code, circuits, & construction

Sparkfun has started two new spin-off sites recently, BatchPCB and OpenCircuits.
BatchPCB is a site for getting printed circuit boards printed cheaply: $2.50 per square inch. Send them a Gerber file and they send you your boards. It’s slower than other PCB fab sites, because they manufacture them in batches, but it’s one of the cheapest I’ve seen.
OpenCircuits is an open wiki of circuits for projects. So far most of the circuits there are parts from the Sparkfun inventory, but others are undoubtedly on their way. It’s open to contributions as well.

Technorati Tags: electronics, PCB

Some good notes on USB Programming for the PIC, from Daniel Hirschmann, tested by Amit Pitaru. Jeff Gray’s Del.icio.us links on USB are good too.

Technorati Tags: electronics, PIC, programming

knew it had to be possible to view serial data in the OSX terminal window, but I’m not enough of a unix geek to figure it out. Finally, a little googling told me what I needed to know. Here’s how to read and send serial data from the terminal in OSX.

Technorati Tags: networked objects, networks, OSX, serial

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This program controls a DC motor attached to the microcontroller via a transistor or relay. Adaptation to make the motor speed change by Ryan Holsopple.

A simple version is at the bottom of the page

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This code reads a 10-bit analog value, splits it into two bytes, and sends it out serially.

Written in Arduino, should work for both Arduino and Wiring.

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