[McHUG] Saturday's Workshop Report

[Rich Mitchell]

McHUGgers,

We had a good workshop yesterday.  We gathered between 10am and 11 am and didn't leave until 2 pm - oh lite 30 as we may call it.  There were 5 of us there:
Frank K3MTT
John K3YJP
Steve N3SB 
Pete W3GVX
Rich N3III

We got two BareBones Board and P4 sets built and tested out.  Another one is almost complete.  John brought his laptop and we got that loaded with both the Arduino IDE and the WinAVR stuff.  We tested out the Arduino IDE and he used that to build and load not only the basic Arduino example, but variations off of that.

As we get more people with working Arduino environments and BBBs built we hope to start working on the ABE project that Steve presented - Arduino Balloon Experiment.  Yes, the PICAXE PICetSat has done a lot, but an Arduino based balloon module could do so much more.  Our next Meet to Eat will focus on brainstorming for that project - and figuring out a budget, since through the TEC  we are a club committee.

Steve demoed an Arduino program that he had running with the ATmega168 and his Si570 board.  He was able to generate frequencies from 80 meters up into the UHF range.  We are going to pursue that area a bit more.  Pete has ordered some more Si570s, both CMOS and LVDS.  I have ordered some WB6DHW boards to go with them.  You can see one version of the board at:
http://home.att.net/~geobra/Si570.html
Yes, it is mostly small SMT parts but that will be an advantage for us.  At one of our workshops we want to build them using solder paste and toaster ovens, hot pads, etc.  So we will get some exposure to those techniques.

I brought in an old 233 MHz ThinkPad with Windows 95.  We tried to get WinAVR running on that.  You can write an compile C code on it but when it comes to downloading it to the BBB, a dll is missing.  We also debugged a Blink from Scratch program that I was trying to get working in WinAVR.  Steve found a register problem.  So with that fixed and a few other modifications it is now working well.  I have pictures and a comparison of the Arduino basic (not BASIC) program and the "Blink from Scratch" program:
http://home.att.net/~geobra/blinkScratch.html
I will add more comments to it.

So look for more Meet to Eats and Workshops to come and join in the fun!!

Rich,
N3III

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