Tinkerlog

A couple of months ago, some nice guys of the IFISC (Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems) contacted me. They saw the Synchronizing Fireflies and wanted them to demonstrate how simple rules can make patterns emerge from chaos. The main research of the institute is in Nonlinear Physics and Complex Systems.

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It took a while since I first posted about the new ATmega header board but finally, here it is.
The board is great for prototyping on a solderless breadboard. It is compatible with the common 28-pin AVR controllers like ATmega48, ATmega88, ATmega168 and ATmega328. On plus it is Arduino compatible.
Some of the features:

Space efficient, occupies only [...]

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It’s Advent season. And what do you do to let your geek shine? An LED Advent wreath of course.

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Again a Braitenberg vehicle. This one is even smaller, than the previous one and comes on a custom PCB. It weighs 17 gramms, is driven by two pager motors, powered by a small lipo cell and controlled by an 8-pin ATtiny25V.

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Last week I invested some time to solder 64 Firefly boards. Only 2.432 solder joints later I was ready for some videos.
Every firefly acts completely autonomously, it has its own tiny controller, eye and luminary. They are all connected for power supply only.

Here are some different configurations.

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Often, when I am tinkering with a controller on a breadboard, I have to open up the according datasheet, only to look up the pinout. So I designed a simple page with all of of the pinouts that I use most. It has:

8-pin AVRs, ATtiny25/ATtiny45/ATtiny85
20-pin AVR, ATtiny2313
28-pin AVRs, ATmega48/ATmega88/ATmega168/ATmega328
Arduino to ATmega mapping
ISP header, 6-pin and [...]

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This is another breadboard compatible header board, that I am working on. This one is for all 28-pin AVR devices, ATmega48, ATmega88, ATmega168 and the latest ATmega328. Component count is low and there is no voltage regulator on board. That makes it easy to power it from various sources.
As a bonus, this board is a [...]

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If you want to play some retro arcade games, you will install the amazing MAME and run your favorite ROM. One of my best-of-all-times is Bomb Jack.
But you have to play it with the keyboard. Bah!
Or an USB game pad. Better, but still — bah!
Nothing compares to real arcade controls. And with a [...]

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Jonathan bought a 64pixels kit and modded it into a green version. The three solar cells, that he uses are rated with: 2.7 volts (open circuit) @ 15mA (short circuit). He writes, it works well in bright sun light. His desktop lamp shines with 60 Watts and that seems to work as well.

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In this post I will try to show, why it’s a good idea to use a current limiting resistor for an LED. And when it’s save to drive the LED without any resistor.
If you read about LEDs, you will notice that everyone tells you, that you need a current limiting resistor. But mostly they do [...]

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