Search found 115 matches

by hp
Sat Sep 29, 2007 6:26 pm
Forum: Robotics
Topic: i know what i want,,but do not know what it is called
Replies: 8
Views: 9118

It's usually called an ESC (Electronic Speed Control). Tower Hobbies (www.towerhobbies.com) sells them to the R/C type people. You'll have to spend quite a bit ~$50 to get a good one. I wouldn't recommend R/C products though since they are sometimes very poorly designed. Parallax also makes one that...
by hp
Fri Aug 10, 2007 12:00 am
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Save those displays!
Replies: 9
Views: 4613

Wow, and a Noritake VFD at that. Those are generally expensive HD44780 compatiable VFDs that are quite simple to control. Great job getting that to work. I would have never though to look in modern consumer grade equipment for that kind of high end stuff. They generally all use custom ASICs and chea...
by hp
Tue Jul 24, 2007 7:17 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: A bigger display for a portable gps
Replies: 3
Views: 2711

You would be better off getting a laptop or tablet PC and running a stable OS and serving as your non critical instrumentation display. There are lots of software packages that allow you to hook up a gps and display a moving map and all sorts of cool location data. BTW, Don't you have to get FAA cer...
by hp
Tue Jun 12, 2007 10:18 am
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Atmel or FPGA?
Replies: 7
Views: 4907

I would say go with a conventional microcontroller (PICs, Atmel, Freescale, etc). The reason being is that FPGAs use a HDL which is somewhat harder to learn and radically different from standard computer programs. Learning to program on a certain microcontroller is probably much more beneficial in t...
by hp
Sun Apr 01, 2007 10:10 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: New promising solar cell...
Replies: 12
Views: 5382

[quote="Chris Smith"]The best “April Firstâ€
by hp
Sat Mar 17, 2007 3:22 pm
Forum: Computer Programming
Topic: Visual Basic and HTML help
Replies: 1
Views: 3542

....
by hp
Tue Jan 30, 2007 6:27 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Start to Blacklist Ad Sites Here?
Replies: 16
Views: 8693

The issue with the registration system is that the default phpbb verification image was cracked early on by some OCR geniuses. They figured out how to easily decipher the generated images with very little cpu power (and thus bots can flood forums in a matter of minutes). Email verification does not ...
by hp
Tue Jan 30, 2007 6:09 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Monochrome ntsc tv "out" project
Replies: 6
Views: 5220

How about using a Propeller Chip from Parallax? The chip consists of 8 cogs which run 8 seperate threads, each with it's own video generator and 2 counters / plls. This enables full color video generation in either pal, ntsc, or vga. The video generation is actually done in software (the chip can al...
by hp
Sun Jan 07, 2007 11:39 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: 1 TB Hard Drives Very Soon
Replies: 7
Views: 4216

1 TB is way too much space for me. I can barely use my 80gb and 200gb hard drives. I also view the 1TB drives as a risk since new hard drive technology that requires huge amounts of magnetic storage in a small space usually means there are huge dataloss issues. Steve Gibson of grc.com stated that hi...
by hp
Wed Dec 27, 2006 12:37 am
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Google found my topic!
Replies: 9
Views: 5123

Many people believe that Google primarily uses the link counting system where if a site is linked to by other sites a lot than it is ranked higher. This is 'proven' by the fact that Google Bombing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb) exists. As you can see, Google lets its system do what it wa...
by hp
Wed Dec 27, 2006 12:30 am
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: wii remote controls roomba
Replies: 3
Views: 3279

Ingenious. It would be much cooler if the guy wrote his own software to actually interface the roomba straight to the wiimote. While this would require external hardware, the use of a computer to connect the roomba to the remote is kind of unsatisfying, at least for me.

Still pretty cool though.
by hp
Sat Dec 23, 2006 9:34 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Google found my topic!
Replies: 9
Views: 5123

Google is indeed amazing. I fell in the almost exact same situation except that it was my computer science teacher searching for an answer. She was searching for how to add a delay in a vb program and the first result was a code snippet I posted on these forums. Needless to say, the post was printed...
by hp
Sat Dec 23, 2006 9:32 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Ham Morse Code Test Dropped
Replies: 25
Views: 10423

Sweet. I may have to finally get a HAM license. I have been wanting to get one for 6 years but never had the time. I just about gave up on the idea after they added morse code to almost all the license tests a few years ago.
by hp
Fri Dec 22, 2006 9:54 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Toner transfer pcb irony
Replies: 10
Views: 6045

I have used the magazine paper method numerous times to make PCBs. I have used them on projects ranging from through hole parts to surface mount and the results are pretty satisfying. I have a pack of staples brand photo paper that has a paper backing and isn't porous plastic. I have heard this is t...
by hp
Fri Dec 22, 2006 6:40 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Pic of inside of small twisted fluor bulb (cool)
Replies: 8
Views: 4177

I opened up a modern-ish one before and they seem to use specialized driver ICs and one or two fets. I'll have to see if I can find the pcb and see what chip it used.

Harrison