IPM product presentation

Hi folks!
For those of you, who don't know what the Internet Personal Messenger Project is all about, my friend The AirBear (proud owner of the IPM V1) created a Flash animation giving some explanations. It also features an icon of the IPM V1 in its makeshift housing - an old cardboard box!
Watch it here!
If you care, you may also explore the BearBros website, made by The Airbear. Bye for now - Mr Pelz

Arduino chiptune synthesizer

Today, I'm back again with source code and a video for you! Enjoy my first chiptune for the Arduino ;)

 
With the help of Draeyoc, I was able to get Linus Akesson's hardware chiptune player onto my Arduino. It is a port Draeyoc got from somewhere on the net, and I used the Linus' simplistic but perfectly usable chiptune tracker to create my own tune. However, the tracker exported an assembly source file, which I had to compile and decompile again to get the correct byte sequence for use in the player sketch.
If you want to create your own tune, then...

• Use the tracker (Linux) to compose it.
• Export it ("%" key in the tracker).
• Run my conversion script in the tracker folder (you'll need gcc and java for it to run!).
• Open the file "song.lst" and copy its contents to the clipboard.
• Open the player sketch and replace the byte sequence in "songdata" by the sequence from "song.lst"
• Update the defines of "MAXTRACK" and "SONGLEN" to the values found in "exported.h" in the tracker directory.
• Connect a speaker to port 3 and two LEDs to ports 10 and 12 and enjoy your personal disco with synchronized light show.

You'll find the sources for my song in the conversion script archive. I also altered the player code a bit, making the LEDs light up brighter and I added a (glitchy!) rewind at the end of the song.
Have fun!

IPM2 Work Started

Hey, it's december ;) The first prize in my calender was... tadaaa! A piezo speaker and a 9V battery plug. Yay!
As this didn't provide distraction for long enough, I decided to start working on the IPM2.
In the former implementation using the ENC28J60, data was exchanged through shared buffers between the library and the main program. With the Ethershield lib, you get a stream-based interface, which suits me much better - I hate static buffers!
Simultaneous operation as server and client IS possible, so the path is clear to fully implement the requested features.
My next step is to find a new case (there are still LOTS of old cardboard boxes lying around here;) and to attach the LCDShield, speaker and LEDs.

"Old" IPM using ENC28J60

Hi folks!

Just a quick post showing off the only picture I took of the "old" Internet Personal Messenger. It shows the shields that were used and a - well, actually very childish message I sent to it. But boy, was I proud when I got it working ;)

So, today I may open the first small present in my electronic Christmas calendar... let's see what's in there. Perhaps I can connect that to an Arduino too!

Internet Personal Messenger V2

Hi everyone!

This is it: The IPM2 project has started. If everything works out right, it will become an Aduino-based internet-enabled message display for the living room. As to its planned features, these are listed here:

• push mode operation for up to 3 incoming messages
• user interaction through DFRobot LCD Shield  and some LEDs
• internet access using Wiznet W5100 Ethernet Shiel
• poll mode
• chiptune player

The push mode, user interaction and a basic chiptune player are already implemented in version 1 of the project, in which the cheaper ENC28J60 ethernet controller was used. However, this one used up so much of the microcontroller's RAM that the poll mode couldn't be realized. And so, we're starting off with a new NIC.
The NIC is already here and seems to work fine:

I'll tell you whether it supports simultaneous operation as server and client in my next post, where you'll also find the sources for the example I'll create.
Bye for now!

Blog Launch

Hi folks!
Now, let's skip all the introductory stuff, because this is going to be a blog centered on my hardware experiments, so what really matters is what I do rather than who I am - if you still want to find out, I'm on Facebook, too. Just like anybody else ;)
So, what to expect in the coming weeks?
My brother gave me a Christmas calendar containing some resistors, LEDs and stuff, so I though I'd tell somebody whether I blew myself up by toying around with these things - as to prevent people from making the same mistake as well.
And second, I'm going to build an Arduino-based internet messenger for The AirBear and I'd like to use this blog to keep him (and the rest of the world, of course) informed of my progress. The launch of the project is scheduled for the end of January 2012, so there isn't that much time left... yet I have barely started ;)
That's it for now...