PMC's Blah

Well, today I managed to put up a little python script which uses Pinguino as Voltmeter. The script can be found on pastebin . It is quite short, but it implements two classes: Analog Multimeter for the nice Voltmeter gauge pictured below, and Piguino which abstracts Pinguinos USB interface. The driving Pinguino script is on  pastebin too. So, what you need is Linux with installed python, PyKDE4, PyQt4 and PyUSB. In order to install PyUSB you will ned libusb too. Just upload the Pinguino script to Pinuguino and run the python script and you should get something like this: Oh, and you should bring some current to PIN 13 (first analog input) on Pinguino. You can try to put a trimmer resistor in front of the PIN 13 on the breadboard an play with it to see gauge moving! That's all folks! bb4now, PMC

You can use perl to communicate with Pinguino via USB. To do it you have to install libusb library and Device::USB module for perl. After that you can upload this program to Pinguino: testusb.pde: // USB Test // Marin Purgar marin.purgar@gmail.com // Use with led_on.pl and led_off.pl companion programs uchar cmd; void setup(void) {   pinMode(0, OUTPUT);   digitalWrite(0, HIGH); } void loop(void) {   if (USB.available()) {     cmd = USB.read();   }   if (cmd == 'N') {     digitalWrite(0, HIGH);   }   if (cmd == 'F') {     digitalWrite(0, LOW);   } } // EOF And you can create two perl programs to turn the LED on (sending the character 'N' to Pinguino) and off (sending the character 'F' to Pinguino): led_on.pl: #!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use warnings; use Device::USB; my $usb = Device::USB->new() || ...

Last two weeks I have been playing with Pinguino. Pinguino is PIC (from Microchip, the company) based Arduino-like experimental board. It supports USB Communication and Power-over-USB, so it's very handy for experiments with PIC technology. The basic PCB is very simple and easy to make. You can find more about the project at Hacklab News Blog . And now for some photos of the boards we made. The "PinguinoTeam Croatia" proudly presents: