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4 September 2015
06 Q&A
Reader Questions Answered Here
Students ask questions on radio propagation
and troubleshooting.
10 PICAXE Primer
Sharpening Your Tools of Creativity
PICAXE-PC Serial Communication — Part 3.
Experimenting with an interrupt-based method of
improving the 20X2 response time that’s faster than
anything we’ve used so far.
16 Open Communication
The Latest in Networking and
Wireless Technologies
Getting Back into Ham Radio —
Trials and Tribulations.
Equipment choice can be harder than you think —
especially when you can’t install antennas.
62 The Ham’s Wireless Workbench
Practical Technology from
the Ham World
RF Interference.
RFI is everywhere, but fortunately there are ways
to keep it in line.
68 The Design Cycle
Advanced Techniques for
Design Engineers
Take Your PIC of a Super-Fast Embedded
Computing Machine.
It just doesn’t get any better than this. It’s time to
gather the components, get the circuit boards made,
lay down the parts, and write the code. When the
dust settles, you’ll have built a super-fast 32-bit
embedded computing machine that can converse
via multiple logic-level serial ports, a true RS-232
port, USB, and Wi-Fi. If all of that data is important
to you, just store it away on the onboard microSD
card. And it does get better. You can have it in two
flavors: the PIC32MX575F512H or PIC32MX795F512L.
44 Adding Color to the
Commodore PET
Go retro with this PET project that will
get you re-learning everything about
these old machines.
■ By Steve J. Gray
52 Beyond the Arduino — Part 6
To the Power of I2C. We’re going to raise the
bar and connect our AVR microcontroller to
modules with a little more intelligence.
■ By Andrew Retallack
September 2015
05 DEVELOPING
PERSPECTIVES
Building Sandcastles in
the Digital Sandbox
18 NEW PRODUCTS
21 SHOWCASE
67 ELECTRO-NET
76 NV WEBSTORE
79 CLASSIFIEDS
80 TECH FORUM
82 AD INDEX
Departments
NEW! Vintage Computing Series 22 Little Book of Horror It may seem like just an innocent edition sitting on the
counter ... but wait! What is that noise?
■ By Bill Elwell
27 Flame On, Dude!
Give your Jack-o-lantern (or whatever props you may
be using) some cool faux flames this season.
■ By Jon McPhalen
32 Single Chip Audio Spectrum
Analyzer Makes Singing Easier
Get those talking props in sync with this audio spectrum
analyzer that has a variety of uses — from tone
detection to real time audio analyzation for controlling
servos and other devices.
■ By Steven R. Bjork
38 Haunting 201 — Thirteen
Electronic Projects to Elevate
Your “Scare Game”
Continuing with the idea from last year’s special
Halloween edition, here are some ghoulish ideas
to take this year’s haunts up to the next level —
electronically, of course!
■ By Steve Koci Columns
SPECIAL
HALLOWEEN
PROJECTS