BBC Micro:Bit

The BBC Micro: Bit is, to say the least, an outstanding product. Designed to give the youth of Great Britain a headstart in the world of computing, the device made its way outside of the UK and has been available in the US for a time now. I decided to give it a spin and, […]

A Spark of Life: More DigiSpark fun

I recently wrote about the cool little DigiSpark ATTiny 85 controller board. This little USB wonder, like the AdaFruit Trinket, is based on the ATTiny85 Microcontroller and has limited I/O, memory and is cheap, very cheap. One thing it is not short on, however, is uses. This little thing can be used for a variety […]

Happy Birthday, BASIC, you wonderful language you!

I remember when I was ten or so years old. I asked my father a question that changed both of our lives. My Dad was an engineer. He was also what we would consider now to be a nerd. A geek. Above all, though, he was very smart and he was MY Dad. He could […]

Developing a handheld console with Arduino

Since my first exposure to computers and video games, I have wanted to design and build my own. Lacking, however, the resources and knowledge, I thought it would just be a pipedream. Well, fortunately for me, that is not the case. The technology is to the point where just about anyone can do so and […]

A Video Game on my Trinket, take 2

Several posts ago, I wrote about writing a video game for the Trinket from Adafruit. Well, since then, I have added scoring, sound and a bit more animation (very crude, mind you, I can only do so much in the small memory and limited screen.) The setup uses the Trinket, Parallax’s 2×16 LCD panel and […]

The Trinket: small, versatile and cute

I’ve become a fan of microcontrollers. These little marvels can do a lot: control motors, lights, LED’s,LCD’s, servo mechanisms, keyboards, mice…you name it, it probably has one of these things in it. Some of them, such as the PIC24, are as powerful as yesterday’s microprocessor and can even run real operating systems or video games […]