pcDuino V1: getting started

pcDuino is a single board computer based on the Allwinner A10 ARM Cortex A8 processor. It's powerful, running 1GHz and featuring 1G of memory.

Installing an OS on the pcDuino is  different than with a Raspberry Pi. It uses onboard flash for storage, 2G for the V1, and it uses a kernel flashed onto the board, as well.

So, here's how to get started with a pcDuino V1, using a Linux workstation...

ATtiny and WS2812B

Did you know it's easy to drive a WS2812B smart RGB LED with an ATtiny?

eeZee RGB WS2812B breakout board on Tindie

I'm not talking about Adafruit's well-known NeoPixel library.

There's a much lighter-weight library for driving these LEDs that's perfect on memory- and flash-limited ATtiny AVRs -- or really any AVR for that matter.

All you need is the light_ws2812 library. I'm using it with the ATtiny25 on my eeZee RGB test jig.

Adafruit gets all the attention, but this little library is small, easy to use, and works great; it deserves more press. Pass it on, k?

NoCo Mini Maker Faire

Failures, faces and fun. This past weekend I attended the NoCo Mini Maker Faire as a maker.

We had a lot of curious, inquisitive people of all ages at the SHARC / Bot Thoughts booth, where they found Ted's Shapeoko, my Hero Jr which failed miserably (fodder for a future post), Sawyer's robots, and my newest robot (also blog fodder):