.:[ a broken lcd ]:.

trying to get this Microchip TC1232 working. At least I have a basic menu structure worked out… but I’ll probably convert it to one that is more abstract.

February 09, 2010, 1:14pm

Arduino library for Sparkfun part COM-09032, works great with the appropriate breakout board. Checkout the Readme.txt file for usage information.

Available at http://is.gd/801AV - includes Readme.txt and examples. Unzip to /libraries/

February 09, 2010, 10:35am

I was messing around learning the Arduino environment and playing with the mini thumb joystick I got from Sparkfun, and my quick (1 hour) test project was Blinky Pilot - you can move your “ship” or “car” or whatever you want to think of it as in one of five positions, controllable by the joystick. I only set up five LEDs in one axis (it was just a quick test after all) and the speed of cycling through the LEDs is controllable by how far the joystick is pushed in either direction. Sketch available at http://isomk.sdf.org/brokenlcd/labs/avr/arduino/sketches/BlinkyPilot.pde - the code may or may not make sense. YMMV. The circuit is pretty easy to wire: LEDs go to digital pins 2-6, the joystick has the horizontal axis wired to analog 0 and the vertical axis to analog 1; the select button is wired to digital pin 9.

I had an idea to extend this to a 4x4 LED matrix using an I/O expander like the MCP23017 and have the user “chase” another LED in that matrix in a game of tag; however, it appears I don’t actually care enough to make this as I have other stuff to learn.

Further experiments to get various pieces learned are experimenting with using the Microchip MCP23017 16-bit I2C I/O, microSD (need to pick up appropriate resistors for the six lines needing it), and the serial RF links (at a blazing speed of 4800 bps). I’m also thinking about picking up a second arduino to quickly set up projects until I learn the art of AVR-GCC makefiles.

February 06, 2010, 12:05pm

Finally got the parts in to start tinkering around in hardware again.

The digikey box:

The sparkfun box:

I basically used part of my tax refund to build up a small parts collection with a lot of common passives and ICs and a couple AVR MCUs, along with some tools.

The resulting workspace:

February 04, 2010, 1:28am

I switched from Ubuntu 9.10 to OpenBSD 4.6 yesterday. For the longest time, I’ve been using GNU screen and it was one of the first things I used to install in OpenBSD. Then I found tmux. I would love to replace all my GPL-licensed software with BSD-licensed software; this is just one more step down that route. tmux also happens to be saner and easier to grok than screen. I’ve heard some complaints that the default keybinding is C-b instead of C-a; since most shells default to emacs-style line editing where C-a goes to the beginning of the line, I think this could be a good thing for those using emacs mode. For those cool enough to use vi (DEATH TO THE EMACS) this won’t be a problem. Either way, I won’t be using screen anymore! (Except maybe on a Linux distro or Solaris).

January 18, 2010, 12:43am

I was watching football with my family this afternoon while getting the new OpenBSD install set up the way I want it. IBM had a few commercials during this time which they proclaimed they were working to share databases together, to link them and share information across databases. Frankly… this scares me. I don’t like data being put together like that. Information is power, and not everyone will have open access to those databases, which means those who happen to be in a position of authority will be able to wield too much power against the ordinary people. Progress has brought us to the point where we are at least ostensibly out of the absolute rule of the privileged few. I know this is a difficult area - we want to maintain the peace and help patients. For the medical records, it doesn’t seem to be as bad of a thing. For the law enforcement and counter-terror, you start treading down a slippery slope of McCarthy-esque dangers. We are supposedly a country of the people, by the people, and this will require to take on more of the role they should take, i.e. being more informed and being more vocal when the government starts doing the wrong thing. The government must be open - you can’t trust anyone to watch out for you when there’s as many special interest groups with more money and power than you vying for attention. To quote the tagline for Introversion’s game Uplink, “Trust is a weakness.”

January 18, 2010, 12:30am

I’m working on a project requiring me to use OpenSSL in a C library; unfortunately the OpenSSL documentation is pretty hard to understand for beginners. To force me to learn how to do it well (and to help learn LaTeX better) I’ve started writing a guide to using OpenSSL in C.

Now let’s see if I actually finish it…

Oh yeah, I still don’t know how to do OpenSSL yet. I’m still learning. The guide serves as sort of a documentation of my learning experience. Feedback more than welcome.

January 15, 2010, 4:22am

I recently traded my eeePC for a Nokia n810 (aircrack, nmap, and python in my pocket!?) I found that using the shell could be quite a pain because the keyboard does not have keys for escape, tab, or the pipe. Fortunately, the repos have xmodmap (and xev) installed. If all you want to do is to remap keys, all you’ll need is xmodmap.

I remapped the yen key to tab, the euro key to escape, and the sterling key to pipe using the following ~/.Xmodmap:

keycode 52 = z Z Tab Tab Tab
keycode 58 = m M Escape Escape Escape
keycode 47 = semicolon colon bar bar bar

And voilà! What really inspired me to figure out how to this was to be able to use RoxTerm - unlike the default X terminal (which has served me well, no doubt), RoxTerm supports tabbed consoles.

January 09, 2010, 7:23am

With the bricking of the MP3 board (for now), and my inability to get to my tools, for now my hardware hacking adventures are on hold indefinitely. Which is just as well, seeing as how I’m supposed to be working on part of an iPhone app for a friend of mine and that I’m now the technical manager for an independent game project which involves learning UDK, switching back to windows, and much weeping and gnashing of teeth. C’est la vie.

January 08, 2010, 11:00pm

I branched off discussions about the MP3 development board to another tumblr to keep them separate from this one.

Check it: http://sfe-mp3.tumblr.com

Werd.

January 04, 2010, 8:34am