my recent reads..

LEAP#423 The Maker UNO

I was recently shown an Arduino-compatible board made by Cytron in Penang, Malaysia called the Maker UNO. I gather it began life as a very successful kickstarter that aimed to produce a better board and associated teaching materials for K-12 education.

It packs some nice additional features in the Uno form-factor:

  • LEDs on all digital pins
  • a piezo buzzer on pin 8
  • a push-button on pin 2

Aside from looking pretty spiffy, a really nice feature is the price - currently listing for RM15 (~$3.60 USD)!

As always, all notes, schematics and code are in the Little Electronics & Arduino Projects repo on GitHub

Here’s a quick demo sketch that exercises the LEDs, buzzer and push-button:


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LEAP#422 VL53L0X Laser Tape Measure

The VL53L0X is a very small Time-of-Flight (ToF) ranging sensor. It is quite widely available as a module, including from Adafruit - see their information page.

For this project I’m taking the module for a test drive and building a short-range tape measure with an Arduino and Nokia 5110 display.

As always, all notes, schematics and code are in the Little Electronics & Arduino Projects repo on GitHub

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LEAP#421 LimeSDR First Look

I think I first heard about LimeSDR-USB on The Amp Hour.

I was convinced to jump in and give it a go particularly because of the fully open-source nature of the platform - from hardware all the way to software, including FPGA code.

The unit is suited to research and development in a wide range of areas, but I suspect as I get more into this I will be mainly focused on areas such as test and measurement (e.g. spectrum analysis) and amateur radio.

As always, all notes, schematics and code are in the Little Electronics & Arduino Projects repo on GitHub hero_image

There are some good video resource, a good place to start is: What is the LimeSDR?


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LEAP#420 CuttleTalk Audio over LiFi

Now I’ve built the Boldport lite2sound, time to test it out. I’m inspired by LEAP#417 SimpleSamplePlayer to attempt some LiFi audio transmission by light.

I’m using the Boldport Cuttle (an AVR/Arduino clone) to transmit an audio sample with an LED, and the Boldport lite2sound as a receiver. The audio out from lite2sound is amplified with LEAP#210 TDA7297 Kit.

As always, all notes, schematics and code are in the Little Electronics & Arduino Projects repo on GitHub

And it works;-) I think I’ve found the Spirit of Saar in the Cuttle..


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