Built a simple Function Generator with Frequency Counter over the last couple of nights. It’s pretty basic — 0-~500kHz, 0-12V, Sine or Triangular waves — but good enough for my test needs. The frequency counter is basically an Arduino repackaged to feed the attached LCD. The counter isn’t super accurate, but is within 1% of what my multimeter says.
The kit has a fairly high voltage requirement for DC (>= 15V), but this was solved by a quick trip to Active Surplus. $11 bought me a 15V power supply (which delivers around 19V open circuit) and the right kind of barrel jack.
(Talking of neater meters, I didn’t know mine could support the Bluetooth Adaptor reviewed here. Dad’s old Avo couldn’t do that!)
I just built my first Atari Punk Console, a simple LM556-based noisemaker beloved of the circuit-bending crowd (and pretty much avoided by everyone else). Jimmie P Rodgers sells a nice board (or kit), and I bought a few boards a while back, and only just built one up now.
The board’s a nicely finished little thing:
… and yes, it really only needs three resistors, three capacitors, and the 556, plus the control pots, power, speaker and all-important on/off button. The APC sounds a little like a drunken, flatulent bee banging around in a lager can, so you really want to be able to turn this thing off.
Jimmie designed this to fit in an Altoids tin, but Catherine had discarded a LUSH Massage Bar Tin which looked just about the right size. The tin is made of butter-soft aluminium, so it’s easy to start holes in it with the awl on my Dutch Army knife. It’s bigger than an Altoids tin, so you don’t have to fight to get things in. Lastly, the LUSH tin is nicely curved, and fits in your hands well.
I’d been surviving on a series of sub-$50 multimeters for years. They’d give an approximation of a reading,then fail miserably in a variety of stupid ways. The last one, a rip-off of an Extech, decided to show me how its wires were connected to the probes. “Barely” is a fair description.
So I thought I’d buy a decent meter. One that had heft and gravitas, like the Avo 8 that my dad used to bring home from work. The Avo — seemingly constructed from bakelite, glass and lead — didn’t just take readings, it told you The Truth on its mirrored scale.
So I bought an Agilent. Reliable company, all the right features, beeps politely only when required; a very, very sensible meter. Then I found these in the package:
Dude, what?! Skins on a meter? Meters aren’t toys. Meters are sensible things used by sensible people. We don’t want our work distracted by thoughts of Space!, America!, Sports!, or Some Kind of Bug Thing Eww Squish It Squish It! If you were able to get “skins” for the Avo 8, they would be about Wisden, sheds, and the TSR2.
Pretty much everyone tries the RGB colour cycler when they get their first Arduino. This variant cycles through the HSV colour wheel, though at fixed saturations and values.
Code:
// HSV fade/bounce for Arduino - scruss.com - 2010/09/12
// Note that there's some legacy code left in here which seems to do nothing
// but should do no harm ...
// don't futz with these, illicit sums later
#define RED 9 // pin for red LED
#define GREEN 10 // pin for green - never explicitly referenced
#define BLUE 11 // pin for blue - never explicitly referenced
#define SIZE 255
#define DELAY 10
#define HUE_MAX 6.0
#define HUE_DELTA 0.01
long deltas[3] = {
5, 6, 7 };
long rgb[3];
long rgbval;
// for reasons unknown, if value !=0, the LED doesn't light. Hmm ...
// and saturation seems to be inverted
float hue=0.0, saturation=1.0, value=1.0;
/*
chosen LED SparkFun sku: COM-09264
has Max Luminosity (RGB): (2800, 6500, 1200)mcd
so we normalize them all to 1200 mcd -
R 1200/2800 = 0.428571428571429 = 109/256
G 1200/6500 = 0.184615384615385 = 47/256
B 1200/1200 = 1.0 = 256/256
*/
long bright[3] = {
109, 47, 256};
long k, temp_value;
void setup () {
randomSeed(analogRead(4));
for (k=0; k<3; k++) {
pinMode(RED + k, OUTPUT);
rgb[k]=0;
analogWrite(RED + k, rgb[k] * bright[k]/256);
if (random(100) > 50) {
deltas[k] = -1 * deltas[k]; // randomize direction
}
}
}
void loop() {
hue += HUE_DELTA;
if (hue > HUE_MAX) {
hue=0.0;
}
rgbval=HSV_to_RGB(hue, saturation, value);
rgb[0] = (rgbval & 0x00FF0000) >> 16; // there must be better ways
rgb[1] = (rgbval & 0x0000FF00) >> 8;
rgb[2] = rgbval & 0x000000FF;
for (k=0; k<3; k++) { // for all three colours
analogWrite(RED + k, rgb[k] * bright[k]/256);
}
delay(DELAY);
}
long HSV_to_RGB( float h, float s, float v ) {
/* modified from Alvy Ray Smith's site: http://www.alvyray.com/Papers/hsv2rgb.htm */
// H is given on [0, 6]. S and V are given on [0, 1].
// RGB is returned as a 24-bit long #rrggbb
int i;
float m, n, f;
// not very elegant way of dealing with out of range: return black
if ((s<0.0) || (s>1.0) || (v<0.0) || (v>1.0)) {
return 0L;
}
if ((h < 0.0) || (h > 6.0)) {
return long( v * 255 ) + long( v * 255 ) * 256 + long( v * 255 ) * 65536;
}
i = floor(h);
f = h - i;
if ( !(i&1) ) {
f = 1 - f; // if i is even
}
m = v * (1 - s);
n = v * (1 - s * f);
switch (i) {
case 6:
case 0:
return long(v * 255 ) * 65536 + long( n * 255 ) * 256 + long( m * 255);
case 1:
return long(n * 255 ) * 65536 + long( v * 255 ) * 256 + long( m * 255);
case 2:
return long(m * 255 ) * 65536 + long( v * 255 ) * 256 + long( n * 255);
case 3:
return long(m * 255 ) * 65536 + long( n * 255 ) * 256 + long( v * 255);
case 4:
return long(n * 255 ) * 65536 + long( m * 255 ) * 256 + long( v * 255);
case 5:
return long(v * 255 ) * 65536 + long( m * 255 ) * 256 + long( n * 255);
}
}
Built a simple Function Generator with Frequency Counter over the last couple of nights. It’s pretty basic — 0-~500kHz, 0-12V, Sine or Triangular waves — but good enough for my test needs. The frequency counter is basically an Arduino repackaged to feed the attached LCD. The counter isn’t super accurate, but is within 1% of what my multimeter says.
