http://www.wanderingmind.ca Welcome to my little world. The stories, my hobbies and my work. Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:54:57 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Atmel AVR Dragon is a new programmer for Atmel AVR 8-bit Microcontrollers. I obtained this little beast because my old AVRISP serial programmer was useless due to lack of serial hardware on my PC. The Dragon was quite inexpensive and readily available at DigiKey. It promised to not only ... http://www.wanderingmind.ca/2006/11/12/avr-dragon/ I needed a device to test R/C servos. Hooking up receiver, battery, servos and then running the transmitter with the antenna extended inside the house was awkward. I thought this could be a nice little project for some microcontroller. After a long abstinence from PIC assembler, I downloaded the latest ... http://www.wanderingmind.ca/2006/11/11/pic-servo-tester/ During the summer of 1998 I built yet another PIC based clock. I had an old LED analog clock kicking around. It was a CMOS logic design built from an ELV (a German electronics magazine) kit. The clock lost its time every single time there was the slightest brownout, it ... http://www.wanderingmind.ca/2006/10/28/pic-aclock/ Curious me wanted to know the pinout of the plug on the back of my Hitec radios. Some time ago I made up a buddy cord for the Hitec Optic 6 and Hitec Laser 4. It took me a while to retrace those steps and find all the information used ... http://www.wanderingmind.ca/2006/10/05/hitec-trainer-cord/ During spring and summer of 1998 I developed my second project utilizing a Microchip PIC processor. The primary purpose was to explore character LCD displays and 2-wire bus (I2C) devices with a Microchip PIC microcontroller. The project was a digital room thermostat with multiple setpoints at different times of the ... http://www.wanderingmind.ca/2006/10/04/pic-thermostat/ It was February of 1998 when I first put my eye on the Microchip PIC microcontroller product line. It all started many years earlier with a Commodore C-64, followed by homebrew 6502 hardware projects and a fair bit of assembler programming on the 6502. Maybe some day I will find ... http://www.wanderingmind.ca/2006/10/03/pic-clock/ For a long time we omitted this cache from our trips. It sounded like a difficult challenge, rightfully so. We've agreed to turn around and post a DNF if the cache proved to difficult or to dangerous for children. With that in mind we packed up and went for a ... http://www.wanderingmind.ca/2006/04/24/lose-lake-2/ The first few caches we placed have been out there for a few years. The last log entries indicated some trouble. The rubbermaid containers were showing wear and tear. They are also not all that waterproof. We decided to make a trip with the primary purpose of maintaining the older ... http://www.wanderingmind.ca/2006/04/18/maintenance-required-april-2006/ Ok, this is not really GeoCaching but very much GPS related. The Degree Confluence Project is all about intersections of latitude and longitude lines across the globe. Here is the story of some Sioux Lookout folks that went out to document the 50°N 92°W confluence. http://www.wanderingmind.ca/2006/04/17/50n-92w-confluence/ It is getting warmer, the snow is quickly disappearing. In fact, there is hardly any snow left. This Easter weekend was blessed with some outstanding warm weather. Great weather for yard work, ya right. Let's go caching! http://www.wanderingmind.ca/2006/04/16/2006-easter-sunday-caching/