December 2007

Les showed us the webpage of the Amateur Radio NSW Radio Homebrew and Experimenters Group and talked about some of the homemade electronic and mechanical devices the members have displayed at their monthly meetings. David showed us through his tutorial How to Drive Multiple 7-segment displays. The full tutorial can be seen on his webpage.

November 2007

Tony discussed using the PIC for remote control, and demonstrated some devices he built. Andrew discussed the PIC24 family. David showed us a PIC simulator and debugger.

October 2007

David demonstrated the Eagle CAD program for designing circuit boards. Neville showed two of the four Instructables, Schematics and font Layouts, for learning this program, and examined Eagle's User language Programs. Tony demonstrated two PIC devices he built. In the first a 3-colour LED was made to show many colours by its PIC driver. In the second a Passive Infrared Detector (PID) was set up to detect movement of an intruder and radio an alarm signal to a remote station. Geoff showed his PIC-controlled triac driver set and discussed some problems he was having with it.

September 2007

Andrew explained the use of several PICAXE08Ms as linear digital position sensors using optical switches. He showed pictures of a rig that is currently in use plotting profiles of model beaches in a wave flume. The sensors monitor the displacement of rocks in the model under wave action, providing information for the construction of breakwaters. Martin showed how his ATMEL-controlled LCD display graphically represents the movement of strain gauges on a structure. Tanjim and Paul presented their project for a dashboard display of the speed limit zones a car is travelling through.

August 2007

Bob reviewed the final chapter of the PIC C course from EPE magazine. He said the course is a good overview, but you need to refer to a book on C while reading the course. Martin showed more details of his LCD display. It was built from Myke Predco's design: www.myke.com/lcd.htm. Peter showed us some Thai websites containing various kits and gadgets: www.silaresearch.com, www.mynpe.com.

May 2007

Alex introduced us to the Wikipedia comparison of programming languages. Andrew showed his project for measuring temperatures at many layers of ocean depths using a string of 26 PIC processors. Neville explained how he adapted a plotter for use as an automatic drilling machine, and Bob showed the software he wrote for it. Martin showed his LCD display driven directly by an ATMEL microprocessor.

April 2007

Aras Vaichas introduced us to the Dorkbot, a worldwide network of 'people doing strange things with electricity'. A local chapter of Dorkbot meets monthly in Sydney. Steve showed us some ways of increasing the number of ports of the picaxe, and discussed using a clock module as a cheap and accurate time base for microprocessors. Bob presented Part 3 of EPE magazine's PIC C course.

March 2007

Chris Velevitch introduced us to Flex programming, an application of Flash. Chris is Manager of the Flashdev, the Sydney Flash Platform Development Group. Stuart Oliver showed us his program to write out data from his PIC-based analogue to digital converter.

February 2007

Martin introduced us to the Atmel range of microprocessors, Alex showed us how to interrupt the PIC SERIN command, and Bob Backstrom presented Part 2 of EPE magazine's PIC C course.

January 2007

Peter showed some websites he had found, Andrew discussed an interface between a PICAXE and a memory card, Bob presented Part 1 of EPE magazine's PIC C course, a four part series beginning with the November issue, David showed us the Assembler programming course he is writing, viewable on his website.

2006 2008