Nuts and Volts - October 2010

Another great thing about the Propeller is that you can very quickly test new code by downloading straight to its RAM (all programs run from RAM). This lets us make and test changes very easily. We can do this by pressing the F10 key in the IDE. Once everything is the way we like it, we can do a permananet download of the final code with F11.

Well, there you have it; a fun Halloween prop and a neat way to safely simulate flames. Want a hellish pit of burning coals in your Halloween display? No problem! Just use red and orange LEDs and set the flicker algorithm to low-and-slow. With a little imagination and a bit of fine-tuning of the flicker parameters, you can simulate most anything that’s “burning.” Happy Halloween! NV

Jon McPhalen is an actor, writer, and electronics enthusiast based in Los Angeles, CA. He portrayed John F. Kennedy in several episodes of The History Channel’s “Unsolved History” series and can be seen with Tom Wilkinson and Frances Fisher in the hit comedy, “The Night of the White Pants.”

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Dealers Wanted

MIAC is an industrial grade PICmicro controller which retails at $180. Features include direct USB download, 8 analog/digital inputs, 4 relays, 4 motor outputs, integrated CAN bus and a free copy of Flowcode V3. We are looking for commercial partners for MIAC – if you are interested then please call us in the UK on +44 1422 252380.