R-B | Embedded Lab

Author Archives: R-B

3-D printed walking robot

Posted on October 24, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

One of the most interesting applications of 3-D printing technology is building customized robot parts. It allows makers to design their own parts on a computer using affordable tools and convert the design into an actual physical product in just a few hours. Randy’s 3-D printed walking robot is a great example of 3-D printing robot parts for rapid prototyping and implementation of your ideas. The robot uses two standard servos for locomotion and are controlled by Arduino. The author also shares his 3-D printer design files and Arduino sketch to the public.

3-D printed robot

Arduino gesture vocalizer

Posted on October 24, 2014 by R-B One comment

People with impaired hearing and speech often find difficult to interact with other people, mostly because their sign language is not understood by all. This Arduino-based gesture vocalizer is designed to assist those people to communicate with normal people. The device is built as a wearable glove, which converts the hand gestures into human recognizable audio. Two flex sensors for detecting bending of fingers and one ADXL335 3-axis accelerometer for getting the orientation of hand are embedded on the glove for gesture recognition. For audio conversion, the APR33A3 audio processor chip is used to storing and playing audio messages. An LCD display is also included in the project for the visual display of the message.

Gesture vocalizer

Zero Plus: An open-source wifi module for IoT applications

Posted on October 23, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

Zero Plus is a new open-source wifi module for Internet of Things applications. This project is currently being crowdfunded on Indiegogo. With RT5350 wifi SoC on board, Zero Plus provides a high performance 360 MHz CPU for advanced applications such as Wi-Fi data processing, etc. In addition, the RT5350 offers a variety of hardware interfaces (SPI/I2S/I2C/PCM/UART/USB) to support a range of possible applications.

Zero Plus IoT development platform

Digital Stethoscope example using the TMS320C5515 DSP board

Posted on October 23, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

Texas Instrument’s medical development kit (MDK) is based on the C5515 DSP and consists of individual analog front-end boards forvECG, digital stethoscope, and pulse oximeter. This application note describes the implementation of digital stethoscope using the front-end board of MDK and sensor to capture the acoustic sound waves of the heart and lungs. The board contains the necessary circuitry for signal conditioning and acquiring signals from the sensors.

Stethoscope implementation on MDK board

Design considerations for a wireless LED sign

Posted on October 22, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

This application note from Texas Instruments describes the hardware design considerations for making a multi-sport scoreboard that is cost efficient, portable, easy to use, and support wireless transmission of display data.

Designing an LED scoreboard

This application report describes the selection of the following: an appropriate LED display, a controller system, a communication system, and software for building the wireless LED-based scoreboard. Different techniques are included to drive the LED display from a microcontroller as well as some test results. This application report is only for displaying numerals on the scoreboard but the same concept can be applied to display alphabets. A similar concept can be extended to large LED-display modules with multiple 16 × 16 or 24 × 24 matrices.

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