I got a chance to talk to Pierce from Logos Electromechanical this weekend at Hackerbot Labs. He showed me some of the new boards (1×3 series and high current arduino shield) that just came in from being manufactured. They look very cool. He also showed me a Rev. 3 board (not assembled) of the Zigdunio. He mentioned that he was getting a lot of interest so far from people around the community that want to integrate RF into their project without having to buy an Xbee Module and shield. It also looks like it has made it onto Wikipedia under the “Shield-compatible clones” section.

The Arduino UNO came out last week. The big difference in this version is the lack of an FTDI chip. It was replaced with a Atmega8U2 programmed as a USB-to-serial converter. Check out the new design and more about the features here. Adafruit had it on their “Ask an Engineer” episode this weekend too.

I have a lot of projects going on right now and one of the biggest annoyances when working with electronics is dangling wire from a board to the breadboard. I have seen some starter kits that come with an acrylic base that has an Arduino and a breadboard mounted to it. I decided to make my own and it turn out pretty well.

I also got to see a 1 watt blue laser diode this weekend which was pretty awesome. Here’s a pic with the lights off and a smoke machine going.

On a last note, I put some more information down about an event that’s coming up in Kalamazoo, MI. I am putting together a little hardware workshop to build and give away Metaboard kits. The Kits are mostly compatible with the Arduino platform and are insanely cheap. More information on that here.

For those of you who are interested, the IO badge (V1) is moving forward. I have the majority of the LCDs on order. The majority of the badges will have 16×1 character LCDs on them (with no blacklight) and a few of them with a 16×2 Character LCD. (with backlight) I will only be making about 30 badges since everything is coming out of my pocket on this project. I would estimate the number to be slightly less due to possible manufacturing defects.

As the design goes right now, the badge will have 5 push buttons. 4 input buttons to control the software and 1 reset button, which I may replace with a header jumper instead. The power will be run off of a 9v battery and it will include an FTDI header to program the board with other firmware (No FTDI chip on board). It will run the ATmega328 (surface mount) with the Arduino bootloader.

I am setting up a parts list and will be putting in the order for all the components the same time as I send the boards out. I plan on posting the firmware on this site a day or two after I give (or sell) them away. I may try to sell them (cheap) to recover some of the costs in producing these. I haven’t made a decision on that yet.

I am still active in ccowmu.org (wmu computer club) and they hold a bi-annual LAN party at the parkview engineering campus (aka PLAN). The plan is to distribute these at the spring event. For more information on the PLAN check out whatistheplan.com.

I have decided to start working on a new badge (possibly for DEFCON or another CON). I will continue to work on the other one as parts come in. The new badge will consist of an arduino like board (not shield compatible) a HD44780 compatible LCD, and some momentary push buttons. It will run on a 9v battery and have 5v logic. I am working on sourcing parts and laying out the board. I ordered a batch of LCD’s for cheap but didn’t look at the datasheet close enough because they are bigger than I expected. They are 122x33mm where as I was looking for ones around 80x36mm. I will be selling these off so if you want some post here and let me know.

Here’s a comparison, the top one is the new one, the bottom one is the size I’m looking for.

I have found the ones I am looking for an now have those on order. They should be here in a week or two.

I received the 3.3v voltage regulators in today. Good thing I looked at the datasheet before swapping them out because the pinouts were different.

5v LM7805 (Top L -> R)

1. Input
2. GND
3. Output

3.3v LM1117T (Top L -> R)

1. GND
2. Output
3. Input

Once I swapped those out I checked the voltages. They were good, roughly 3.3v (little less). Then I wired up the LCD. I used the analog pins 5-1 because they were on top of the chip closest to the lcd header (digital pins 19-15). Now we are getting somewhere, the display lives!

Next I’m going to wire up the momentary push buttons to some inputs on the atmega. After that I’ll continue porting over some code.

I got a chance to start working on the Arduino (ninja) badge prototype. This first prototype is inspired but the hackduino project. I wanted to make something functional but didn’t want to mess with etching a board on the first attempt. Since I wasn’t paying attention when I ordered the parts, I accidentally ordered a 5v voltage regulator vs a 3.3v one (LM1117). That should come in tomorrow. All that is currently working is the bare-bones ardunio circuit with a LED flashing. I started to wire in the LCD but stopped when I realized what voltage I had and didn’t want to use a level shifter on this board. After I get the new voltage regulator put in I’ll wire up the LCD and the buttons and write up a test sketch. Here is a picture of the progress.

I got a chance to play around a bit with the display buffer on Wednesday. The Ninja badge buffer images and Ladyada’s images are stored and written into the buffer differently. The ones in the ST7565 Library fill the buffer using 8 bits at a time drawing down to left. For example; 10000000, 01000000, 00100000 (0×80, 0×40, 0×20) would draw a diagonal line down 3 pixels wide. This is different from the way other code writes to it. I was able to go through and view all of the characters that are in the badge. There was one that was kind of confusing, echelon….what?

