Archive for June, 2010

16 Jun
2010

Victor Speed Controllers and EMC2

I’m currently working on building a EMC2-controlled CNC machine with mostly parts I have on hand. I decided to use Victor 883′s to control my servos, but EMC2 does not put out the RC-style PWM signal that victors are driven with. Thankfully, hardware in EMC2 is configured with HAL, allowing the software to work with nearly any hardware. Below are the values and configuration I used. If you are planning on using other RC-style motor controllers, you’ll need to calculate these values yourself.

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13 Jun
2010

Google Voice and Asterisk

Google Voice & Asterisk

There are numerous guides about setting up Google Voice and an incoming sip number for free outgoing calling. Sadly, all of the guides I found were written for FreePBX or some other Asterisk bundle, and also used a shell script to do much of the work (scary!). I have compiled the minimal amount that you need to put in your asterisk conf files to make things work, GUI-free and variant-independent.

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11 Jun
2010

End of the road for free data on iDen?

It looks like getting free data access on iDen handsets is going to end, likely on or before 6/20/10 according to this Sprint document (credit Engadget). Coincidentally, this is the same day that the Motorola i1 is released, the first Android phone on the iDen network. With this phone, Sprint would needed to lock down iDen data access a bit harder than blocking the phone’s built-in browser (the status quo), so the change will affect all phones on the iDen network (Boost and Nextel).

This also means that getting mobile connectivity for your Arduino will no longer be free. Boost mobile’s data rates run at $.35/day.

Update: 6/20 has passed, and I still have data access.

Gaggia Classic Disassembly and Cleaning

Gaggia Classic Disassembly and Cleaning

I recently purchased a used Gaggia Classic machine on Amazon. After realizing that it was not as “lightly used” as

Arduino Leonardo - Interrupts

Arduino Leonardo – Interrupts

As of Arduino 1.0, interrupts are not supported on the Arduino Leonardo. I’m working on a project using the atmega32u4