The Stem » Electronics

Flashduino at FITC Toronto 09

Brettf — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 20:26:45 +0000

I have been working hard on creating some interesting stuff for the Flashduino talk I am giving at FITC this year. Below is the first video made using a prototype circuit and Flash code for time-lapse photography. By the time of the presentation this will be refined into an open source DIY Arduino shield. Who knows I might build a couple extra and give them away at the presentation.

Time-lapse created with Arduino and Flash from Brett Forsyth on Vimeo.

Processing Controlling a Color Kinetics LED String Over Ethernet

Brettf — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 03:28:56 +0000

Below you will find code that will allow you to control a Color Kinetics iColor Flex SL LED string via UDP. Why should you care? Well this will allow control of the string directly from your computer via ethernet. If you can’t see the power in that then maybe your inner nerd isn’t shining through.
Here is a video showing it in action.

Arduino Servo Control… Screw It, I am Going To Learn Some Assembly

Brettf — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 02:08:58 +0000

Controlling a servo with Arduino is easy, as shown in a previous post. What I have found difficult is getting multiple servos and serial data processing to play nice together. Processing serial data is screwing up the timing of the software PWMs. There are several libraries written for Arduino to control servos, check them out here and here. The first library looks great as it is a hardware based solution that changes the arduino PWMs to be servo friendly but is limited to two servos. My plan is to learn some AVR assembly so that I can extend that library for more then 2 servos. My goal is to create a complete servo control system for Arduino which will include a shield and control software written in flash.

Arduino Servo Control take 2

Brettf — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 05:05:20 +0000

Controlling 11 servos via the digital ports on Arduino turns out to be foolish. In the process I learned a bit more about Arduino but now I am going to concentrate on a hardware solution.

Arduino Servo Control for Beginners

Brettf — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:43:07 +0000

I managed to get my servo working with Arduino today using this tutorial. Nothing to special. The first time I tried nothing happened because I had the min/max pulse time setup wrong for the hitec servo. With the hitec servos the min pulse is 900µsec and the max is 2100µsec. Once I changed that it worked and should work for all hitec servos. I have looked at the Arduino servo libraries and they all seem unfinished or limited in one way or another. I am currently working on a sketch that will allow the control of up to 11 servos with analog inputs or serial commands. Also in the works is an Aduino servo shield.

Arduino Servo Sketch for analog control of a hitec servo

Piranha Zygote

Brettf — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:20:53 +0000

Nothing better then some blurry iPhone photo’s to show off new tech. Now people can analyze them to figure out if they are fake of not. Shown in the photos are a prototype board, code named Piranha, for the Zygote interactive ball. It is a really slick board with surface mounted everything. A lot of work has gone into the software controlling the Zygote. It now has ability to be controlled by music, generate music and on board behaviors.

In other news. Chemical Brothers concert (more to follow soon).