Here is the Ninja character that is displayed on the badge.

unsigned char ninja_large[] = {
 50, 46,
 0xfe, 0xfe, 0xfc, 0xf9, 0xf2, 0xf0, 0xf1, 0xf1,   /* 0x0 */
 0xf1, 0xf1, 0xe3, 0xe0, 0xe0, 0xc0, 0x80, 0x80,   /* 0x8 */
 0x03, 0x03, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x80, 0x80, 0xc0,   /* 0x10 */
 0xe0, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x18 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x20 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xfe, 0xfc, 0xf9, 0xf0, 0xe0, 0xe1,   /* 0x28 */
 0xe3, 0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0x30 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xfe, 0xfc, 0xf8,   /* 0x38 */
 0xf8, 0xf0, 0xf0, 0x70, 0x0c, 0x02, 0x01, 0x00,   /* 0x40 */
 0x80, 0xc0, 0xe0, 0x20, 0x60, 0x60, 0x20, 0xe0,   /* 0x48 */
 0x03, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x50 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xfe, 0xfc, 0xf8, 0xf0, 0xe0, 0xcd,   /* 0x58 */
 0x9b, 0x37, 0x6f, 0xdf, 0xbf, 0x7f, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x60 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0x68 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0x70 */
 0x10, 0x0c, 0x03, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x80,   /* 0x78 */
 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x03, 0x48, 0xd0,   /* 0x80 */
 0xc0, 0xe0, 0xfc, 0xf4, 0xf0, 0xf0, 0xe0, 0xc0,   /* 0x88 */
 0x80, 0x07, 0x0f, 0x1f, 0x3f, 0x7f, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x90 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x98 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0xa0 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0x3f, 0x0f, 0x0f, 0x0f,   /* 0xa8 */
 0x0f, 0x0c, 0x38, 0xf0, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0xb0 */
 0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0xf0, 0xfe, 0x13,   /* 0xb8 */
 0x41, 0x21, 0x83, 0x07, 0x07, 0x0f, 0x3f, 0xff,   /* 0xc0 */
 0x7f, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0xc8 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0xd0 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0xd8 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xfc, 0xf0, 0xc0,   /* 0xe0 */
 0x00, 0x08, 0x10, 0x10, 0x08, 0x00, 0x0f, 0x7f,   /* 0xe8 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0x7f, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x10,   /* 0xf0 */
 0x88, 0x90, 0xc0, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0xf8 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x100 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x108 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0x110 */
 0xf8, 0xf0, 0xe0, 0x80, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0x118 */
 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x04, 0x3c, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc,   /* 0x120 */
 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0x0c, 0x04, 0x04, 0x04, 0x04,   /* 0x128 */
 0x04, 0x04, 0x04, 0x84, 0xc4, 0xe4, 0xf4, 0xfc,   /* 0x130 */
 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc,   /* 0x138 */
 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc,   /* 0x140 */
 0xfc, 0xfc, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
};

I will have more time to work with this over the weekend. I need to get my hands on a official Ninja badge to figure out the way the application is supposed to work.

Some new toys came in last week. A while back before I started the badge project, I ordered a thermostat because it said it had built in Zigbee, a LCD, and some input buttons. I figured It would be a cool device to hack on but after looking into it more, most of the sites including the manufacturer side said that it was a Zwave module. So I kinda wrote that off as a bad buy. But after getting it in I found out It did have Zigbee. It had an Xbee module that I could remove and use in other projects. Possibly to dev on the badge project.

Second I got my Arduino Pro 3.3v in. I didn’t realize how much easier it would be to have the nice FTDI cable to program it. I don’t have a built-in Serial adapter (Macbook Air) so I tried to use a the USB to Serial adapter while supplying the board with 9v, but the adapter I have kind of sucks so that board is on hold until I order the FTDI cable.

I was able to get some input buttons working on the dev board. I also switched to a bigger bread board to accommodate some more components. I had 6 push buttons but after doing some testing I found that only 4 of them actually worked. So I wired up the 4 that I had and I was then able to to move up, down, left, and right on the bottom menu. Next I need to figure out what this thing is going to actually do, be it a game or some other type of application.

I took some time yesterday to sit down and play with the display. As I mentioned before I’m currently using Ladyada’s ST7565 library. I used a program “bitmap2LCD” to make a 128×64 background image. In that program you can choose which direction you want the display table to be laid out. If you are using this program and ST7565 lib then you want to choose the “down” arrows when exporting your bitmap to a file. Here’s a pic of one of the display images I was playing with.

I’m not really sure what the name of the badge is going to be when I get done but I just threw that in there for lack of a better name.

EDIT: another pic for those mega man fans.

My LCD came in on Saturday from Adafruit. I would recommend them if you are looking for some kit type stuff. No hassles and fast shipping (from NY).

Here is the LCD with some wires that I soldered to it.

Adafruit included a library (which is awesome) that you can download from their github page. It comes with an example which is great for testing it out. I thought it was funny how they loaded their logo into the buffer when you load the library. It took me a second to figure out why I couldn’t use glcd.display(); without getting their logo to show. I have a feeling I will be tweaking the header file when I get some time.

That’s about a far as I got on Saturday night. Looking forward for the Arduino Pro 3.3v to come in this week.

I order this LCD a couple days ago from adafruit.

After doing some research into electronic badges I found out that most of them are using somewhere around 3.3v instead of 5v+. This LCD’s input is 3.3v. It does come with a 4050 level shift so that I can test it with one of the Arduinos I already have. I was also thinking about getting an arduino pro 3.3v (they also have 5v version) so that I didn’t have to use the extra level shifter. Sparkfun has one.

After doing some more poking around, I saw that the Ninja guys started with the same approach.

Hopefully the LCD comes in today/tomorrow so that I can do some testing this weekend.