Embedded Computing Design

If you grew up in the 80s or 90s, you were likely amazed when devices like the Nintendo Game Boy and Sega Game Gear came onto the scene, enabling you to play versions of Mario or Sonic on the go.

One thing I?ve enjoyed integrating into videos are physically panning shots, taken with a slider. My setup worked well, but the controls were extremely poor.

These devices cram up to a 1 GHz processor, ADC, Ethernet capabilities, and 1 GB of DDR2 RAM into an enclosure the size of a nickel.

This year, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has stepped its game up with the Pi Model B+.

When using an Arduino board, DC motors and hobby servos are relatively easy to control, but stepper motors require a bit more electronic fiddling to get working correctly.

When working with MCUs and the like, blinking lights and OLED outputs are fun, but to create something that actually moves, your first choice will normally be a DC motor.

While Arduino boards and the like can respond to serial inputs from a computer, to really take advantage of MCUs and their associated development boards, you need an array of sensors.

First off, the Pi Zero doesn?t use a standard HDMI connector, or even RCA-style outputs, but needs a mini-HDMI cable.

While the NRF24L01+'s range is limited to 100 meters or less line-of-sight, it?s perfect for simple remote control and data transmission applications.

By moving on to the next project or task without reflecting on and recording what we?ve done, we lose some important benefits that we could get from documenting our projects.

The LoRaWAN low power wide area network operates on the open radio spectrum, meaning that anyone is free to set up a LoRa network without data transmission fees.

Instead of buttons, potentiometers, and the like being fed directly into your microprocessor, you can take care of this with a few wires, and the near-ubiquitous I?C protocol.

As my first foray into a ?useful? ESP8266 device, I decided to make a pumpkin that can be controlled via a smart device on my local network.

One of the most popular protocols for facilitating integrated circuit communication is I2C. Since October 2006, no licensing fees are needed for implementation of the protocol.

You can build up your own smart home to your exact specifications for a very reasonable price by using various flavors of Raspberry Pi, available for as little as five dollars.

What would you do with a Raspberry Pi Zero or Zero W?

MakerPro: I found that I had hotkeys on my keyboard that worked for mute and volume control functions, but the ergonomics are lacking.

The board features an ATtiny85 microcontroller for processing, giving it 8K of flash memory and five available I/O pins.

[Image by RoboCore Robot Sumo by Paulolenz via Wikimedia Commons, CCA-SA 3.0] In human competition, one could argue that there is no purer expression of sport than pitting one person directly...

[WeMos D1 Mini back by Tpkull via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.] In my last article, I went over how I was able to program the WeMos D1 Mini ESP8266 development board via the Arduino IDE....