Gadget Factory

Microcontrollers

  • All You Need Is 2 Wires And 50 Bucks To Get Video Out Of Your Arduino With Mesa-Video

    In this post we want to introduce you a great article that describe the latest projects from Black Mesa Labs. These guys wanted to create a new approach to add video support to your projects with Arduino and other low cost microcontrollers. So the idea of Mesa-Video was born. Mesa-Video is a fully open-source device…

  • How To Control What You See On A Screen in Two Hours and For Less Than $25!

    Imagine how cool it would be to control what appears on your screen and at a bargain price, just using your FPGA (yes! Your Papilio!) and some other easy-to-get components. All you need is read today´s article (and buy the tiny things of course). This how-to post is one of those which are written thinking…

  • Simple Infrared PWM on Arduino

    Nice code walk through of how to generate a PWM in C code. This is a 3 part series showing how to generate IR commands in software. We are often asked on discussion boards, about conflicts between IRremote or IRLib and other Arduino Libraries. In this post, we present a sketch for ‘Simple Infrared PWM…

  • Spin Brushless DC Motors Slowly

    Here is some good reference material on spinning Brushless DC motors that should be applicable to the Papilio. We would just need to add some sensors to spin the motors faster…   I used specialized triple half bridge IC L6234 (~ 8$). You can make the same spending less money (but more time) with MOSFET…

  • Cool QR Code Clock On Graphical LCD

    Sometimes its good to see what other people are up to on their projects. It can serve to spark an idea for your own designs, and this one here is just plain cool. This QR code clock is displayed on a graphical LCD screen, and is totally indecipherable just to look at. You have to…

  • Remote controlled balancing robot !

    Hey everyone! Today we have an excellent open source project to show you, Wily made a very cool self-balancing robot controlled by a Wii Nunchuck! Before we continue talking about it please enjoy watching this video where he shows off his build while it’s chasing a cute pet: As you see in the video above…

  • Using Microcontrollers To Drive A VGA Monitor

    We found a great article over at LucidScience regarding having a microcontroller drive a VGA monitor.  This is some pretty cool stuff, when done right!  The project explains how to work out the kinks from the typically difficult task of using a microcontroller with a VGA monitor. “It took some time to learn how the…