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Archive for the ‘Arduino’ Category

Xbox 360 receiver added to the USB Host Library

December 29th, 2012 104 comments

You asked for it and here it is.
I finally got the time to implement support for Wireless Xbox 360 controllers to the USB Host Library. This is done via a Xbox 360 Wireless receiver that is normally intended for Windows computers.

The source code can be found at github: https://github.com/felis/USB_Host_Shield_2.0/blob/master/XBOXRECV.cpp
There is an example as well: https://github.com/felis/USB_Host_Shield_2.0/blob/master/examples/Xbox/XBOXRECV/XBOXRECV.ino.

The receiver supports up to four controllers internally, so it was fairly easy to implement it.

Actually I havn’t tested the library with more than one controller, but if somebody out there could confirm if it’s working or not, with more than one controller, I would really appreciate it!
Thanks to Tim, multiple controllers is now confirmed to work!
Read more…

Categories: Arduino, TKJ Electronics, USB Tags:

LVDS Display controller for microprocessors

October 3rd, 2012 50 comments

We have had a couple of embedded projects for our customers where the requirement were large-screen LVDS displays. By large screen I mean sizes over 7″ and a resolution of 800×480 where the common SSD1963 LCD controller can’t be used as the frame buffer RAM is too small.

LVDS Display Controller V1.0


So now we have decided to make our own similar display controller board but for LVDS displays as they are much more inexpensive and common (used in TVs and PCs).
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Categories: Arduino, ARM, FPGA, Other Microprocessors Tags:

Wiimote added to USB Host library

August 21st, 2012 72 comments

This is yet again a new announcement regarding the USB Host library. I just added support for the Wiimote via Bluetooth.
Check out the source code at github: https://github.com/felis/USB_Host_Shield_2.0/blob/master/Wii.cpp and the example sketch as well.
I will work on implementing support for the Nunchuck and Wii Motion Plus extension in the near future.

Update:
The library now also supports the Nunchuck controller and the Motion Plus extensions. The newest version of the library can be found at github.

Another Update:
The library now also work with the new Wiimote where the Motion Plus extension is built-in.
Check out my commit to see what where needed in order to make the new Wiimote work as well – the main difference is that you now have to send the data using the interrupt channel.
To tell if your Wiimote is the new type, it should have a label at the bottom saying “Wii MotionPlus INSIDE”. If you are in doubt take a look at this picture.

Yet another update:
The IR camera inside the Wiimote is now also supported. The the following commit for more information.

A new update once again:
The Wii U Pro Controller is now also supported via Bluetooth.

Categories: Arduino, Bluetooth, TKJ Electronics, USB Tags:

RFCOMM/SPP Library for Arduino

July 30th, 2012 104 comments

This is yet again a new library for Arduino.
But this time it is a speciel one and a library I have though about making for a long time since I wrote the PS3 Bluetooth Library. It is the RFCOMM/SPP library, in short it is a virtual serial port via Bluetooth, which means you can now communicate with your Arduino via Bluetooth using a normal terminal application on your computer, smartphone etc. It has been confirmed working with Windows 7, Mac OS X, Linux (Ubuntu 12.04) and several Android devices.

Arduino RFCOMM

Arduino Mega with some compatible dongles

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Categories: Arduino, Bluetooth, USB Tags:

Xbox 360 controller support added to the USB Host Library

July 18th, 2012 88 comments

Update
A wireless Xbox 360 controller is now also supported via a Wireless receiver. For more information see the blog post.

Hi everyone. I just wanted to let you know, that I just added support for the Xbox 360 controller via USB to the USB Host Library. The code can as always be found at github: https://github.com/TKJElectronics/USB_Host_Shield_2.0.

Categories: Arduino, TKJ Electronics, USB Tags:

NXT Shield Library

April 18th, 2012 5 comments

After several questions on how to use the NXT Shield I decided to create an Arduino library. All the code is available at github: https://github.com/TKJElectronics/NXTShield.
The library is pretty easy to use, I have provided three examples witch demonstrates all the libraries functionalities.

I works with all official Arduinos including Arduino Mega. To use the ultrasonic sensor with an Arduino Mega, one have to connect pin 20 (SDA) to A4 and pin 21 (SCL) to A5. A new revision of the shield might use the two extra SDA and SCL pins that are near to the AREF pin on r3 versions of the new Arduino boards.

