chipKIT Tutorial 6: Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) communication

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I2C or IIC (Inter-Integrated Circuit) is a simple bidirectional serial interface, which requires only 2 signal lines for data transfer. It was originally developed by Philips in 1980′s to provide easy on-board communications between a CPU and various peripheral chips in a TV set. Today, it is widely used in varieties of embedded systems to connect many low speed peripherals, such as external EEPROMs, sensors, LCD drivers, port expanders, real-time clocks, etc, to the host microcontroller. In this tutorial, we will explore the chipKIT Wire Library for establishing an I2C communication link between the chipKIT Uno32 board and two I2C

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Enhanced water and condensation safe touch sensing operation

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This application note explains the unique auto-calibration feature of the touch sensor family from NXP and provides guidelines for enhanced water and condensation safe operation, focusing on applications with capacitive touch buttons. Capacitive touch sensing is considered as a revolutionary development to replace mechanical buttons in all application areas. While providing an easy to implement hermetic touch interface with no mechanical parts, factors as accumulated contaminations, condensation and water droplets have been less pleasant topics to deal with. Robustness is a major concern. Especially in harsh environments as workshops where contaminations are usual, in automotive applications where extreme climate conditions

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Arduino basic I/O learning shield

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Jesus Echavarria, an electronic designer from Spain, has informed us about his K4S Keyboard project, which is a basic I/O shield specially designed for learning Arduino Programming using the Scratch for Arduino (S4A) platform. S4A is a modified version of the MIT’s Scratch Project and supports interactive Arduino programming through drag and place blocks. The design of K4S board is simple and contains three 10mm LEDs, three tact switches, one potentiometer, and one Piezo buzzer. It can be used for educating kids the basics of Arduino programming using S4A. Experiments that can be done with this shield include basic digital input and

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