Have you ever wanted to log FPGA pins on a host PC? Well, Digilent forums user hamster has done a project showing how, which you can find here!
Two California hotels tested autonomous service robots over a six-month period. Reviews from their customers were overwhelmingly positive (except when aforementioned customers were intoxicated). They will be rolling out their next wave of autonomous service robots, called the Relay.
Originally, this blog post was going to be about how Linux works with its kernel and everything. That turned out to be extremely dry, and it was a jumbled mess to try to fit everything into a blog post. Just check out the Linux wiki page for all that stuff. Instead this post is going to be more about parts of Linux that people should know about. Linux is used widely for developing software and embedded systems. One example is the Zybot, partially developed by Kaitlyn and me!
How did Digilent begin? Here’s our story.
Did you ever play the game Battleship as a child? I remember finding it incredibly fun. This weekend, I found a new take on it! The version on Instructables uses a breadboard, wires, and other electrical components. It’s designed to teach children the basics of breadboarding — and to have fun, of course!
Now that we have Linux booted up on our computer, we can get programming. What happens if we want to create web pages? Well, we need to set-up our LAMP server. LAMP stands for Linux Apache MySQL PHP. This blog post goes in conjunction with a relevant Instructable about setting up our LAMP server, so just like the previous blog post about dual-booting Ubuntu, this is going to go over more of why we’re doing this. What the LAMP server will allow us to do it create a local host that will let us communicate with the Internet.
In a previous post, I talked about how plasma can be used to build high-fidelity speakers. Plasma isn’t limited to only producing sound– it can also be used to record it. Being made up of physical particles, plasma can be affected by vibrations through the air. This means it is possible to build a plasma arc microphone using the proper circuit. This application is far less common than using a plasma arc for a speaker, but research has still been done on the subject.
In the rapidly changing world of technology, the giant computers of yore are particularly befuddling to the younger generations who weren’t around concurrently with those computers. Children were shown computers from the 1970s and reacted to them.
One of our regular contributors to the forum let us know about an awesome project he worked on. He managed to use the Basys 3 with a low-cost ultrasound rangefinder.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! If you’re wondering how to celebrate and add some green to your life, consider this — improving your solar panels with a microcontroller! This project from Hackaday uses an Arduino to harvest more energy from the panel than would otherwise be available.
Did you know you can melt metal using magnetic fields? It seems pretty crazy, but it’s possible.
If you have a computer, you may have heard of Linux. Linux is a free ad open-source operating system, where the “base” code can be used and modified by anyone. Some of Digilent’s boards (like the ZYBO) use Linux. Linux is great for programming and development, but isn’t as user-friendly as other operating systems.
It’s been awhile since we last had some specific focus on Pmods, so I decided that we should get back to our favorite blog series (or at least my favorite). This week we’re going to check out some of the Pmods that occasionally get overlooked– the power Pmods. These Pmods include screw terminal modules, transistor modules, and power monitors.
This week’s throwback features one of the first tri-fold brochures we did, coming up on 11 years ago! Interesting to see the old product lineup. The D2 is probably the oldest board you see there, within the first four or five that Digilent ever built.
Our applications and systems engineering manager, Sam B., has had an exciting project sitting on his desk for a long time that we finally get to see. Originally, his project was the Zedbot, a Linux-based robot that uses the Zedboard.
Have you ever wanted to shoot lightning bolts out of your hands like the Sith do in Star Wars? Have you ever wanted to be immune to lightning strikes? These things sound impossible, but they actually aren’t. Specially designed suits are capable of making you immune to high voltages by redirecting the flow of current around you.
Last year, I wrote a blog post that featured everyone’s favorite women in STEM history. In celebration of yesterday’s International Women’s Day, I’d like to bring that back!
So, who’s excited about ECEDHA? We here at Digilent wanted something big and flashy to amaze everyone, so we put this together. We carry weatherproof strips of the WS2812 addressable LEDs in 1m lengths with 30 LEDs on each strip, so what better way to grab your attention than to build a display with 30 strips!
In science fiction, plasma-based technology is often included because it is perceived as futuristic and exotic. Referring to plasma as exotic is understandable, but the technology behind its creation is less so. Since the invention of electric circuits, it has been possible to easily create and control plasma using high voltages. It is pretty common knowledge that high voltages ionize the air producing plasma arcs. What is not-so-common knowledge is the fact that these arcs of plasma can be used to play music.
Today’s throwback brings us a few pictures from the first time we at Digilent presented ourselves as a company in a trade show setting, around 2007. This conference was very small — it was located in the main floor entry of the ETRL building on the WSU campus. Clint (Cole), our former president, was giving a presentation as well.
Inter-integrated-circuit, more commonly known as I²C (generally pronounced I-squared-C), is a communication style originally developed by Phillips Semiconductor (now NXP Semiconductor). Its design allows multiple components to be able to talk to each other on the same data line, making it widely used in a variety of systems, including Pmods. As a fan of Pmods, I’m in favor of learning how you can communicate with them and get them what you want to do. Let’s find out more.
As I mentioned a couple days ago, we will have a greater focus on women’s history within STEM this month. Last summer, I did a blog series focusing on just that! With it being the beginning of the month, I’d like to do a throwback to one of my first posts in the series that provided an overarching history of women’s involvement in the long history of science, technology, engineering, and math.
Some of the Pmods, such as the PmodOLED and the PmodCLP, need a higher operating voltage to run their screen than is normally supplied by system boards. This predicament could be solved by using an external power supply to power the screens, but that can get pretty inconvenient especially if you want your project to be portable. A slightly easier method that does not require a power supply is a boost converter circuit.
Digilent hasn’t always been located at 1300 NE Henley Court! Looking back at its old locations is so fun — getting to see where we were and how we’ve grown. Today, we’d like to show you one of our former locations, the one right before our current building. This was Digilent’s fourth location. Norm snapped these pictures on a Friday night in 2006, just after we had re-organized the main floor. This was the “combine” building — it sits above what is now one of Pullman’s fine dining establishments, Black Cypress.
With any upcoming projects you may be doing, will you be using transistors? A few months ago, Brandon wrote a post detailing the basics of transistors — what they are, how they work, how they can be used, etc.
