RAREblog

I've just come across this amazing beast  on Hackaday: I suspect that there are some heavy-duty pneumatics buried in the body. I wonder how close one could get using a much, much smaller body and conventional servos.

Yesterday's announcement of the Arduino Galileo at Make Faire Rome overshadowed a second significant announcement: The Arduino Tre . Arduino Galileo The Arduino Galileo is based on the Intel Quark SoC X1000, and should be in the store by the end of November, though the lucky attendees at Maker Faire were given one at the door yesterday. (If anyone has a spare...) Intel plan to give away 50,000 to Universities over the next few months. Arduino Tre The Arduino Tre is based on the TI Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8, built around a Leonardo core.  It has a 1GHz processor with 512M of RAM. It supports 1920x1020 HDMI video output and HDMI/Stereo Analogue audio. It's expected to be available in Spring 2014. Linux everywhere Both boards run Linux, and both can be programmed using the Arduino IDE. The Arduino family now spans a huge range of processing power while supporting a common development environment and compatible libraries across the whole range.

Over the weekend I spent some time on the LCD text display using the LiquidCrystalFast library. There's still work to do, but the core hardware is working. When I've finished the hardware and software I'll post the details but first I thought I'd document the mistakes I made and the processes I followed to troubleshoot the project and get it back on the rails. My normal workflow for a new hardware design takes things in small steps, with lots of testing as I go. I start with a rough design, which may be on paper or in my head, and then I breadboard and test. Once the breadboarded version is working I transfer the design to stripboard or to one of Adafruit's wonderful PermaProto boards , and test again. If appropriate, I then design a board and send the files off to a PCB fab shop to make the first PCB version, which may need further testing and revision. My First Mistake This time I took a short cut. I've built a dozen or so Arduino clones on stripboa...