Rugged Around The Edges

QuadRAM and FreeRTOS

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:33:47 +0000

Here’s a nice article on the first steps in integrating our QuadRAM board into a FreeRTOS environment.

Custom design

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 06:32:30 +0000

We’re pretty excited to have finished another custom design, a tiny Arduino WiFi board with multiple servo outputs, H-bridge output, switching regulator to provide 2A from 4 AA batteries, and a pushbutton on/off circuit. Oh, and there’s a FFC connector for an off-board 1.8V GPS module and a 6-pin FTDI connector for serial interfacing.

New products from Liudr

admin — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:46:26 +0000

We’re now stocking a new product from Liudr, a Phi-Panel Serial LCD Backpack Kit with either a 20×4 LCD or 16×2 LCD.

The Phi-panel 20×4 backpack lets you add a 20-character 4-line LCD to your Arduino (or PIC, Stamp, just about any microcontroller) using only a two-wire standard serial interface. An on-board microcontroller takes care of all your interactive user interface needs, including controlling the LCD for displaying menus, lists, input numbers, texts, sensing key presses, returning user choices, and a lot more. The backpack is also addressable so up to 254 displays can be connected to the same serial port.

CyberBlackFridayWhatever Sale

admin — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 03:57:35 +0000

Our own version of a CyberBlackFridayWhatever Sale : $5 off 5 Arduino products.

Check them out!

Blinkenlight shield now available

admin — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 16:21:43 +0000

From designer Udo Klein comes a simple and elegant shield, now available in our store:

Blinkenlight Shield

The Blinkenlight shield connects all of the Arduino I/O pins to 20 LED’s. Simple, but this enables a wide range of curious and interesting experiments, such as:

Persistence of vision displays
Constructing a 20-pixel “camera”
Measuring the accuracy of the Arduino’s oscillator
Measuring the frequency of your AC power lines

and more. Check out Udo Klein’s extremely detailed web site which has full source code videos, and more.

QuadRAM Shield for Arduino Mega

admin — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 04:05:42 +0000

We’re excited to release our latest Arduino shield, the QuadRAM Shield for Arduino Mega. This shield gives you 512 kilobytes of fast-access RAM, directly mapped into the Arduino’s address space. No libraries are required.

QuadRAM Shield

This shield is similar to our MegaRAM shield but has 4 times the amount of RAM.

Rugged Motor Driver now chipKIT compatible

admin — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 04:12:58 +0000

Our latest revision of the Rugged Motor Driver now makes it easy to work with the Microchip chipKIT board.

Rugged Motor Driver

The problem with the chipKIT is that pin D11 does not have PWM capability, like it does on the Arduino. We fixed this with a 3-position jumper (J15):

Rugged Motor Driver Jumpers

By default, J15 connects D11 to the ENABLE2 line (PWM line for Motor #2). This works on the Arduino-type boards, but not on the chipKIT. Our fix for this is to make use of the chipKIT pin D9, which does have PWM capability. You need to cut the jumper that connects D11 to ENABLE2 and install a jumper between D9 to ENABLE2 (all on J15). The chipKIT can now use D9 for PWM on Motor #2 instead of D11.

New Product: MegaRAM shield

admin — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:56:57 +0000

We’re happy to announce another product, the MegaRAM shield for Arduino Mega and Mega2560. The shield adds 128 kilobytes of external fast-access RAM directly to the microcontroller’s address space.

Available and in-stock at our web store!

Atmel’s AVR ATxmega updates

admin — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 02:51:52 +0000

Atmel’s update of their ATxmega 8-bit microcontrollers to include USB just keeps pushing the limit of what these 8-bit micros can do. Despite the pressure from inexpensive 32-bit ARM-based micros (like NXP’s Cortex-M3 offerings) Atmel seems to be unwilling to let the 8-bit micro die.

Here’s an example ATxmega part, the ATxmega16A4U. It includes:

3.3V operation at up to 32 MHz (operates down to 1.6V)
16kB of FLASH
3.3kB of SRAM (probably 1.2kB of that is for USB)
Full-speed (12Mbps) USB device interface with no external crystal required
16 QTouch channels supported
SPI/I2C/UART’s
12 12-bit ADC’s (note the improved resolution over the 10-bit ADC’s in the AVR series)
2 12-bit DAC’s (that’s right: DAC’s built right in!)
1kB of EEPROM (hey NXP! build in some EEPROM to your Cortex-M3 parts!)
AES/DES crypto engine
Timers, output compares, PWM, input capture, RTC, all the usual suspects

The Cortex-M3 parts still win on raw clock speed and 32-bit vs. 8-bit computing power, but the ATxmega’s stay in the game by adding USB to match, and with the improved peripherals (12-bit analog blocks, QTouch) and EEPROM.

Unfortunately, no parts in stock at distributors as of this writing so no price realistic price info is available either.

10 Ways To Destroy an Arduino

admin — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 20:55:11 +0000

New application note posted: 10 Ways to Destroy an Arduino