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arduino

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Hands-On

First Impressions of Electron, a new Node.js IDE for Arduino

The Arduino IDE is great in that with a single download on any PC platform, new users can start writing code and see immediate results.   The same simplicity though, limits some of the more “advanced” features found in modern editors.  Also one of the IDE’s greatest strengths is cross-platform through Java.  This is also one of its weaknesses.  Java is outdated and it’s time to move on.

There’s a slew of other Arduino development environments out there, but most of them are limited to 1 or 2 platforms.  Electron is a novel idea because it is based on Node.js, meaning it runs in Google’s Chrome.

The initial implementation even includes a Serial monitor!

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Arduino

Teach your Arduino to listen with µSpeech

When most people say “Arduino” they mean an ATmega328 based board like the Uno.  This means a simple 8-bit microcontroller with only 2K of RAM.  That’s 2,048 bytes of memory to work with.  So when someone asked me if the Arduino could do speech recognition, to be honest, I laughed.  Then my jaw dropped when I saw µSpeech.  A speech recognition library for the Arduino Uno’s ATmega328.

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Blog

9V Batteries Suck — And why you shouldn’t use them.

Smoke detectors beep when their backup battery dies, which always seems to occur in the middle of the night (at least for me.) These backup batteries are usually a small rectangular 9V. They have become popular choices for electronics projects. If you need your Arduino project to last longer than a day, this isn’t the battery you want to use.  Here’s why.

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