Recently I realized most of my projects were all Arduino-based. There are lots of other prototyping platforms available in the market, and the TI LaunchPad, based on the MSP430 is one of them. In fact, I have had one of these boards sitting in my box of stuff ever since they came out. At $5, they because an impulse purchase when I was buying some other stuff.
So, I dusted off the original box and recorded opening it up. Let’s see how it works.
Martin Rowe over at Test & Measurement World asks an interesting question: Are you a Scotty or a Geordi? While both were engineers in the Star Trek universe, they approached their jobs with a different philosophy.
Which engineer are you most like?
[Via: Are you a Scotty or a Geordi? | Test & Measurement World.]
One of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s developers, Rob Bishop, is heading out on a Hackerspace tour in the US. Looks like he’ll be visiting a couple of spaces on the west coast, east coast, and my home town: Austin, TX.
Documentation, Documentation. Documentation.
It is always critical to document progress is a log book. If using an electronic tool like Evernote or a Blog, it can be difficult to document equations or calculations you’ve made in a project.
Vision Objects has put together a demo tool that allows for writing your equation in freehand which then uses image recognition to covert into LaTeX code.
For convenience, there is a direct link to WolframAlpha to calculate the equation. A preview of the LaTeX Equation is provided by the open-source MathJax javascript rendering engine.
Renesas is offering a promotion version of their RL78 microcontroller. This offer is only available to their Sample Component account holders, but the process for signing up for a sample account is pretty straightforward. (There may be EAR restrictions with this board.)
If you are looking for a powerful processor that is an alternative to PIC or AVR processors, this board might be worth a look.
[i]Note: It appears samplecomponents.com might have been compromised at some point in the past. Google throws a warning page up. Proceed at your own discretion.[/i]Renesas Promotion Board for RL78/G13 | Renesas Electronics America.
