Last week I was having a discussion with one of our members about solutions on how we can control his biped robot he is working on.  I was trying to explain that we could go something like zigbee (which he has a zigbee servo controller already) but you’re going to trade off throughput, if you wanted to add streaming video to it, and we’ll need to construct something for the pc to talk to the zigbee network.  We could go bluetooth, or even wifi, etc.  And it became a discussion of push pull’s difficulty implementing it, writing code for, cost of parts, etc.

(Biped robot pictured below if you havent’ seen it, it’s really awesome!)

Anyway, I stumbled on this article on digikey’s web site that goes into further detail, but I wanted to share this nice little chart they have in the article.  It really sums up cost vs range vs throughput vs robustness.  I found it useful, thought someone else might also.  Enjoy.

Miles is ready!

You’re not ? Well check us out here. Furthermore we’re doing some google+ stuff too.

Oh and here’s some of the stuff you’ve been missing!

GPS speedo, keepon, old parts, more old parts, dip pic32, and first glimpse at the cake o tron!

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Just playing around with the iPad app Animoog, which I believe is still available for $0.99 at the iTunes app store. This is a huge bargain on a really really cool app.  I won’t get into the specifics of the app, but if you want to know more about what Animoog is or how to use it, I recommend this YouTube video.

So, while playing around with the Animoog app, if you go into the setup menu there is a selection under ‘Refresh MIDI input(s)’ where  you can select ‘Off’ or ‘Network Session 1′.  This intrigued me!  Apparently you can use MIDI over the ‘Network’.  After some Googling I was still unclear on how to get this setup, so I thought I’d just tell everyone how I did it so you can get to making some cool tunes yourself.

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This isn’t a complete list or anything just some links to people’s albums we found. You should check out the entire albums because all the projects are really cool.  Here’s a video of the presentation and here’s some links to pics scoured from the web: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18.  Maximum Tech Photos: 1 2

Chris has been dabbling with CPLD’s and FPGA’s.  He wanted to share some helpful resources with anyone else looking to get started with them as well.

• Difference between CPLDs and FPGAs:

  • http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/difference-between-fpga-and-cpld/

• VHDL Tutorial:

  • http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~ese171/vhdl/vhdl_primer.html

• Xilinx ISE Software (Windows or Linux, 32 & 64 bit available)

  • http://www.xilinx.com/tools/designtools.htm

• Digilent Xilinx FPGA Board:

  • http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,400,790&Prod=BASYS2

• Digilent Xilinx CPLD Board:

  • http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,400,798&Prod=CMOD

• Xilinx Platform USB Programmer:

  • http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=platform+xilinx&_sacat=See-All-Categories
    (you can program through the USB of some of the boards but you can do a lot more with a VHDL interface)

• How to install the cable drivers in Linux:

  • http://www.george-smart.co.uk/wiki/Xilinx_JTAG_Linux#Using_Xilinx_USB_JTAG_Programmers_under_Linux_.28Installing_Cable_Drivers.29

• Opencores.org: (open source hardware modules (“cores”) for FPGAs)

  • http://opencores.org/projects They have a lot including multiple CPU designs.

Just wanted to let everyone know we are participating in the Baltimore  Hackathon.  You can check it out here .

Also this weekend while we are working on the project, our webcam is live.  You can view that here.

I wanted to just say thank you to Jeff Del Papa @ the-nerds for stopping by the space last night and sharing his Junkyard Wars experiences with us. Jeff and his team have been featured on a few episodes in the US and UK.  It was very cool to be able to ask Jeff questions about what happened behind the scenes.

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A little late posting this, but a few of us went to the NYC Maker Fair.  I personally had a blast and wanted to share some pictures with those of you who missed it.

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We’ll be at Electronica Fest.

You should come.

More details here.

Saturday, September 18, 2010
10:00 am – 8:45 pm
Live Music starts at 12 noon

1745 West Nursery Rd.
Linthicum, MD 21090