Thursday November 06 2014

Here's a little makeover of an inexpensive aftermarket car seat heating pad that stopped working. Designed to activate and warm up when sat upon, the electronics face a fair amount of abuse: since the seat is a soft frame, the wires inside constantly move and flex with the body. They are also subject to harsh […]

Unlike Sparkfun, who actually manage to find fake Atmel ICs, we just get strange batches. The Atmel ATMega328 is the power behind the Arduino/Freeduino/*duino, and we have to set up a programming system to burn the venerable Arduino Bootloader into these chips. We normally use an AVR STK500 in HVSP (high voltage serial programming) mode, […]

Here's a little something from Grant in the development lab - a very simple pair of circuits based on Mark Tilden's Bicore Shok architecture. This circuit makes for a very simple, effective Photovore robots, or even a photo-head. Take a look - schematics & parts listed included! We've also added a gallery entry for these […]

HELLO EVERYONE, AND WELCOME TO THIS WEEK'S EDITION OF STUFF THAT'S NEW. But before we get started, how about some light-hearted entertainment, yes? Chances are you've heard of the Toronto International Film Festival. It has something to do with those fancy moving pictures that seem to be all the rage these days.  You might recognize […]