Gadget Factory

Knowledge Base

  • How to design a Homemade GPS Receiver

      Have you ever thought about designing a GPS Receiver? It seems very complicated but not with this design we found at holmea.demon.co.uk, the article clearly explains how to make a homemade GPS receiver and we thought you guys would find it very useful. “…I was motivated to design this receiver after reading the work of Matjaž Vidmar, S53MV, who developed a GPS receiver from scratch,…

  • Quick & Easy – Getting Started With GitHub

    GitHub is a giant online storehouse for archiving and sharing code.  We’ve got a bunch of code available on GitHub for many items of Gadget Factory interest that we’re sure you’ll find useful in your endeavors: Gadget Factory top-level repository Gadget Factory Wing PCB designs Papilio Arcade source code AVR8 source code We also came across…

  • A Nice Collection Of Code Tools For The Papilio

    Mike Field has put up a wiki bursting with all kinds of code for many aspects of the Papilio board, as well as a number of test projects for the Papilio + Arcade MegaWing hardware.  We’re happy for everyone who has a Papilio, as many of these items are really handy to have at the…

  • Tips And Tricks For Prototyping With Breadboards

    Here’s a great bunch of tips and tricks for breadboarding that Boseji recently put up on his blog.  It’s a nicely done collection of tips, tricks, photos, tutorials, and more that we thought our readers here would enjoy having in our “Knowledge Base” category. An excerpt: “We have all used breadboards, or those who plan to jump into the…

  • 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…

  • VHDL Tutorials With Mike Field

    Happy New Year!  2012 is the year that the Mayans predicted would be the end of the world, or some such rot.  Don’t worry, we don’t believe in this at all.  We believe in hard science.  But if you believe, then there’s not much time left – so why not get started with some FPGA goodness? Papilio enthusiast…

  • Structuring An FPGA Project

    The way you think about designing with VHDL is a lot like how you design a circuit board.  This is a good article that we found over at Embedded.com on the finer points of structuring an FPGA project.  The article relays some very important concepts, and we thought you guys would find it useful. “…the highest…

  • Learning VHDL With Robin Debreuil

    (And the answer, for five MILLION dollars….contestant one?) Here’s an excellent article we found over at Robin Debreuil’s blog concerning a number of VHDL concepts and implementation.  It’s a great read, and we thought it’d be cool to post here for any Papilio owners and/ or VHDL coders to take a look at!  Robin totally attacks…