How do you clean a clean-energy generating system? With a microcontroller (and a few other parts, of course). An excellent example is US designer Scott Potter’s award-winning, Renesas RL78 microcontroller-based Electrostatic Cleaning Robot system that cleans heliostats (i.e., solar-tracking mirrors) … Continue reading →

Every time the Arduino team is about to release a new board, we expect something great in terms of better specs, more I/Os, a faster processor, more memory—or, well, just something to “fill the gap,” such as small-scale versions. With … Continue reading →

In the first part of this article series on Parallax Propeller-based gaming projects, I hooked up the hardware for the Hi/Lo game on a breadboard. Now I’ll write the game logic. The finished code is available here. The power of the Propeller chip is … Continue reading →

Welcome to the Propeller Games! In a few installments, I’ll present several gaming projects that use the Parallax Propeller chip. The Propeller is perfect for gaming with its multiple CPU cores to handle simultaneous gaming activities and its on-board video … Continue reading →

The Embedded Systems Conference has always been a top venue for studying, discussing, and handling the embedded industry’s newest leading-edge technologies. This year in San Jose, CA, I walked the floor looking for the tech Circuit Cellar and Elektor members … Continue reading →