Micro Controllers have become so powerful and inexpensive that this would be a good time for anyone wishing to do embedded programming to take the leap. I recently purchased an ATMega1280 knockoff board for around $50
[here] and am very impressed with it and immediately wanted to start programming it so I started googling for tutorials and examples and found that there were plenty of articles but not for this board so I had to convert everything I found to work with my board, as a result I will be featuring a series of articles and tutorials geared towards the ATMega1280 board and relate my experiences as I progress.
WinHeist Windows Hobbyist Electronic Inventory SysTem
Looking for an easy way to keep track of all those electronic components?, With minimal effort you can also track orders and create material lists that automatically update your inventory. This simple to use application is customizable and has an intuitive user interface that is designed with the electronic hobbyist in mind.
The latest release Version 1.0 has the following features;
- Component organized by Category/Subcategory
- Preferred supplier and Price
- Advanced Search
- Alert threshold for components that visually alert when a components count has gone below a value defined by the user.
- Ability to generate order from alerted components.
- Order Module - maintain a grocery list of items planned to be ordered and respective prices. When items received inventory updated automatically.
- Project module - allows user to keep a record of inventory used on projects and when committed updated inventory automatically.
Setting up programming environment for ATMega1280
This will be the first in a series of articles about the ATMega1280 Micro Controller and the best place to start is at the beginning. This article will lead you through the various environments that may be used to program, debug, simulate and upload the software for your device. Also included will be helpful documentation that I have found indispensable during the design stage.
I have a little electronics background (just enough to be dangerous as they say) so saying this my emphasis will be on the software, the schematics I provide will be mostly the result of articles that I found on the internet and have used in the projects I submit here.
FreeNAS or Ubuntu
A while back I read an interesting article on CodeProject about building a Network
Attached Storage (NAS) box using a computer that would otherwise be used as a door
stop or for spare parts. Being the cheap SOB that I am this sounded like a perfect
project for me, but at the time I didn't have a spare computer laying around. After
waiting for some time and not being able to find a free box I found that I cound
buy a few parts new and use some of the spare parts that I did have laying around.
To make a long story short I found a deal on
NewEgg and ended up with the following;
System Specs.
Biostar G31E-M7 Mobo
Intel Celeron 1.8 Gb Processor
1 GB DDR2 Ram
550W Power supply
Had an old case and CD reader
Total cost including shipping < $200
I installed FreeNAS and had it set up in a short time and was very pleased with
the results but as is always the case I got a bad case of scope creep. Since I use
Subversion as my source control of choice I wanted to set up a repository but found
it to be a daunting task, and since I didn't have an intemit knowledge of FreeBSD
I went looking for alternatives to FreeNAS. My son has used Ubuntu on occasion and
recommended it but not having any Linux experience I shyed away from it. But after
some prodding I decided to give it a go so I installed it on VirtualBox and set
it up as a server to see how easy it would be and if it would do what I wanted it
to do and was astounded at the results. In this article I will relate my experiences
with both products and give some insight into the capabiities, problems and comparisons
between the two.
RichText Control in C# and VS2005
The RichText Control is a lightweight control that can be seamleesly integrated into your
application to provide a rich set of features that rival those of a control you would have to pay for.
Among its many features this control allows the user to insert single or multiple images, open and save
files in either raw or rich text formats and maintains a transparent background allowing the developer to add
background content including images.
ClipSpy+ - Clipboard intercept application
The Clipboard class uses global memory to store and retrieve data during cut, copy and paste operations
and when dragging and dropping files. It accomplishes this by storing data pertaining to the object in
fragments with various formats to represent different aspects of the data being acted upon.
Windows provides a hook for anyone interested in intercepting data from the Clipboard by allowing
us to add ourself to a chain or linked list of listeners. The only thing we need to do here is to relay
the data passed to us to the next listener in the chain. Don't break the chain or you'll be dancing on
thin ice! i.e. unpredictable things can happen.
Gradients made easy - A utility to design Gradients interactively.
I'm not going to go knee deep into explaining graphics, GDI+ or even gradients, instead I'm going to give
a brief overview for each of the important concepts then I'll move on and and get into how to create the
gradients that you see/have seen in this article. A lot of them were easy, some I stumbled on and some I
really had to scratch my head and just try different things but overall I've managed to create some pretty
nice graphics and you can too. First thing we need to do is get a basic understanding of the concepts, so
this first section is devoted to that.