The control board is up and running, with some re-work. Shown next to the working LEDs is my original inspiration. Last Christmas my brother gave me the ThinkGeek Binary watch. Since then I’ve been fascinated with binary clocks. Finally I had an idea that can help with other projects.
Even knowing that the name Arduino was rooted in Italian, I have often wondered what it meant. David Kushner of IEEE Spectrum has a great write-up on the beginnings of the Arduino project.
Great read. The most surprising thing to me is that over 250,000 official boards have sold since 2005. That isn’t counting clones and stand alones. Wow!
Assembled control board. The processor is an ATmega328, RTC is DS1307 RTC, and LED driver is a TLC5904. There is also a FT232RL on the back side for USB to Serial connection, however, it doesn’t appear to be working.Next I’ll need to turn on the RTC and make sure it can actually keep time.
The lead hardware designer of both the original ARM core and the BBC Micro Computer, Professor Steve Furber, is leading an effort to simulate the human brain with ARM cores. Custom chips with 18 cores each will be used. Check out the story at Electronics Weekly for more information: One million ARM cores to simulate brain at Manche`ster – 7/8/2011 – Electronics Weekly.
A long time fan of the NASA Space program, the last shuttle going up is a little bit sad. Artist Alberto Cuadra has put together this infographic about the shuttle. Originally created by the Houston Chronicle. (Citation missing, please comment if you have one!)
