Electronics - The Cerebral Kitchen

Tutoring Day 2 - Python

by Michael Earls

Today was day 2 of the tutoring session for a coworker's daughter. She's into 3D printing, coding, and electronics, so I volunteered to help her learn the topics. Today, she wanted to start

Classic Arcade Games

My first arcade cabinet project - part two

by Michael Earls

I did some more troubleshooting today and I have to admit that I'm a little embarrassed. I took the power supply and harness out of the cabinet so I could work on it

Classic Arcade Games

My first arcade cabinet project - part one

by Michael Earls

I woke up early Saturday morning so I could get started before it got too hot (it still smells bad from having the dead rat in it, so we're keeping it in the carport to air out). I plugged in the cab and the speakers made a crackling sound for a few seconds and then went silent.

Classic Arcade Games

Pac-Man Fever - My newest electronics project - Part 1 - Maggie and the dead rat

by Michael Earls

Every story has a beginning. The story of how I acquired my first arcade cabinet is no exception. It started when I was contacted by an old high school friend on Facebook. She

Electronics

Building a Magic: the Gathering Life Counter with Arduino and MAX7219

by Michael Earls

Before dedicating myself to the task of soldering 64 LEDs to make my 4x4x4 LED cube, I decided to build a life counter for the card game Magic: the Gathering. Basically, it is

Electronics

4x4x4 LED Cube - Part 2 - Schematic

by Michael Earls

I sat down and built the schematic for my 4x4x4 LED cube tonight. I only built out 2 layers. The other 2 layers are identical to the first two. They are stacked on

Electronics

4x4x4 LED Cube - Part 1 - Design

by Michael Earls

This post is the first in a series on making a 4x4x4 LED cube utilizing a Max7219 as a multiplexer.

Pathfinder

Being bored has never felt so good

by Michael Earls

Ater two 55+ hour work weeks and a 17 hour day (we didn't leave the office until 1 AM and I worked through lunch that day), I've been a bit lazy. In fact,

Electronics

I have officially turned to the dark side

by Michael Earls

Slowly turning to the dark side, I just purchased my first Apple watch.

3D Printing

3D Printer Z-Axis Woes

by Michael Earls

In a previous post, I discussed my new 3D printer and I briefly mentioned that I'm having z-axis banding issues. I'm not quite sure what's happening, but I initially had severe z-axis banding

3D Printing

My first 3D printer - the Geeetech i3 Pro B (Prusa Clone)

by Michael Earls

Back in the day... When I was a kid (back in the 80's), I used to come home from school and watch a great TV show about future technologies. I don't remember the

FPGA

FPGA for Fun #1 (Part 2) - Driving the MAX 7219 LED Display Module

by Michael Earls

In a previous post, I covered the wiring diagrams, finite state machines, and LED segment encoding for the MAX7219 display module wired up to the Mojo FPGA. In this post, I will cover

FPGA

FPGA for Fun #1 (Part 1) - Driving the MAX 7219 LED Display Module

by Michael Earls

I recently ordered a few LED display modules based on the MAX7219 chip. When they arrived, I immediately began putting together projects to use them. The first project was to wire one up

Programming

Driving the Max 7219 7-Segment Display Module from ASP.NET Core on the Raspberry Pi

by Michael Earls

In a previous blog post, I discussed how to create a dotnet core 2.0 WebApi application to run on the Raspberry Pi and trigger an LED. This post will build upon that

Programming

Is the feedback loop the key to a learning computer?

by Michael Earls

When I was in my early 20's, I setup my Korg Poly-Six synthesizer so that the audio output fed into a Radio Shack (Realistic) Reverb Machine with the output of that going back

Electronics

The Hand-MIDI Interface Project - Adafruit Feather 32u4 with Magnetometer

by Michael Earls

A few months ago, I had an idea to create a new musical instrument that mounted on a glove. I used a cycling glove that I had from that time that I bought

FPGA

Armchair Engineering - Ignorance is bliss

by Michael Earls

I'm totally into my FPGA. Embedded Micro is supposed to be announcing a new FPGA based on the new Artix 7 FPGA chip that will allow me to run the new Vivado design

Synthesizers

Emulating a Lunetta circuit with an FPGA is a flawed idea

by Michael Earls

Last night, I decided to explore an idea that I have been formulating over the past several months, but haven't actually taken the time to explore. I had a thought that I could

Electronics

Strange VGA Effects on an FPGA

by Michael Earls

When I assembled my VGA implementation on my Mojo FPGA, I did so with only a single wire for each of the color signals (Red, Green, and Blue). This limited my color choices

FPGA

A Saturday morning puzzle on my FPGA

by Michael Earls

I woke up this morning with a desire to solve a puzzle. I decided that I'd make a simple LED chaser on a 7-segment LED display using my Mojo FPGA (now that I

FPGA

Pong on the Mojo Revisited

by Michael Earls

In my previous post, I briefly discussed the implementation of a pseudo-pong game on my Mojo FPGA developer board. I was able to implement the VHDL version that I linked to later in

FPGA

Creating PONG on the Mojo FPGA

by Michael Earls

I recently found an old VGA monitor on the side of the road and it inspired me to see if I could get my Mojo FPGA board to output a VGA signal. I

Electronics

Custom Fritzing part for Mojo v3

by Michael Earls

There is a great tool called Fritzing that allows you to create a breadboard view of circuits that you can use for documentation. I really wanted to use it to document the breadboard

Mathematics

Solving the Stable Marriage problem on an FPGA (Part 2)

by Michael Earls

In part 1, I introduced the Stable Marriage problem and proposed implementing it on an FPGA. In this post, I will define the approach I am taking to define the preferences in binary

FPGA

Using Notepad++ as the default editor for Xilinx ISE

by Michael Earls

I was having difficulties working with the built in text editor for the ISE FPGA tool from Xilinx. I was missing some of the things I've come to depend on in the editors

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