Still alive!

Hey there! Just checking in to make sure that I haven’t abandoned this blog/journal/whatever on my progress into the world of electronics. I have been making great strides indeed, it’s just that documenting that work is quite laborious.

Anyway, there are numerous things that I’m working on simultaneously. I will be getting a fresh new batch of components and tools in the next few weeks (already got them! 🙂 ) so I am looking forward to getting started on actual projects, instead of just tinkering around (although that has been greatly entertaining).

Some of the things that I will be working on are:

[Done!] A clock with a 7-segment led display whose time accuracy will be controlled by the real time clock (also known as a RTC) DS1307.

I already have the RTC DS1337 that I previously purchased, however it is quite different from what I expected. It doesn’t seem to have an easy battery backup like the DS1307, and there really isn’t much hacker community support for it in the way of libraries and tutorials.

Now I could buy a premade module for about $10-15 which would just “plug and play”, but the module is only made up a few passive components – besides the RTC -, and shouldnt be hard at all to make myself. (It wasn’t.)

[Done!] Controlling a 7-segment LED display with a display driver. More specifically, the MAX7219 display driver. I figure it would be a lot easier to get this thing up and running rathar then deal with the hastle of using multiple shift-registers and a whole lot of resistors just to control a 4 or so digit LED display. (And it was, honestly, this thing is like a god send for controlling 7-segment and matrix LED display.)

[Done!] Programming an ATtiny, to start with, and later an ATmega. This is so that I can get away from being dependent on the Arduino being hooked up to my projects all the time, and would reduce the size of my projects as all I would need is the ATmega/tiny, a crystal, a couple of capacitors and something to regulate voltage.

[Done!] Modifying a servo to rotate continuously. This is absolutely necessary for my main project, and there are more then a couple of guides/tutorials online that detail how to do it. (It was ridiculously easy to do this, took no more than 5 minutes start to finish.)

Update (6/Oct/2012): So I started writing this a while back, maybe a month or so, and have accomplished a lot of the things that I had planned. As such, I updated this post and am submitting it now. The detailed posts accompanying each project should be up soon – but knowing my post history I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for them.

Creation

I can’t describe how immensely satisfying  it is to start with a blank sketch like this,

Applying my combined understanding of the Arduino, electronics, and programming to create this,

And have it compile and run flawlessly, and create a physical response:

It’s something so simple, and yet, it’s so empowering.

Hello World!

I got the idea to start collecting my ideas and progress on projects into one directory from Reddit.

I’ve already uploaded several ongoing projects to imgur.com so I’ll be attempting to sync that to here.

Learning to submit posts on here and format them will be a project in itself.

I’ll be attempting to track my progress here in a similar vein to this blog: http://benduino.wordpress.com/