JP's Website

I recently picked up an embedded project that I hadn't touched for a few months, so I could add some new features.

Over the past weeks, I've been working through Advent of Code.

Curious as to how each category did in PiWars (Professional, Intermediate and Beginner), I've annotated the official results with the category of the team and their overall leaderboard position in that category.

Well, I've missed Christmas, obviously.

I've now got a Python webserver up an running (on my Linux server, for now), which offers a list of modes for the user to select from.

I picked up a couple of Raspberry Pi Zeroes (plus one with the Mag Pi magazine, which I'm not going to open) when they went on sale.

A recent holiday gave me time to catch up on things.

I decided to switch from taking the bus to work, to cycling.

Intro So Matt Lane, Matt Kingston and myself have spent the last few months putting together our entry for PiWars.

I'm thinking about entering Pi Wars in December.

And now for something completely different.

Some success!

I mentioned before that I might patch the font render to handle proportional as well as monospace.

Leaving the dashboard for a moment and going back to the in-car entertainment, I've noticed that DAB modules are quite expensive.

So I can tie input waveform sampling to LCD updates, plus the menu system will reset the various trip values on demand.

I've elected to stay with 8-bit mode as I need the pins as GPIO.

I can now blit coloured rectangles to a small 4" LCD.

So, I've been trying to get this Displaytech LCD module to function, as part of the Mazda's TFT dashboard.

I had a thought and figured I should write it down somewhere.

I'm about to try and drive a 4.3" Display-Tech LCD from my Cortex-M4 powered Stellaris Launchpad board.

There's so much going on at JP Towers that I feel the need to write some of it down, lest any of it leaks about of my brain.

A couple of months ago, I went to a Raspberry Jam in Cambridge at the Centre for Mathematical Science.

My Github for the Stellaris Launchpad has had a cleanup.

My Stellaris Launchpad finally arrived the other day.

There was a slight mistake in the last pinout, which I've now corrected.

I recently purchased a 1995 Jaguar Sovereign (you might know it as a Jaguar XJ, but the Sovereign spec doesn't actually wear an XJ badge anywhere).

Just as a quick note to myself: the UDN2981 requires pull down resistors as the inputs are not allowed to float when Vcc is powered.

It turns out you can get relays from Farnell for about 55p each.

I was recommended to try VeeCAD by a colleague who's a member of CMES.

I think this is a little more prototypical.

The CR signals website (www.crsignals.com) is proving potentially ruinously expensive.

I went to the March and District MRC show today.

Just put some more code on github.

I've spent the past couple of days re-laying track.

Well, this one has less insane wiring, but uses a larger board.

This is a bit better.

Well, it's pretty good on board size, but perhaps I should expand it a few rows to try and tidy up some of the wiring.

Here's my final schematic.

I spent some time today deciding whether I could use a 7 or 8 channel Darlington Pair IC (like the ULN2003A) to drive the point motors.

I found this: http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/darlington-transistor/0162795/ Basically it has 8 channels and each of those can continuously source 150mA at up to 50V.

You can get my modified MCP23S17 library from Github: https://github.com/thejpster/Mcp23s17 My four-led twinkling app is: /* Simple MCP23S17 demonstration */ /* Supplied with Arduino IDE */ #include <arduino.h> // Mcp23s17 library available from https:/…

The Arduino Uno has arrived,. along with some other bits and pieces.

I'm considering adding some form of electronic control to my N-gauge model railway.