T3 vs RPi for AVR ISP programming

I have been working on couple of projects after my last post about which I will post later. But before that I want to mention the difficulty with ISP programming with Teensy3.

I am late to enter the Arduino world as I started with Raspberry Pi. So to work on a small Arduino project, I bought Teensy3 for it's capabilities. Along the way I bought couple of ATtinys to play around with. Now, I needed to program these AVRs so I turned to T3 as it is supposed to be possible to use the ArduinoISP sketch to program these Tinys. The T3 is fine for it's job but I have had a very difficult time programming these AVRs using T3 on a breadboard. I spent one whole night to debug the problem with "Device signature = 0x000000" on an ATtiny45 ... it only says to check my connection. None of the combinations I tried worked. So I checked to see if I could program using RPi. Turns out that the fine folks behind Gertboard project (mostly Gert & Gordon) have already laid the foundation. I downloaded the modified avrdude, connected the SPI pins and programmed the blinky. Lo-and-behold the flashing worked (Device signature = 0x1e9206) and blinky started running.

Hacking my boombox

  I have couple of small projects lined up, the first of which was to convert the cassette input into an AUX (auxiliary) input. The boombox in question is SONY CFD-S33. The function button on it controlled the sound from either one of the three inputs which were Tape / CD / Radio. I have stopped playing cassettes for quite some time and I needed to use it outdoors. Unfortunately this year, while using it for some outdoor shoots, I realized that I cannot rely on it's CD playing capabilities either. So either i needed to buy a new boombox or add an AUX input to play from any device which has 3.5mm audio output.
  For couple of reasons I went with second option. This instructables page helped me get started. The only thing I needed to buy was 3-conductor phone jack (RadioShack part #274-0249). Accessing the screws to open up the box was a herculean job though. In the end I opened it up and connected the 3 wires coming from the phono input. This boombox also has TA20168N chip for radio and tape head pre-amplification. I tapped on the output side of the chip as follows:

• Right channel -> red wire -> pin 18
• Left channel -> white wire -> pin 20
• Ground -> black wire -> pin 7

Turned out that this setup taps into the radio input instead of tapping into the cassette input. So now I have to set the function to Radio input and if the AUX input is unplugged then I can hear the radio but if it is plugged then I can hear whatever is being fed into the aux input. Now need to test it's performance in the heat outdoors.

Fresh beginnings

This blog was started quite some time back and had seen it move from one hosting provider to next and finally I have decided to move it permanently to blogspot till the time blogspot is available. It will still be carrying posts on various topics. See my other blogs on specific topics.

Toasmaster's international

I have joined the local chapter of Toastmaster's International called Connection Communicators. I hope it would be a fun thing to do every week. We have members from Nokia and NSN meeting in one of the meeting rooms during lunch time every thursday. When searching on the website there are about 250 local chapters around greater DFW area.

Power and awe of a tsunami ...

I start out by conveying my condolences to the families who lost their dear ones in the worst disaster of the year. The people of south asia not being familiar with a phenomenon like this lost their lives. Have a look at these pictures sent by one of the vacationers there.

Off to Hawaii during Labor day weekend

We will be off to Oahu island during the long labor day weekend. I hope to get lots of pictures to upload on my website and some truely picturesque ones... Meanwhile hurricane Frances is coming to the Florida coast during the big weekend. Hope it does not do as much damage :(

Playing around with Flickr

A nice web service for photo blogging brought to us by flickr.com I just added their daily zeitgeist to the right side of this page. You can see my entries at http://www.flickr.com/photos/swapan/ The photos will be there only for three months. I will try to explore the possibility to extend the service to store them on these pages, maybe show a snapshot on the right... oh! I can change it show my pics or my contact list's photos but right now it is empty so I will leave it at that.

Another of those computer jokes

My wife forwarded them which she got from her friends ...

Today we have come out to watch The Wizard of Oz on a big screen outdoors. Its a lovely evening.

Calendar in a box

I was trying to implement the calendar in a rounded box as mentioned at this handcoding post but it failed spectacularly. Images attached to 'table' tag does not behave the same way as attached to 'div' tag. I have to admit that I tried only on IE6 and not much on N7 but still it does not look good. Here is a screen shot with IE at the top and NE at bottom.