This morning I spent a good amount of time attempting to get a decent twitter widget set up on this site to simply put my Twitter status into the widget sidebar. Fun part is I can actually justify this pursuit as work – we have been asked to integrate Twitter into a website we are [...]
Archive | April, 2009
New gear from Mouser – a digital multimeter! This is getting serious!
In addition to the stuff from NKCelectronics I got in the mail yesterday, I also received a box from Mouser. It seems like Mouser and DigiKey both have similar things, but there are always parts that you can find at one and not the other, as was the case with the digital multimeter I wanted [...]
NKCelectronics Rocks! – NKC has great customer service
I got some more gear in the mail yesterday. Below is an image of what my Arduino Ethernet Shield, from NKCelectronics looked like when I got it out of the packaging. I was totally willing to keep this, and repair it myself, but NKC stepped up to the plate and hit a customer service home [...]
Not your usual PIR sensor – playing with ZDots
I made an order a while ago from DigiKey. I got some basic electronics prototyping stuff as well as a few sensors and LEDs t play around with. One of the more interesting things I picked up was a Ziglog ZDots PIR sensor (click to view datasheet). Now this is not the usual PIR sensor [...]
Bad Audi! – Back in the shop again!
So as I mentioned before, my car has been having some problems. It all started with a “Check Engine” light about 1500 miles before my warranty went out. After going in and out of the shop 4 times for the problem, and subsequently leaking petrol all over the garage at my house, I was assured [...]
PySerial and Arduino – communication with software
My first order of stuff from DigiKey arrived today – yay! Unfortunately it is so tightly packed inside the box that I am unable to dig in more here at work. More on that later… Yesterday i began exploring making the arduino communicate with the computer it is attached to. Not having a breadboard left [...]
electronic Odyssey – Sidenote – designing embedded hardware
Last week it occurred to me that I was bothering Nick a bit too much for his knowledge of electronics. He has been pretty happy to assist me as I explore his realm of expertise, however I think i have a bit too many questions. I decided to find an alternate source of reference material and found O’Reilly’s [...]
Electronic Odyssey – pt.1.5 – First steps, and some info on driving 8×8 rgb matrixes
So after receiving my arduino last week from Seeed studio, I have been itching to give it a roll. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, I stupidly forgot to pick up a breadboard so I have been pretty limited to what I can do. That has not stopped me from hooking up a single LED and my giant [...]
2005.5 Audi A4 Hell – not quite a lemon, but causing grief
This is my 2005.5 (b7 platform) audi a4. It is a 2.0t (great engine), and has quattro, XM sat radio, an automatic transmission (boo…), and the performance package. I love it. I will say this again and again, this is the ultimate car for driving in snow. Its 200 HP from a 4 cyl engine [...]
Electronic Odyssey – pt.1
This one falls on the HARD side of hardware… Inspired by my good friend Nick, who does EE and works at the product design / idea house TwisThink, I decided to jump into the world of physical computing via Arduino. I apparanty know a thing or two about software, so I thought I would mix [...]
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