many output pins. There are 13 digital pins, plus 6

UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35283891.post-58207393056789007362009-01-28T09:23:00.002-05:002009-01-28T09:37:24.828-05:00

I've begun to really start looking at all of the features of the websites I use regularly and make an effort to use them more efficiently. I've started with perhaps the least original website you can imagine. Many of you probably use this site every day: Reddit.To everyone who doesn't use Reddit, it's like Digg only not full of morons. Moreover, it has some really great subreddits that allow

UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35283891.post-82657803804020274912009-01-26T09:58:00.016-05:002009-01-28T11:40:13.337-05:00

Charlieplexing is a way to drive many LEDs with just a few pins on a microcontroller. The technique exploits the microcontroller's ability to put arbitrary pins into high impedance input mode, essentially removing its effect (either sinking or sourcing current) from the circuit. The AVR chips can do this, so can the Arduino.The easiest way to explain Charlieplexing is to just show you. Take a

UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35283891.post-72503336684996503662009-01-14T11:21:00.002-05:002009-01-14T11:54:07.867-05:00

I dug some Flash chips off a few old motherboards, and I wondered how difficult they would be to interface? It turns out, it's not that difficult at all.I was lucky though. Some flash and eeprom chips require high voltage to be able to program, this one I have here requires only 5v. It's a 39SF020 flash chip. So how to program it with the Arduino?The first problem to solve is accessing all

UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35283891.post-31569250540011633112008-04-25T00:49:00.000-04:002008-04-25T00:49:18.076-04:00

So the Arduino programmer was not that great. AVR programmers are easy to build though, just a handful of zener diodes and resistors and your serial port. Instead of building one, I decided to re-purpose my MiniPOV3.Doing this is about the same as building one of these. The pinout is easy to remember as an 8-pin AVR's ICSP pins are in the same place. The only thing to do is hook up Vcc,

UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35283891.post-39595195946492637162008-04-23T20:56:00.002-04:002008-04-23T21:02:40.899-04:00

I wanted to make an AVR programmer, but since I have almost no experience with AVR programmers beyond the Arduino and MiniPOV3 I thought I'd try something a little more documented. Of course documented doesn't mean non-hackish in anyway. It's also quite ironic that I'm using an Arduino to escape the restrictions I'm trying to avoid on the Arduino.I found this article which outlines a method for

UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35283891.post-70060276426189041292008-04-21T23:12:00.003-04:002008-04-21T23:34:20.151-04:00

My brand new (manufactured just 30 years ago) HP5036A microprocessor lab arrived in the mail today. I'm not sure if you can still get machines like this, but it's quite interesting. It runs on an Intel 8085 @ 2MHz, has 1k of SRAM and 2k of ROM. I've already written my first program, a single instruction that writes the contents of the A register to the ouptut LEDs. To change the A register,

UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35283891.post-79145209819307984172007-09-15T06:51:00.000-04:002007-09-15T07:04:39.600-04:00

I found an old keyboard with a 7-segment display. Lots of other interesting things in the device, but sadly most of it was a huge 100-pin surface-mount chip. I did get this 7-segment going though, driven by a 74hc4511 (also from the keyboard) and the Arduino.The 74hc4511 takes BCD digits and drives the 7-segment. It also handles source current for the LEDs, so I don't have to worry about the

UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35283891.post-4817209503890575802007-09-05T05:46:00.000-04:002007-09-05T05:58:45.298-04:00

I got a MiniPOV3 kit from Adafruit.com with my Arduino, and I decided to solder it up tonight. Soldering was a bit tricky since I only have a cheap radio shack soldering iron and nothing to properly hold the PCB in place, but I got it all right. As you can see from the pictures, I didn't make a mess of the soldering.The MiniPOV3 is a really cool kit. You can reprogram it yourself or modify it

UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35283891.post-38168837046314727312007-09-04T16:18:00.000-04:002007-09-04T16:25:54.299-04:00

I found a stepper motor in a scanner and decided to hook it up. They're dead easy to drive from the parallel port. All you have to do for normal stepping is pulse the pins in order. Each pin goes a transistor that hooks the motor coils to a 9v power supply. And that's it, very easy.I tried to get the pulses as small as possible, but under 10ms per pulse it gets pretty flaky. This probably

UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35283891.post-1291496045623176362007-09-04T01:40:00.001-04:002007-09-04T01:48:27.524-04:00

I don't have a DC power supply to use, so I made one out of a 9.6v NiCad battery pack from a remote control car.  I can supply up to about 9v and is of course rechargable and I don't have to worry too much about short circuits.It uses an LM317 adjustable voltage regulator and a potentiometer to select the voltage.  There are two led indicators and two switches.  The first switch turns the input

UziMonkeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10526539019929055977noreply@blogger.com0