Still Building Parols

Aside from the Arduino post I just published - has it really been almost 2 years since I've written anything for the blog? Oy, vey. Too busy for my own good, I guess.

Still building Filipino Christmas parols. Lots and lots of them. Playing with WS2812B IA RGB LEDs, too, but I'm having a hard time figuring out the right way to mount them in the parols so that they look best and are somewhat equivalent in brightness to standard 1 color LEDs.

Oh well.

It may be another 2 years before I publish anything else. Don't be surprised.

Dipping A Toe Into The Arduino Pond

Arduino MEGA with Ethernet Shield

Training Shield

I bought an Arduino board, training shield, and ethernet shield this weekend at the SM Megamall. Never too old to learn new things. So far, not really impressed - I'm still convinced that the right MicroChip PIC, chosen for the job at hand, is far superior (and cost effective). I'm still wading through the Arduino, however, so it still has the opportunity to win me over.

BTW: what is it with 'sketch' and 'sketches'? WTH? Wasn't 'programs' and/or 'source code' and/or 'projects' good enough for Italians? Too cute for it's own good.

Also BTW: not digging the 'C'-like language. Give me assembly any day. You can write faster, leaner, more efficient code in assembly. At least all of the code is open source, so you can dig into it and know what all it is doing.

Also also BTW: I _am_ digging the shield concept. Nice for initial prototyping. I will have to come up with my own 'proto-board' shield, tho. They didn't have one at the store I visited at SM Megamall.

*UPDATE - 2016.0311*
I made my own "prototyping shield". Cool. Now to figure out something nice to prototype on it.

Left: Arduino Mega           Right: Prototyping Shield

Prototyping Shield installed on Arduino Mega