It is going very well with us, TKJ Electronics. We have a lot of ongoing projects and try as much as possible to update the blog with information about these projects.
Though we thought it would be very interesting to get some feedback from all of you brainy guys out there too, so why not make a contest about it ? and as announced previously there will of course be a price.
So instead of it being us publishing information about our projects all the time we would like to know more about your project ideas or what projects you would like to see designed.
The only requirements for the project ideas are the following
The project should include some kind of microprocessor (PIC, AVR, Arduino, mbed, LPC, STM32, other ARM etc.)
The project should be affordable with a budget of $200 – this is just the electronics cost for use in the development (not the target price)
The project can?t be something we already have done, but it is ok to use parts of our previous projects
The project idea description should be at least 75 words
We will soon be holding a contest about project ideas, as we would like to get some feedback from all of you brainy guys out there – and of course there will be a price.
So instead of it being us that makes the ideas for new projects all the time we would like to know what you think and what projects you would like to see designed.
At the 16. January 2012 the contest will be opened and everyone is free to enter with their project idea.
The only requirements for the project idea are the following
The project should include some kind of microprocessor (PIC, AVR, Arduino, mbed, LPC, STM32, other ARM etc.)
The project should be affordable with a budget of $200.
The project can’t be something we already have done, but it is ok to use parts of our previous projects
At the 20. February 2012, about 5 weeks later, we will close the contest and select the best idea. The author of the best idea will win the new STM32F4 Cortex-M4 Discovery Kit from ST Microelectronics.
You can read more about the winning price (kit) in our webshop: STM32F4DISCOVERY
NB: The newest source code can now be found at github.
Playstation Navigation and Motion controller
As some of you might have seen, my class for the development boards from www.ghielectronics.com, including FEZ Panda, FEZ domino, FEZ Rhino etc, now also works with the two other PS3 controller: the Navigation and the Motion controller. The Navigation controller works the exact same way as the original Dualshock 3 controller.
The Motion controller is a little different, as all of the commands sent to the controller are sent via the HID Interrupt channel, and not thru the HID Control channel as the Dualshock 3 and Navigation controller. It also use a DATA output request instead of a set output report request. For more information, see the source code and the wiki.
A great thing about the Motion controller is that it features a 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyro, 3-axis magnetomer, a thermometer, and the shiny bulb on the top of course. All these peripherals can by controlled by the FEZ devices too.
Stay tuned as I have almost finished porting the code to Arduino – I will make a new post as soon as I’m finished.
Tonight is a big and great day for TKJ Electronics because we can finally announce the grand opening of our awaited Webshop: SHOP.TKJElectronics.dk
The webshop for now currently contains primarily our Arduino NXT Shield at a price of $43.00 excl. VAT and also our mbed Periphiral Board at a price of $33.50 excl. VAT.
Besides of that the shop also contains some of the standard components and tools needed when doing development – Breadboards, wires, pin headers and LEDs.
There will definitely be more products in the future – but lets say, this is reasonable beginning 🙂
Due to the delayed opening we would like to offer you a $10-off coupon for the products found in the Development boards category (including our boards). The coupon is valid thru January 2012 and it can be used as many times you like.
When checking out please type in the following Discount Code: GRAND-OPENING
Thank you very much for your patience and see you soon in the webstore.
Happy New Year!
Here is a short sneak peak of a project we are working on.
When the project is finished we are going to write a guide about it, publish the code and of course make a longer video explaining the different parts and showing the Segway in action!
I can briefly say that we are using 2x 12V motors + Motorcontroller from Pololu, a 6DOF board from Sparkfun, a FEZ Rhino and a 12V battery pack.
The data from the 6DOF board is run thru a Kalman filter, whose data is used in a PID filter to regulate the motors. More details and source code will come soon!
Evaluation Type: Development Board, ARM Application you used the part in: Embedded Graphics Display Was everything in the box required?: Yes! A USB A to USB Mini-B cable was also required for programming What were the biggest problems encountered?: None – it’s a very easy board to use for a beginner, just like the Arduino
Edit: The BeagleBone is now available for around $89 or ?79 – check out the distributor list at http://www.beagleboard.org/buy
BeagleBoard has recently announced an upcoming product in cooperation with Texas Instruments, which hopefully is going to help both of them to become a bigger part (and share) of the embedded hobby world, which has become pretty big recently and is currently led by the Arduino.
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! Read more…
Evaluation Type: Development Board Application you used the part in: Easy embedded development with microprocessors Was everything in the box required?: Yes What were the biggest problems encountered?: Requires an internet connection for software development (compiling)
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