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Author Archives: R-B

Digital calculator using discrete 7400 series logic ICs

Posted on November 1, 2012 by R-B Leave a comment

Two students (Umair Mukati and Naveed Ahmed) from Institute of Industrial Electronics Engineering in Karachi, Pakistan built this 5-bit signed data calculator using the 74 and 40 series logic ICs. This project is also their entry for the ongoing Open 7400 Competition organized by Dangerous Prototypes.

Digital calculator using 7400 series logic ICs

The calculator does addition and subtraction functions on 5-bit signed data. The fifth bit is the sign bit. The 7485 comparator IC is used to detect the negative output. The result is displayed on a 3-digit seven segment display.

Norfolk Mini Maker Faire 2012

Posted on October 21, 2012 by R-B One comment

Yesterday (October 20, 2012) was Mini Maker Faire day in Norfolk, Virginia. This was the first Maker Faire happened in the Hampton Roads area. It was really good to see people from local hackerspaces and maker communities and their interesting projects. Here are some pictures that I took at the event.

Norfolk Mini Maker Faire 2012

Stellaris Launchpad and TM1638 based seven segment LED display

Posted on October 14, 2012 by R-B One comment

TM1638 based display modules are found dirt cheap on ebay and dealxtreme. These displays require only 3 I/O pins of a microcontroller to operate. Although they are 5V displays, Dan showed in this tutorial that they can be used with 3.3V platforms such as Stellaris Launchpad. He has published his TM1638 display driver routines for Stellaris Launchpad on Google code.

TM1638 display library for Stellaris Launchpad

A quick start-up guide for TI’s Stellaris Launchpad

Posted on October 14, 2012 by R-B Leave a comment

The Stellaris® LM4F120 LaunchPad Evaluation Board is a low-cost evaluation platform for ARM® Cortex™-M4F-based microcontrollers from Texas Instruments. This quick start-up guide from Texas Instruments will help you verify that your tools are properly installed and that you can edit, compile, download and debug your code on the Stellaris® LM4F120 LaunchPad.

More Easy Pulse kits are available now

Posted on October 12, 2012 by R-B Leave a comment

All the Easy Pulse kits from the first lot were sold out pretty quickly. More kits are available now on Tindie. If you are interested to get one, you can buy it from here:

https://tindie.com/rajbex/easy-pulse-a-diy-pulse-sensor-based-on-photoplethysmography/