Below are some photos of the NXT Shield:
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ATtinyRemote

March 20th, 2012 70 comments

I have previous thought about buying a universal remote like this one, as I was tired of grabbing my JVC remote for my stereo everytime I had to turn it on, off or turn the volume up or down. But then I discovered Ken Shirriff’s IR Library for the Arduino. Normally the library didn’t support neither the Panasonic or JVC protocol, but I discovered that somebody else had already added them. See the forked github library. At first I simple downloaded the library and tested whenever it could decode the Panasonic protocol and send commands to my JVC stereo. It had to tweak the library a bit, but then it worked just fine.
I thought it would be a bit overkill to use an Arduino and I didn’t want to rewrite the whole library, so I decided to use another AVR’s but in a much smaller package, the ATtiny85. Which is 8-pin AVR.
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Categories: Arduino, Guides, TKJ Electronics Tags:

The Balancing Robot

March 4th, 2012 599 comments

Now avaliable as a kit
A balancing robot kit is now avaliable via Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tkjelectronics/balanduino-balancing-robot-kit. Check out the blog post as well: http://blog.tkjelectronics.dk/2013/03/balanduino-balancing-robot-kit-kickstarter/.

Hello everybody
I have for a long time wanted to build a remote controllable balancing robot aka Segway – that’s was actually the main reason why I created the PS3 Bluetooth Library both for Arduino and the FEZ Devices. It has been a long time since the sneak peak and the performance has been improved a lot since then. The original one had a FEZ Rhino as the main processor, but I discovered that it was not fast enough to read the encoders, as it is not running embedded code. Also I was already using more than 10ms per loop, which I used as a fixed time loop, so I decided to step up a notch and go for a much more powerful device: the mbed microcontroller, which is an ARM Cortex-M3 running 96MHz.

It might have been possible with just a normal Arduino (NB: I have now ported the code to Arduino, see update for the code), but I didn’t want the speed of the processor to be an issue, so I decided to go for the mbed. The robot also features an Arduino Duemilanove with a USB Host Shield on top running a sketch based on my PS3 Bluetooth Library. The mbed board actually has USB Host functionality, but I decided not to port the PS3 Bluetooth Library as my original thought were to use an Arduino Due, but as you might know it hasn’t been released yet, despite the Arduino team announced, that it would be released by the end of 2011. But as soon as it is released I think I will port the code to it instead.

Video Demonstration
Here is a short video demonstration of the robot and me explaining some of the concepts of the design and how it works:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N28C_JqVhGU]
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PS3 Controller BT Library for Arduino

January 16th, 2012 291 comments

I just finished porting the bluetooth library to Arduino. It’s based on the library for the USB Host Shield from Circuits@Home. It works exactly the same way as the class for the boards from GHIElectronics – FEZ Panda, FEZ Rhino etc. You should check out my other post, if you haven’t already: FEZ Panda & PS3 Controller, FEZ Panda & PS3 Controller via Bluetooth, and Demonstration of the PS3 Controllers in action.
To make it work, you’ll need a USB Host Shield or an Arduino ADK.

Update
I have now created another library that only supports the controller via USB. The source code for the USB library can be found at the github repository. An example can be found as well: PS3USB.ino.

Video Demonstration

The library can be found at our Github: https://github.com/felis/USB_Host_Shield_2.0. You should also see the Github wiki for more details.

Categories: Arduino, Bluetooth, TKJ Electronics, USB Tags:

Arduino Due – what about it?

November 28th, 2011 2 comments

Some of you might have noticed the new upcoming product in the Arduino series, the Arduino Due. The Arduino Due is going to be the first Arduino with a processor not being an AVR.

Arduino Due - ARM based Arduino


The Arduino Due is going to contain an ARM Cortex-M3 processor from Atmel, the SAM3U, running at 96MHz. This processor has got a lot more Flash and SRAM than the original Arduino boards, and includes 5 SPI buses, 2 I2C interfaces, 5 UARTs, 16 Analog inputs and a whole bunch of Digital I/Os.
With the processing power of this new board and the big community around the Arduino family, we are going to see much bigger and more advanced projects in the future.

Finally Arduino has realised the need for a more powerfull but easy development board for the market. They have realised that the ARM-family is the way to go in the embedded world, and I am very satisfied with the choice of an Cortex-M3 processor, which is relatively low cost, has a fair amount of processing power, Flash and SRAM and of course also a lot of usefull periphirals.

Their plan is to have this board ready for the market by the end of 2011. We are definitely looking forward to test and review this!
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Categories: Arduino, ARM, News Tags: