My new year resolution

Posted on January 5, 2013 by bonzo — No Comments ↓

I have to admit that in 2012, I couldn’t find much time to develop any of my existing projects. With the coming new year after a relaxing but time consuming and stressful holidays (o yes they can be stressful when you have to tour heavy trafficked cities in Italy!) I have sat down and write a little road-map for my projects.

Well first of all, I had to fix a couple of issues (well not just one!) with this wordpress site and the wikimedia one. Lots of spambots were polluting everything, so fierce updates were required. After that, I have opted for a more responsive web layout that I am still forging right now with a nice HTML5 format. Other important fixes need to be done with the shipping modules of the e-commerce.

A contact form was introduced since I have noticed many of you trying to contact me (ye I am getting popular!), so now should be more easier from the top menu.

In terms of development I have promised myself to:

  • update the Norduino design (this time via Kicad) with a more compact version of the radio module
  • update the MspNode design with Kicad and cooperate with another developer (Jan Kuras) to make a solar powered version
  • rebuild a stock for the Norduino and perhaps the MspNode
  • organize a Kickstarter campaign for either the MspNode or the Norduino
  • do a mini-USB version of the Norduino via the FTDI chip

God knows how many of these tasks I will manage to complete, but at least I know what I want to achieve and time permitting I will do my best to produce something useful for the community.

I have met very interesting people in 2012 that gave me some very useful advice and will try to exploit them at my best.

 

Posted in Uncategorized

Sigrok officially supports BugLogic3!

Posted on April 20, 2012 by bonzo — No Comments ↓

I am very proud to announce that the folks at Sigrok v0.3 just released a new version of Sigrok that relies on the open source firmware fx2lafw.

Sigrok now rely completely on fx2lafw to support all FX2 based devices. This should reduce the complexity in enabling the open driver+firmware.

That means that now there are cheap and free alternative to the more corporate and closed source products from Saleae or USBee.

Sigrok can be compiled for Windows, Linux and MacOsX and now there are already the most common protocol decoders.

The wiki page for the board is here .

Posted in Bug Logic

XMote2 PCB for Arduino FIO with FreeIMU

Posted on December 18, 2011 by bonzo — No Comments ↓

Here’s my last batch of XMote boards:

The board is essentially identical to the XMote1 with the addition of a FreeIMU connector on top, the other connectors allow the user to connect the excellent groove sensors from Seedstudio.

If you want to build a wireless inertial sensor this is the way to go!

 

Posted in Tutorials

Test robo 4 wd arduino

Posted on November 20, 2011 by bonzo — 3 Comments ↓

This video shows my recent development with the tiny 4WD robot.

I have used a spare Pinnacle IR remote which supports RC6 a very good protocol for IR transmission. Any direction I can select 2 speeds but I need to find a way to add a proportional speed control to make more accurate turns.

I want to replace the IR with an RF controller, more to come soon!

 

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Posted in Norduino Sw

RFID reader with Norduino

Posted on November 9, 2011 by bonzo — No Comments ↓

I have got a module from JSXZLZ.com which reads RFID tags of the 125kHz type and  I thought is going to be very educational to write a simple demo for the Norduino + Teensy.

So what I did was to connect the module to a Norduino with GND, PWR and RX.Make sure you connect the TX pin of the module to the RX pin of Norduino.

The RFID module can be powered both at 3.3V and at 5V, so make sure that you connect the regulated 3.3V of the Norduino board to the Vcc.

The Norduino parse the RFID tag and sends the data to a Norduino USB (Teensy) which emulates a USB Keyboard and thus will type the RFID tag code in your current text enabled form.

Now the RFID I have used have a 14 char identification code terminated with a CR+LF tail, so I had to write a simple code to parse the data, the sketch is called rfid_tx:

void loop(){

if(Serial.available()){
int i=0;
delay(100);
while( Serial.available() && i< RFIDBUF) {
char symbol=Serial.read();
if(symbol==0x0D || symbol==0x0A)
i=RFIDBUF;
else rfidbuffer[i++] = symbol;
}

if(i>0)
{
Mirf.setTADDR((byte *)"serv1");
byte data[Mirf.payload];
Mirf.send((byte *)&rfidbuffer);

while(Mirf.isSending()){
}
delay(1000);
}
}

once the code is parsed, we send it to th Norduino USB and we wait for 1 second to avoid multiple readings.

The range of this thing is amazing, with the card size tag I can read at about 50 cm distance which is good considering we are working at only 3.3V via a small LiPo battery

On the Teensy make sure you enable the Keyboard+Mouse mode and use a simple routine to parse the packet, the sketch is called rfid_keyboard_pde.

void loop(){
  /*
   * A buffer to store the data.
   */

  byte data[Mirf.payload];

  /*
   * If a packet has been recived.
   */
  if(Mirf.dataReady()){

    //do{

      /*
       * Get load the packet into the buffer.
       */

      Mirf.getData(data);

      for(int k=0;k<RFIDBUF;k++)
        Keyboard.print(data[k]);

    //}while(!Mirf.rxFifoEmpty());
  }
}

There is a lot of stuff you can do with this approach: RFID loggers, RFID readers, access control, door lock
but make sure you encrypt the data between the norduino nodes otherwise you are vulnerable to sniff or ma in the middle attacks.

The code is available as usual on the github.

Posted in Norduino Sw

Norduino Wireless Mouse

Posted on October 21, 2011 by bonzo — No Comments ↓

This is a very simple implementation of a wireless inertial mouse.

The Norduino board is fitted with a GravityPlug and a BlinkPlug from Jeelab: that allows the sampling of the 3D gravity vector as well as 2 button presses.

The Teensy on the host computer is adapted with a Nordic module via the Norduino adapter board and receives the samples from the Norduino mouse.

The Teensy allows the direct use of a HID Mouse so you are not reading the serial and emulating mouse, but rather having your own mouse implementation.

The code is available on the github as usual.

PS

I didn’t do any data filtering for the position estimation so at the moment is quite simple but it can be improved with a simple 2 pole digital filter.

 

Posted in Norduino Hardware

XMote sens Amarino integration

Posted on October 19, 2011 by bonzo — No Comments ↓

This is the first successful test for connecting the Amarino toolkit.

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Posted in Tutorials for MiniDspNode

XMote sens and orient are ready!

Posted on October 18, 2011 by bonzo — No Comments ↓

Hello guys, as we say in Italy, we have got 2 pigeons with 1 seed.

I want to show you what I have been working so hard day and night, the fantastic ………. XMoteee … round of applause!

The core behind this platform is the not very well exploited Arduino FIO which has a nice XBee connector on the back, so in essence you can use either the XBee module or the BluetoothBee module from Seedstudio.

So I have wrote some decent software and the necessary electronics to interface the FreeIMU from VabioVaresano (codename XMote Orient ) and the Groove sensors (codename XMote Sens).

I really want to see people using it and so if you want a PCB please drop me an email I have very few.

Cheers.

Posted in Uncategorized

MspNode is born

Posted on October 13, 2011 by bonzo — 6 Comments ↓

The official MSPNode project has been released on the wiki page, it was a concentrated effort of SimpleAVR and JeelabsAndy on the Jeelabs forum.

My roles was essentially testing and electronic layout development. The idea is to produce some kit for people to play with.

The MSPNode is a cheap low power sensor board based on the MSP430 and the RF12B sub 1-GHz RF transmitter from HopeRF.

It’s aimed at MSP430 developers (not arduino based) to achieve professional sensor networks setups.

We had our first radio contact with the USB Jeenode and achieved a low price solution for the kit, that is something really exciting and will post some demo projects soon.

Posted in MSPNode

Norduino USB finally is ready!

Posted on October 12, 2011 by bonzo — No Comments ↓

Yes I managed to prototype and test my adapter boards for the Teensy2 and Teensy2++.

Now the chain is complete, I have got Norduino sensor boards and Norduino USB adapter: think about of all the possible applications.

First of all is all arduino code based, secondly you can run on the host computer USB Serial, USB Mouse/Joystick/Keyboard HID peripherals!

So you can build your own wireless sensor device, keyboard emulators, gyroscopic super mega mouse and so on.

I have for example did a simple prototype of an IMU which can be used to build an inertial mouse, some demo projects will follow up soon!

The wiki page contains the schematics and arduino code to get started, it’s really really easy just run the ping_server on a Norduino board and a ping_client on the NorduinoUSB to see if the packets are being transmitted correctly, then unleash your imagination!

The first kits are available in the shop as usual, I have few boards that will be probably send to friends but I will do a bigger batch next time.

 

Posted in Norduino Hardware