hardware Archive

  • The Burnduino Kit

    The Burnduino Shield

    The Burnduino Shield is, as the name suggests, an add-on ‘shield’ for the Arduino microcontroller and compatibles. It’s designed to make programming an ATmega328 DIP-package microcontroller easier, and turns the Arduino into a remarkably efficient AVR programmer. Features include: 28-pin universal ZIF (zero insertion force)...

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  • Arduino Burner PCB

    The Arduino Burner Shield

    Continuing my creation of circuits that save me a little time, I’ve developed a shield which turns an Arduino Duemilanove (or compatible) into an EPROM burner for ATMega328 chips. Imaginative as ever, I call it the “Arduino Burner.” While working on the Standalone Sleepduino, I...

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  • Standalone Sleepduino Working

    The Standalone Sleepduino lives!

    Just a quick update on the Sleepduino project: the PCBs for the Sleepduino Shield and Standalone Sleepduino arrived from the fab yesterday, and they work a treat. Here’s a quick comparison between the Standalone Sleepduino and its breadboarded prototype: As you can see, the Standalone...

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  • Arduino Duemilanove Side View

    Using an ATMega328 as an Arduino

    In the course of the design for the Standalone Sleepduino, I needed to create a bare-bones breadboard that could run an Arduino sketch. I really mean bare bones, too: I didn’t even want to include the 16MHz crystal, as through-hole versions take up too much...

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  • Standalone Sleepduino PCB

    The Standalone Sleepduino

    My original concept to create the Sleepduino as an Arduino shield to aid with sleep via white-noise and night-lights – or as a convenient way of getting three RGB LEDs, three buttons and peizoelectric buzzer with adjustable volume into an Arduino – is good, but...

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  • Sleepduino PCB

    Introducing the Sleepduino

    As a new father, I’ve found it’s difficult to convince my little bundle of noise to go to sleep at night. A common method of convincing a baby to sleep is to provide ‘white noise,’ either through the use of an expensive specialist baby-soother or...

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  • RetroGlove Pinout Diagram

    PowerGlove Project – The Famicom Connector

    So, I bought a PAX PowerGlove – so good it’s bad – with a view to connecting it to my PC for use as a neato peripheral. The PAX PowerGlove, hailing from Japan and predating the Mattel-manufactured US release, comes with a DB-15 Famicom peripheral...

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  • The aRSSduino in action

    aRSSduino

    The aRSSduino is a simple project for the Arduino microcontroller, designed to display RSS feed entries on a 16×2 LCD.  It’s still in the early stages, with the following outstanding: To Do: Support for larger LCDs To Improve: Better UTF-8 character handling To Do: Multiple...

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  • Toshiba launches dual-screen notebook

    Toshiba launches dual-screen notebook

    Toshiba has confirmed its plans to offer a dual-screen notebook similar to Microsoft’s Courier concept, to be added to its Libretto ultra-mobile range. The Toshiba Libretto W100 was launched as part of the company’s 25th anniversary celebrations – its first laptop, the Toshiba T1100 was...

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  • Fujitsu and Shinoda demo curved displays

    Fujitsu and Shinoda demo curved displays

    Fujitsu’s display division has teamed up with Shinoda Plasma to create impressive curved displays which the companies believe could be used to turn building support pillars into information boards without taking up any extra floorspace. Demonstrated over on Tech-On, the displays are based around Shinodo’s...

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