MachineGrid

Creating an Open Source Toolchain for ARM Microcontrollers

In the process of jumping onto the ARM bandwagon, I found a neat tutorial by [J]im Lynch, who has written a highly comprehensive tutorial on how to combine various opensource tools to create an ARM toolchain. He also details what goes on behind each tool right from the hardware level to the software layer. This is a highly recommended read for those interested in using the open source tools for their project including Eclipse, OpenOCD and Yagarto tools. He also …

1 Comment | Posted in » Microcontrollers, Tutorials

TI MSP430 Launchpad for $4.30 – Update

TI just launched a cheap and easy to use development tool based on the MSP430 low power microcontroller. The Launchpad includes a development board, 2 programmable MSP430 micrcontrollers and a mini USB cable.

3 Comments | Posted in » hacks, Microcontrollers

Power Supply Connector Paper Clip Hack

Ever come across a power supply where you had to needle in your power cables into tiny terminal holes – and all you had were IC and alligator clips? What if you wanted to power a number of boards from the same supply?
Here is a simple hack which will allow you to connect, wrap , group quite a few power cables in parallel… and all you need is a paper clip. Two paper clips to be precise to connect to …

12 Comments | Posted in » hacks

Microchip Explorer 16 Development Kit Hacks

The Explorer 16 is Microchip’s controller development boards for evaluating its 16 and 32-bit microcontrollers. While searching the web for reviews about the baord and its feasability, I came across [P]hillip Burgess’ website detailing some cool hacks that can be done on the board and also save you money.

3 Comments | Posted in » hacks, Microcontrollers

The Jerker : The Ultimate Geek Desk / Workbench

The IKEA Jerker desk. I spend alot of time in this space. The setup uses two Ikea Jerker desks – combined. I just swing between them depending on what I’m working on.

7 Comments | Posted in » hacks

Reversing a Hacker Style Brushless Motor 20-22L.

The Hacker Style Brushless(20-22L) motor finds a very common use in Quadcopters. Unfortunately the only way to mount the motor on a frame is to reverse the shaft so that the mounting holes can be used for what they were meant for..mounting.

11 Comments | Posted in » Hackable Toys, hacks, Robots

Surfing the Web with a 1964 300baud Acoustic Coupled Livermore modem.

This hack is so impressive that I had to put it up here. I am really surprised that a dated piece of hardware[circa 1964] can still work with today’s technology.
[p]hreakMonkey got his hands on a Livermore acoustic modem and managed to get it online and download a Wikipedia page.

What’s really amazing is that the modem works by placing an old school telephone over the modem’s “receiver” and communicates using …

Comments Off | Posted in » hacks

Controlling the Nikon D40 with gphoto2

gphoto2 is a neat little command line interface to talk to digital cameras. The Nikon D40 DSLR is also supported. I was not able to find a good guide on interfacing the D40 to gphoto, so I wrote this down for reference.

Installing gphoto2
1. I have Fedora10 installed on my laptop. Running the following simple command “yum install gphoto2″ as root installs gphoto2.

2. Doing the above however does not install libghoto2 which is the core library designed to allow access to digital cameras …

8 Comments | Posted in » hacks, Nikon D40

Digital Picture Frame Hacking Roundup

With all the nice hacks on digital picture frames scattered around the web, I decided to put them all in one place for reference. Due thanks to all the hackers out there who put their work out for everyone to see. It’s the joy in reverse engineering. For some of the hacks I’ve included a compressed file with the code and webpage archived in case the original site goes down. If you are the author an would not like it, …

34 Comments | Posted in » Hackable Toys, hacks, Tutorials