31 July 2013

There's been a product category we've been working on for a long, long time. And that's getting the Internet in the hands of everyone with a simple low end microcontroller.

The problem is that TCP/IP, the protocol that underpins the Internet, is inherantly complex and requires a lot of memory to run. And the specification for WiFi (802.11) is over two thousand pages.  Yes, we even looked at writing our own WiFi stack.

Please welcome the humble WRL-3000. We're super excited about this little guy since any low-end microcontroller can now connect to the internet at a super low price.  Yes, it's so cheap that you can connect just about everything to the Internet!  The design is module-level approved by the FCC, and we have had much pleasure in getting sensor data up to the internet and finding out what the weather is going to be tomorrow to put on LED matrix displays.

We would like to acknowledge our beta test program participants for helping out withe the software development for this module.

We have made an initial manufacturing run of these modules but at this price they won't last. Get them while they're hot! 

22 July 2013

The first in our new range of fabulous OLED displays. OLED displays don't need a backlight, and a have a crisp, clear display.

We're delighted to stock 128 x 64 pixel OLED displays, and all those pixels in a mere 0.96" diagnoal space.  With great prices, these displays are an easy way to add a lot of visible information to your next project.  The first one we have available is a white display.

It uses the well known SSD1306 OLED driver chip, which means you can access all thoses pixels with just a few microcontroller pins.

Grab one (or two) for your next project!

1 Oct 2013

Embedded Adventurer Giovanni Verrua in Brazil is a freelance programmer and pinball designer and was working on games for the Brazilian firm X-Lusion.

He needed a bright, blue 16 segement LED display.

After evaluating the standard DSP-0401B displays, he decided that a custom design was necessary.  So we added USB control, power and expanded the display to 16 digits by 2 lines.

The results look fantastic!

3 July 2013

We love customer feedback, and these days it seems that many people are exploring using SPI to connect to their devices rather than I2C.  Many sensors are able to do both, including the fabulous MS5611 air pressure sensor, so by popular demand we bring you: Version 3!

With solder jumpers for pullups and a simple solder jump to chose between I2C and SPI, this update makes the MS5611 breakout even more useful for your own communications preferences.

For people that have particular board layouts that the v2 module plugged into, we have v2 boards still available if you need them.  Just drop us a note when you make your order.

11 Sep 13

In the lab we're trying some microscopes to keep a better eye on smaller surface mount components.

When we tried the Veho VMS-001 we found that it had this unexpected filter:

That's the EA logo from one of our WRL-3000 wifi modules - under the microscope you can see the dots that make up the "silk screen" on the PCB. And the filter - well, who knew that our little chip dude had friends in such high places?

1 July 2013

Really, we love LEDs. You can never have enough. But sometimes the odd status LED is just not enough to see what's happening in your project.

Embedded Adventurer Richard Mullens shows off his Rasberry Pi displaying text on the LCD-1602

It's time like this you need to stretch things to use an LCD display - but the problem is that most of them require many microcontroller pins to communicate with the display. So it's nice to find a display that has a (synchronous) serial interface that only needs a few pins. And it would be nice if the display was available with a 3.3V interface (LCD-1602-3.3V) as well as the usual 5V (LCD-1602-5V). Hey, why not stock both? So that's what we did.

16 characters, 2 lines, 3.3V and 5V models, a great price, daylight readable, backlight, and lead-free. And cheap! Get them while they're hot!

Thanks to Embedded Adventurer Richard Mullens from sunny UK, who has shared the Python script he developed that allows easy communcations with the display.