Marginally Clever Robots

Tutorials

Reverse engineering an 8×8 LED grid for Arduino

2014-11-05 Dan

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of work with LEDs. For an upcoming class called DevFest I’ll be leading a group of ~60 coders in their first steps with Arduino and robotics. This course includes a getting started grab bag of fun electronics, including an LED panel. None of the parts came with any kind of documentation or API. I had to do some reverse engineering to figure out how they worked. This LED panel was both really frustrating and really fun to figure out. How I did it and how you can too

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Store News, 2014-11-03

2014-11-03 Dan

Today we have news about Black Friday week long deals, upcoming classes, and public appearances across the continent. I don’t have a clever picture, so here’s a photo of my manager giving me a hard time.

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Tutorials

Introduction to Morse Code

2014-11-03 Dan

Okay, today’s lesson will be on blinking morse code through Arduino. Morse code is an ancient tongue spoken by grey haired wizards named Tim. It predates the internet, telephones, and radio. Now you, too, can become a master in a few short minutes.

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Tutorials

Arduino: Loops, Conditions, and Methods

2014-11-02 Dan

Previously, we figured out how to colour a pixel in a certain place. Today, we’ll be looking at some of the ways we can colour a whole bunch of lights by using different programming tools.

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Tutorials

Introduction to LEDs 2

2014-10-29 Dan

Previously, we looked at how to wire up your LED string to the Arduino and the power supply. Today, we’ll be completing a demo of the first sketch and seeing how computers do what they do.
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