CygnusAlpha

Started work putting the front panel together, and also fitting the Arduinos in the case. It turns out the waveshield is capable of driving the speaker, and it works very well indeed. The sound quality is not bad either. I used the 'sox' unix program to convert MP3 data into raw 22khz 8 bit wav data. Here is the incantation I used :- sox the_archers.mp3 -b8 the_archers.mp3.wav channels 1 rate 22k I still need to get a decent printed card for the legend behind the top panel, but it's starting to look good. On a side note, someone at work had an old Radio Times, which suited the radio superbly..

Thought I'd post a bit of an update on the progress of the Wayback Machine. The Wifi connection is working using the Wifly module (see previous post) and connects nicely to the router. I've had a few problems with RFI where the signal from the built in antenna seems to interfere with the other electronics causing the Wifly to keep resetting until you stop it by touching (and attenuating) the antenna with your finger. I hope to solve this at some point. I made a start stripping down the old Hacker radio. I thought I might be able to resuse the amplifier board, but to be honest I don't think I'm going to have room for all the electronics and two PP9 batteries too. So I'm hoping the Waveshield amp is capable of driving the speaker, perhaps with a small amp. Next step is to get the Arduinos wired up together and to the Wifly via a MAX3232. (The Wifly is 3.3V logic, so needs a level converter and the MAX is a very proper way of doing that.) I've also got to get th...

WiFly Ver 2.15, 10-15-2009 MAC Addr=00:06:66:00:23:c2 Auto-Assoc Custard chan=1 mode=MIXED SCAN OK Joining Custard now.. *READY* Associated! DHCP: Start DHCP in 186ms, lease=86400s IF=UP DHCP=ON IP=192.168.1.66:2000 NM=255.255.255.0 GW=192.168.1.254 Listen on 2000 CMD ls FL# SIZ FLAGS 11 17 3 WiFly_GSX-2.09 28 1 10 config 29 1 10 custard 30 1 10 cis 31 18 3 WiFly_GSX-2.15 207 Free, Boot=31, Backup=31

This little lovely dropped on the doormat today from Adafruit. A little late for ArcHak, but it will hold a special place in a project I'm working on at the moment. I'll write some more about that soon. The WaveShield can play audio at 22KHz from an SD card and has a socket for headphones and provision for connecting a speaker. The audio data is clocked out of the SD card by an interrupt handler in the Arduino, so the device can also perform other tasks while audio is being played. More information here: http://www.ladyada.net/make/waveshield/

After resisting for a while I decided to have a look and see what all the fuss with the Arduino was all about. I purchased a Freeduino and LCD Shield from eBay. I have been pleasantly surprised by just how easy it is to get started with these devices. The Arduino environment is C based and it's as easy as writing some code or loading a demo and hitting upload. The bootloader on the Freeduino does all the hard work for you. Now, which of my many projects shall I use this for? http://www.freeduino.org/