Animate Arcane Protocols With Interrupt-Backed Bitbanging

Diagram of the LTC protocol, showing the difference between 1 bits and 0 bits - both transmitted using one up and one down pulse, but with '1' bit pulses being half as short.

We often take our “SoftwareSerial” libraries for granted, and don’t investigate what goes on under the hood — until they fail us, at least. Would you like to learn how …read more Continue reading Animate Arcane Protocols With Interrupt-Backed Bitbanging

Remote Control of Clocks is Easy as Pi

[Fatjedi007] recently acquired three programmable boxing gym-type clocks to help his developmentally disabled clients manage their time. The plan was to have timers of varying lengths fire at preset times throughout the day, with the large displays providing a view from anywhere. Unfortunately, the clocks were not nearly as programmable as he needed them to be.

Since he’d spent enough money already, [Fatjedi007] turned to the power of Raspberry Pi to devise an affordable solution. Each clock gets a Pi Zero W and a simple IR transmit/receive circuit that operates using LIRC. The clocks came with remote controls, so it …read more

Continue reading Remote Control of Clocks is Easy as Pi