3D Printing Latest projects I've been working with a new FPGA called the Mercury 2. It has 5 volt tolerant GPIO pins, so I can interface it with my Lunetta synthesizer experiments.
Electronics Featured Four day weekend without the Internet It was just like I remember it back in the days before the Internet. If you wanted to make the computer do something, you just had to figure it out. You got to your destination by trying new things and repeating with small permutations over and over until you get the desired result.
Electronics Featured My Obsession with Feedback Continues I have been working diligently at building my own synthesizer using an FPGA. I will be using a breadboard-mounted Cmod A7: Artix-7 FPGA Module.
Electronics Latest Keyboard Project - CannonKeys Ortho48 Laurie got me a CannonKeys Ortho48 Keyboard Kit [https://cannonkeys.com/products/ortho48] for my birthday this year and I decided to spend my Saturday afternoon building the kit. The kit comes with all the parts you need to make a keyboard except the keyswitches, LEDs, and keycaps. You have
Electronics New Keyboards I had a little change of plans. I canceled the Drop CTRL and ordered a Glorious GMMK [https://www.pcgamingrace.com/products/gmmk-full-brown-switch]. It's the same layout as the CTRL, but it was a lot cheaper. I used the YMDK Carbon keycaps that I had ordered for the CTRL. I
Electronics New Keyboard projects in the works I recently ordered a bunch of mechanical keyboard parts so that I could get a smaller keyboard for work and home. The full-size keyboards aren't leaving me any room for my mouse. I had about $200 worth of Amazon gift card balance, so I ordered a few GK61 kits [https:
Electronics New Cherry MX Black Keyboard I got a new keyboard [https://amzn.to/2MsiFU3] for Christmas. It has Cherry MX Black switches. I'm noticing that my typing has fewer errors with this linear switch. It feels amazing to type on. I think I may like it better than the Cherry MX Brown keyboard that I
Electronics Retro Computing - My first retro computer kit build I got my SC126 Z180 computer kit [https://smallcomputercentral.wordpress.com/sc126-z180-motherboard-rc2014/] in the mail a few nights ago. After two nights of soldering after work, I finally got it assembled. Having a flux pen was helpful, even if it did leave a lot of residue on the board. My
Electronics Retro Computing - Getting Started I've been investigating getting into retro computing using old CPUs like the 6502 or the Z80. Ben Eater is doing a series on building your own 6502 computer [https://eater.net/6502] on a breadboard, but I want to avoid the pitfalls of building complicated circuits on a breadboard. I
Electronics Mechanical Keyboard Frenzy I recently discovered the mechanical keyboard community. Wow, what a bunch. The demand for a great keyboard kit is higher than the supply, so the market is totally out of balance. For all of my other electronics based hobbies, it's been easy to order cheap parts from China. Not for
Programming Baremetal programming, Assembly Language, and FPGAs I've been exploring how to program in assembly language lately. It's been a fun experience. I just ordered a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB of RAM from Adafruit. It should be here by the weekend. One of the things I've recently discovered is called "baremetal programming". It refers to programming
Electronics Driving the Max7219 7-Segment Display Device from a TinyFPGA using Verilog I recently bought a TinyFPGA to replace my Mojo FPGA. The primary reason for this was the outdated toolset required by the Mojo (Xilinx ISE Web doesn't properly run on Windows 10 without some hacking). TinyFPGAtinyfpga.github.io : [https://tinyfpga.com]Affordable, Open-Source FPGA One of the first things that
Electronics DJI Spark Drone - Our newest acquistition We picked up a DJI Spark drone yesterday so we could create some aerial photography. It's a lot of fun to fly. It's also very easy to fly. All you have to do is hit the takeoff button and it will hover 4 feet in the air. When you raise altitude, it will maintain it when you stop.
Electronics Tutoring Day 2 - Python 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 learning how to program, so we wired up some LEDs to her Raspberry Pi and opened the
Electronics My first arcade cabinet project - part two 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 on my bench. I hooked it up to power and there was nothing. I then looked at
Gaming My first arcade cabinet project - part one 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.
Electronics Pac-Man Fever - My newest electronics project - Part 1 - Maggie and the dead rat 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 told me that she was selling off her vintage 1980 Pac-Man arcade cocktail table. The price was
Electronics Building a Magic: the Gathering Life Counter with Arduino and MAX7219 Before dedicating myself to the task of soldering 64 LEDs to make my 4x4x4 LED cube [https://cerkit.com/2018/08/29/4x4x4-led-cube-part-1-design/], I decided to build a life counter for the card game Magic: the Gathering [https://magic.wizards.com/en]. Basically, it is a two-digit 7-segment display that
Electronics 4x4x4 LED Cube - Part 2 - Schematic 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 one another in 3-dimensions by attaching the anodes of the LED "segment" to 16 columns and attaching
Electronics 4x4x4 LED Cube - Part 1 - Design This post is the first in a series on making a 4x4x4 LED cube utilizing a Max7219 as a multiplexer.
Electronics Being bored has never felt so good 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, I haven't felt like doint anything at all. No electronics, no coding, no anything. We did play
Electronics I have officially turned to the dark side Slowly turning to the dark side, I just purchased my first Apple watch.
3D Printing 3D Printer Z-Axis Woes In a previous post [https://cerkit.com/2018/01/30/my-first-3d-printer-the-geeetech-i3-pro-b/], 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 before printing out some "Z axis fix" parts [https://www.
3D Printing My first 3D printer - the Geeetech i3 Pro B (Prusa Clone) 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 name of the show, but it had some interesting ideas. One of those ideas was this notion
Electronics Featured FPGA for Fun #1 (Part 2) - Driving the MAX 7219 LED Display Module In a previous post [https://cerkit.com/2017/12/26/fpga-for-fun-1-part-1-driving-the-max-7219-led-display-module/] , I covered the wiring diagrams, finite state machines, and LED segment encoding for the MAX7219 display module [https://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fsch%2Fi.html%3F_from%3DR40%26_
