Arduino++
When I needed a high brightness 7-segment display and discovered that I did not have one at hand, I turned to an available Neopixel (WS8212B) 10×10 matrix to act as temporary display. This turned out to work well enough that it could be used in other situations.
Having acquired a FlySky 6 channel Radio Control transmitter (FS-T6) for a planned model airplane, I decided to take on the common advice that it is worth practicing on a simulator before being let loose on the ‘real thing’. Here’s what’s required.
When planning a new project I needed to tackle how to remote trigger a Canon DSLR camera. So I started with looking at the options and landed on using an infrared link to the camera. Things didn’t quite go as I expected.
Of all the many questions that have been asked about issues they face when using the MD_Parola and MD_MAX72xx libraries, there are a few themes that keep re-emerging. In this article I’ll cover the top eight questions, their most likely cause and solution.
It is common for operating systems to use a hard disk swap files to increase the amount of available system RAM by swapping blocks(or pages) of memory between real RAM and the hard drive. As many applications use RAM linearly, this imposes relatively modest decrease in performance for the bigger benefit of increased temporary RAM.
It seemed to me that, for particular applications, this concept could be applicable to providing management of arrays to increase what could be stored in a microcontroller’s very limited memory resources.
Sometimes it’s fun to do things just because they are interesting. This idea seems to be behind minimalist programming languages (languages with barely enough keywords to be viable). These languages have no useful purpose except to pose a challenge to programmers using them. Here’s one I played with on the Arduino.
A long time ago (2012) I wrote an application called MultiBlink that allowed me to control many simultaneous independent monochrome LEDs lighting in patterns. The original version was updated a number of times, gaining more features (and complexity) with each iteration. Recently I updated MultiBlink to version 5, which included a conversion to using neopixel type RGB LEDs controlled using the FastLED library.
Whilst updating an old application that implemented PWM color control of hard-wired RBG leds to NeoPixel type devices, I had to work out a new way to transition between colors. PWM is not an applicable technique when using serially controlled LEDs.
Here’s what resulted.
In the first part we built up some percussion sensors using piezo electric elements that can detect a strike and provide feedback on the strength of the blow.
In this part we define a software framework that turns these, and any other similar sensors, into a DIY percussion kit.
Some small projects are interesting because they can enable more than their initial proposition, and the simplicity of producing synthesized sounds using a MIDI interface allows us to experiment with different types of instrument ‘user interfaces’.
In this project I build a flexible software kernel for a DIY MIDI percussion kit that can initially be used switches and piezo sensors but is easily extensible.
