Balanduino Kickstarter almost finished

April 13th, 2013 6 comments

Hello to all of our followers. This is just a short reminder that the Kickstarter of our Balancing robot, the Balanduino, is nearly finished.
We have already reached our goal of $10.000, but of course it would be great to get even more backers and pledges.

In the meanwhile we have recorded a new video of the robot with a GoPro mounted on the top.

For more information check out the prevouis blog post: http://blog.tkjelectronics.dk/2013/03/balanduino-balancing-robot-kit/ and the Kickstarter page.

Balanduino – Balancing Robot Kit (Kickstarter)

March 18th, 2013 4 comments

Hello all fellow blog readers.
Most of you might be aware of the Balancing robot project we have been working on for quite a while, if not please have a look here: The Balancing Robot.

We have now been working on this project in over a year, fine tuning the balance and stability of the robot and adding even other features and control options.

And NOW we are ready to announce this Balancing robot to be sold as a kit, named Balanduino.

The Balanduino

The Balanduino


The Balanduino kit consists of an Arduino compatible main board with the necessary sensors to keep the robot balanced automatically.

Furthermore the main board contains a USB Host controller, the MAX3421E, which library for the Arduino we have been expanding a lot recently, adding support for many of the most popular game controllers.
This USB Host controller together with a USB Bluetooth dongle enabled you to remotely control the Balanduino with your Android phone, PS3, Wii or Xbox controller and even your Windows, Linux or Mac PC.
Read more…

Categories: Arduino, Balanduino, Bluetooth Tags:

LPC4350 board – which parts would you like to see reviewed

March 3rd, 2013 7 comments

We have just recently bought a one of the latest evaluation kits from Hitex, featuring the new dual-core LPC4350 from NXP – the LPC4350 Evaluation Board.

LPC4350 Getting Started Kit

LPC4350 Getting Started Kit


The processor consists of two cores, an ARM Cortex-M0, as the low-level processor and the high-end ARM Cortex-M4. Even though the two cores are of a different kind and with independently different features, they both run at a frequency of up to a stunning 204MHz.
Read more…

Categories: ARM, Development boards Tags:

Drive LCD TFT displays with an FPGA

February 22nd, 2013 17 comments

FPGA’s can be very advanced to get started using, especially if you are used to microcontrollers.
But when you first get the right feeling and the proper mindset you will soon see the endless possibilities with the programmable logic.

One of the great aspects of the logic is the speed and the full control of what happens at every single clock cycle.
With this full control it doesn’t takes many lines of code to generate a very time-critical signal such as a video signal.

In this short post I will walk thru our current test setup with an FPGA, the Spartan 3E, controlling a 18-bit 7″ 800×480 TFT display.

Spartan 3E controlling a 800×480 TFT LCD

Read more…

Categories: Development boards, FPGA, Guides Tags:

Documentation added for the USB Host Library

February 20th, 2013 22 comments

I’m happy to announce that documentation is now available for all the libraries I have written for the USB Host Shield library.
The documentation is available at the following link: http://felis.github.com/USB_Host_Shield_2.0.
The documentation is generated using Doxygen which is a free documentation-generator based upon the header files in the source code.

For instance the following comment will end up looking like this in the documentation:

I hope this will be useful for people who is new to the USB host library or even people who just want a quick overview.
If you spot any typos or got any comments please let me know in the comments below.

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

Bluetooth controlled RGB light strip

January 20th, 2013 14 comments

In December last year we developed a small Bluetooth controlled RGB light strip for the christmas tree, to be controlled with your Android smartphone

The demonstration of the project and the smartphone control can be seen in the video below.

The main aspect of the project is to use an Arduino to parse incoming Serial commands to enable and set different effects for the attached RGB strip.
The code for the project, including the Arduino code and the Android application project, can be found on GitHub: AndroidControllableLights

Another interesting aspect of the project was to enable wireless update of the Arduino sketch, using the Bluetooth serial connection. Scroll down in this post if you are only interested in figuring out how this can be done. Read more…

Categories: TKJ Electronics Tags:

USB Host Shield is now available in the webshop

January 17th, 2013 73 comments

This is a short announcement regarding the USB Host Shield from Circuits@Home, which we are now carrying in in our store.
By buying the official shield you will support the continous development of the library and get support from us!
The shield can be found and bought here: USB Host Shield 2.0 for Arduino.

The shield can be used with almost any kind of Arduino including the most popular Arduino Uno, Arduino Mega, Arduino Leonardo etc. If you are in doubt if your Arduino is supported please don’t hesitate to write a comment below.

The USB Host Shield will allow you to use any of the Bluetooth and USB libraries I wrote.
Read more…

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

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:

Inexpensive 2×16 LCD display (HD44780)

December 6th, 2012 No comments

Small and inexpensive LCD module


We at TKJ Electronics have just received a big bunch of inexpensive 2×16 Alphanumeric character display with a built in HD44780 controller, making it easy compatible with the Arduino or any other microcontroller.

2 by 16 characters though without backlight


Read more…

Categories: TKJ Electronics Tags:

4×4 Arduino controlled LED Cube

December 2nd, 2012 12 comments

4×4 Cube-board in action


We all know that it has been quite a while since we have written any posts on the blog and we apologize to all our readers.
Before telling more about the project and the blog post finally to come I would like to explain the reason for the big delay.

As TKJ Electronics has been evolving quite a bit over the past year we have been provided with a still increasing amount of consultancy work.
This includes everything from PCB Layout, Arduino software development, Robot platform development, ARM processor units and FPGA solutions. Read more…

Categories: TKJ Electronics Tags: