Electrogeek.cc

← News ! What's up and fresh in my geeky world! →

2020-07-30 - Another emulation station
Old laptop, how to make your own emulation paradise? My version of the build here.

2020-06-18 - Another radio
Just making another webradio, with spare parts: an old Raspberry Pi 1, a slow as hell screen, USB storage etc... bref, Another Raspi Webradio player.

2020-06-01 - About TL866II
Just bought me a TL866II to program some old cheap OTP, and ended up for programming any EEPROM so good it is! I wrote here a few memo of the steps to get it work on Linux.

2020-05-29 - Get git
A small Git manual for me, to remember those tricky commands you just do once in a while.

2020-05-26 - GB Cartridge again again (no luck)
... and no, still doesn't work. It works on GBColor, but not on GB DMG or Pocket, because I miswired the EEPROM /CE pin... Big big big thanks to people on the Gbdev forum. So yes, I'll have to make another version:/
Buuuuuuuut good news is that I can play my GB games in the browser, go and see the Just a Snake.

2020-05-18 - GB Cartridge again again
Ok this time it worked out of the box, no acrobatic wiring, just works, done by hand from the basic layout, feels great. Details here.

2020-05-04 - GB game (III)
My Just A Snake is sufficiently debugged to be in its v1.0. Will burn it on a ROM and store it somewhere. Now continuing on practicing, I'll do a small side scroller, another clone, this time of a flapping thing between vertical pipes ... see what I mean? It will be FlappyFlap, yet another clone of a famous game, and a good occasion to practice (still in C).

2020-05-04 - GB game (II)
ok so I decided to level up by making a smaller project: a snake-like. Just a snake, is the name. Gameboy game. 17 levels so far, playable though there's still a few bugs. Young-me would be so proud of now-me...

2020-04-12 - GB game (I)
Still working on the engine of the game, now this one can make 32x32 tiles random dungeon map. Still crude, but there's potential.

2020-04-09 - GB shortcut
I added what I hope is a shortcut to make Gameboy apps or games: a Gameboy development guide. Just a summary that points to what you need. Oh and I work on a game, well, the engine now. The concept is vague, but it's for my son, so I want it special. Well a game made by your dad for your is special already I think :)
EEPROM programmer at work

2020-04-05 - A blemish on my pride was cleansed
Years (like 5) ago, I made a Gameboy homebrew cartridge that would double up as an EEPROM programmer. As a mix microcontroller and EEPROM it was doomed to fail, but I had hope for the EEPROM programming part. It never worked, disregarding how many times I fixed my code, read it, scratched my head, read the docs, read other people stuffs, ... never. So I gave up, and always had that thorn in my side since then (I'm not the kind of give up guy). Recently I resumed working on GB development, and used my EEPROM programmer and noticed that.. it works. The only weird bug is you have to 1) Erase the eeprom first (or program to 0xff - that I have to try) and 2) write an EVEN number of bytes otherwise I suppose the bus is left in a weird state.
Ok sure that doesn't sing very high the quality of my code here I admit, but it did work. Do I added a few things, tested it more thouroughly, then made a Python program to communicate with it and there we are: I can upload and download ROMs on my EEPROM, and it just works.
I will sleep the sleep of the just tonight.

2020-03-20 - Alternate RGB led USB board
Made another small USB board just received fromn Seeedstudio, the RapideUSBII that runs an ATtiny2313, has a couple of RGB leds ... worked out of the box, so happy.

2020-03-16 - In Gameboy we trust
Ok I resumed working on an old project: make my own Cartridge and game for Gameboy. The cartridge was a bit of a fail so far, so I put it on the side (like 5 years ago!) and so the game too. Now I just bought a cartridge where I can upload a ROM so I resumed the development. And as a good developper, I made a tool to make development : the GbReaper. Allows you to see a ROM, extract sprites, use the sprites to make "maps", and export it into a format that GBDK can compile. Then you have your background and sprites, you just have to start coding! Heavily WIP, but who knows where it could lead? At least it will allow me to cross out a "TODO" / childhood dream from the bucket list, and it's worth its weight in gold.

2020-03-12 - Fixed power button on a Gameboy color
20 minutes, kapton, 2 wires... just switch pins 3 and C.

2020-03-08 - SNES to USB joypad (closed)
Ok done, some very minor issues only with the board, now I can play on my Retropie console with my original SNES pads v(^_^)v

2020-02-21 - SNES to USB joypad (ctd)
SNES-to-USB adapter PCB sent for production. I forgot how pleasant it was to make PCB, I think I will make a couple more and send together for prod. At 5USD the board, the 15USD sending fees would hurt less if I can group.

2020-02-17 - SNES to USB joypad
Nothing new here: already done by others and legacy technology, but hey, it's my life and my site. Plus recently my son is a big Super NES player and those eBay 1 USD USB SNES lookalike joypad aren't par with the real thing. I have a few of them home, so let's make the SNES-to-USB adapter for my Retropie console.

2020-02-03 - Google Vision API
Just playing with Google Vision API, that's all.

2020-01-31 - Air cleaner
I'm lucky to have a room for my electronic hobby, but the air doens't move much and after long soldering session it stinks and hurts your lungs (maybe psychosomatic). So maybe making a small air cleaner, with a fan and a HEPA filter? Too expensive to buy but make, maybe ...

2020-01-30 - Raspi radio, listening to the waves
That was fast, my Raspi WebRadio player is working just fine now! Ok a bit of tuning to do (power management mostly), but it's here. The hardware part is done, so is the speaker case itself. Works fine, though lots of white noise... meh, will be enough for a workshop AND it makes it sound like a real old time radio!! (in woodworking these happy incidents are called "rustic charm" :)
The outside, with anonymized helper elf for scale

The outside, with anonymized helper elf for scale

2020-01-23 - Got myself an oscilloscope
A long time dream came true: this year in my fukubukuro at Akizukidenshi 秋月電子 there was an oscilloscope probe. It was the message I was waiting for, I need to upgrade from that cheap (yet pratical) DSO probe (one of the first versions). So I got myself a small factor one for less than 30 USD: a Yokogawa DL1540 functional! Made in 1992, it's closing on its thirties, with a vintage orange on black CRT screen. 150 MHz 4 channels, though channel 1 is dead. Leaves 3, and I have 2 probles (yeah I bought another one) only so no problem. Surprisingly the battery is dead so I'll change that and put a few pictures one of these days.

2020-01-18 - And the sun shined AGAIN!
Guess what, after finally replacing the eInk that died on my eInk Weather station, 1 week later the weather provider changed the API and removed the per hour forecast permission from the free plan! After Yahoo!, now it's WeatherBit who's playing tricks on me. So I spent a few hours cleaning up the code (shame on me it was and still is ugly) and re-implementing the weather source API from OpenWeatherMap! Big thanks to them.
Format was somehow similar so 3h of work while watching youtube were enough (a best practice to guarantee quality code and high efficiency).

2020-01-12 - Charging DS Lite ghetto style
Found an old DS Lite in the closet for my son to play with but of course the battery was empty, and impossible to find the charger or an USB adapter. But I remembered an old technique, and after checking continuity with the battery pins, I just stucked 2 wires in the plug and fed it with the USB 5v. Not a long term solution but it does the job for tonight.
Oh and I resumed (years after!) working on my Arduino Programmer, basically just an ArduinoISP.

2020-01-11 - Troll
Just found this quote on the net, I liked it so let me share with you:
"Give a man a fish and he'll be fed for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll promptly forget that he once didn't know and proceed to call anyone who asks a n00b and flame them on the boards for being stupid."

2020-01-04 - Raspi radio
Ok new idea: make a Raspi WebRadio player. Using a raspberry pi zero W as a webradio player! Let's do it!

2020-01-03 - Foot switch
For my drillpress, I wanted a footswitch to keep my hands on the workpiece. So I bought a cheap footswitch and based on the Clapclap 1386 board I made a smart foot switch : long press to start, short press to stop. The details are in the Clapclap 1386 page.

2019-12-16 - Mini Media USB keyboard
Changed my keyboard and made a new USB volume control with 3 keys mute/vol+/vol-, on Linux and Eclipse, works just fine. Happy of the result, a nice small project to return to electronics.

2019-11-26 - PT2399 (II)
Yet another guy uses the PT2399 chip as an effector, this time he just reuses a small eBay module and tweaks it a bit but still, nice to read. Bought one of the modules of course (^_^)

2019-11-24 - Retropie console
Nothing unique or original here, I just make my own take on the Retropie game console emulator (born in the 80's, have 2 year old boy at home, what other excuse I need? :) If you're curious, there it is.

2019-11-12 - Android things
A friend of mine working for the "Big G." kindly gave ma a second hand Android Things - Pico Pro maker kit, so cool! So since I'll enjoy a few hollidays in the coming months between jobs, let's play with Android!

2019-06-06 - getting hot
My air conditionned is second hand like the house, and the remote bid us farewell. Luckily I have another Mitsubishi aircon for the which the remote works, but now I can use one out of 2 (I could turn both on but navigating between rooms with the remote is not fun). So should I buy again a remote (which failed first time because my aircon is an antique) or make one? I'd say the tipping point is 10USD: if a new working remote costs me less than that, I'll buy it. Let's see.

2019-06-04 - And the sun shined
At last, my eInk Weather station is completed and seating in the entrance. I should make a cache to hide the screen ugly connector and PCB as per my wife suggestion: that will come later.

2019-04-11 - PT2399
Wow found someone who makes something new with the PT2399 (not like me) and share her schematics here

2019-03-04 - LittlevGL GUI
Found a nice user interface library for micro controllers (in C): LittlevGL. Looks very nice, now works with micropython, will try to give it a try one of these days, maybe for my Bedside mood companion (if one day I really start working on it :)

2019-02-20 - Color highlight!
You don't care but I do, so now my edition mode has HTML syntax highlighting after all these years. Took me 2h thanks to the great CodeMirror library. Big big big thanks to them, it's easy to use, works from the start, lots of themes, and free: I love it.

2019-02-13 - And the weather cleared
One week later, the damage is fixed and my eInk Weather station is back, kindly supported by the excellent WeatherBit.io site.

2019-02-06 - Et merde...
My eInk Weather station was fine, I finally resume on it and BAM ! Yahoo! decommissioned the API used by the Python lib... Now got to rewrite the app to use another provider, maybe openweathermap.org. et merde.

On Jan. 3, 2019, YQL service at https://t.co/g4W9RhdMLk will be retired. YQL based services that use https://t.co/g4W9RhdMLk, including users of https://t.co/5IkUaEykdl, will no longer operate. Yahoo Weather API users see the tweet below for info about continuing your service.
— Y! Developer Network (@ydn) December 31, 2018

2019-01-31 - Smartphone, Linux and USB
Had a few ideas recently now that my setup AVR on Linux is working: a Smartphone Media Keyboard that would allow me to press Next/Pause while I listen to music at my desk and not unlock screen, while charging the phone. And while I'm at it, a small USB Smart Switch that could connect/disconnect the data easily when I work on a USB gadget.

2019-01-22 - Google scripts
Found this article on Hackaday about google scripts ... looks interresting, especially to do some advanced cleanup in mail gmail mailbox!

2019-01-10 - Happy new 2019
Hi all and happy new year! In fact winter break was dedicated to setup a Line chatbot and it worked just fine (^_^)v Need now to find a real usage for it ...
I found this nice firmware for SonOFF devices, and sicne I'm equipped at home, it might make sense to try it... https://github.com/arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota

>>> Old news are in the news history page...