Electronic

ESP2866 — WiFi for the Arduino

Posted by & filed under Adruino, Electronic, Hardware, Hardware Development.

This board is really freakin cool. It no only has a SoC chip that is essentially a UART to WiFi, it’s microprocessor is also programmable and has a PWM pin as well. On Arduino day, it was announced that the Arduino IDE now supports the ESP2866 making things a lot easier.

 

01-02
  • Article on the ESP2866: makezine.com/2015/04/01/esp8266-5-microc…
  • ESP2866 Forums: http://www.esp8266.com/viewforum.php?f=25
  • ESP2866 Arduino Source code: https://github.com/esp8266/arduino
  • ESP2866 Breakout Boards: http://www.esp8266.com/wiki/doku.php?id=esp8266-module-family
  • ESP2866 on eBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/251690993989?lpid=82&chn=ps
  • Seeed studio ESP2866 Module: http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/WiFi-Serial-Transceiver-Module-w-ESP8266-p-1994.html

How to build a cheap HDTV Antenna

Posted by & filed under Electronic.

Found on a forum and it’s pretty cool: uhfhdtvantenna.blogspot.com/

If you don’t want to spend upwards of 70 bucks like I did on a not so great performing Yagi style antenna. Then build this diy hdtv antenna for almost nothing and get better results. My Yagi style antenna I got from ebay was pulling about 60-85 signal strength on most channels and ALWAYS would have continual dropouts making it impossible to watch Free OTA (over the air) digital HDTV. It always dropped out at the most inconvienent time. Another thing I hated about the yagi was it came with a rotor but the rotor had NO INDICATOR! You had no way of telling when the antenna was pointed in the right direction!!! That might work for analog signals you can watch come and go but is just ridiculous for digital signals! Digital signals are choppy, latent and very slow to respond with a moving antenna. Pointing must be very accurate for a strong digital signal. I found it was quite impossible to use a rotor without an indicator when positioning for a certain station. That is why you can see I have an old timey rotor in the setup. I built this bowtie style antenna in about an hour and can’t believe the way it out performs that other antenna. Swear to GOD! I am hitting 88 to 99 signal strength on all my channels now with NO DROPOUTS AT ALL!!!!

Firmata — Host Computer –> Microcontroller Protocol

Posted by & filed under Electronic.

Firmata is a generic protocol for communicating with microcontrollers from software on a host computer. It is intended to work with any host computer software package. Right now there is a matching object in a number of languages. It is easy to add objects for other software to use this protocol. Basically, this firmware establishes a protocol for talking to the Arduino from the host software. The aim is to allow people to completely control the Arduino from software on the host computer.

If you are interested, we can help you use this protocol with any software whatsoever. The protocol is quite simple. We will all benefit if we use a common firmware. Then microcontroller boards become really cheap sensorboxes in addition to all the rest of the stuff you can already do with them.

firmata.org/wiki/Main_Page

CEE: The USB analog electronics multi-tool

Posted by & filed under Electronic.

The CEE (control · experiment · explore) is an analog multitool. By sourcing and measuring voltage and current, the CEE opens up a world that has previously been restricted by monolithic, bulky, and hard-to-use tools. Learners can explore a wide range of concepts including everything from AC/DC electricity and resistance to work / energy, torque / speed, heat flow, and electrochemistry. As tinkerers, we’ve used our proof-of-concept boards as a multimeter to sort components in our junk bins, a programmable interface device to test new sensors, a power supply to fuel our breadboards, a web-based datalogger, and every possible combination therein.

www.nonolithlabs.com/

Demo of the web-based graphing — PixelPulse: www.nonolithlabs.com/pixelpulse/demo.htm…

RoboRealm – Vision for the bots!

Posted by & filed under Electronic.

RoboRealm® is an application for use in computer vision, image analysis, and robotic vision systems. Using an easy point and click interface RoboRealm simplifies vision programming! Using an inexpensive USB webcam and the PC you already have you can now add machine vision to your robotic projects!

Cool!

www.roborealm.com/index.php

1ZZFE COP Units

Posted by & filed under Automotive, EFI Tuning, Electronic, Toyota.

These were put with the rubber seals more or less in the same plane so you can get an idea of comparative height.

Source vehicles and part numbers from left to right:

90919-02227 ST215 Caldina 3SGTE

90919-02230 GXE10 Altezza AS200/Lexus IS200 1GFE vvt-i

90919-02239 ZZE120 Corolla 1ZZFE

90919-02240 NZE121 Corolla 2NZFE

90919-02236 SXE10 Altezza RS200 3SGE Beams dual vvt-i

If you have a standalone that can do sequential fire theese seem the way to go even over ls1 truck coils.

Sources: www.supramania.com/forums/showthread.php…
www.ae86drivingclub.com.au/forums/showth…

Bridging Amps and Ohm Loads

Posted by & filed under Audio, Electronic, Hardware.

Amplifier bridging is simply using 2 channels of an amplifier to drive a common load. For 2 channel amplifiers, one left signal and one right signal is used to drive a mono speaker load. Keep in mind that mono and bridging are not necessarily the same. Mono means that there’s only one output signal. There could be more than one speaker but each speaker will have the same output. Bridging means that you are using more than one source of power to drive a load (speaker). The sources of power are one each output from either channel of the amplifier. A long time ago, amplifiers had signal on the positive output speaker terminals only. To bridge one of those amplifiers, you’d have to use some means to invert the signal on one channel (remember the old ‘bridging modules’ for Orion amplifiers?). Today’s bridgeable amplifiers have an inverted channel as part of their design. For many amplifiers, the left positive and right negative are are the signal outputs. A few use the left negative and the right positive. Others still (mostly mono amplifiers that are to be used in bridged pairs) require that you choose 0° or 180° via a switch to invert the signal.

www.bcae1.com/bridging.htm