I Love Cynics!

A while back, I posted to the Arduino Forums about the trouble I was having getting actual data from the GPS to the Arduino. If you scroll down a couple of entries, you’ll see that I was getting a ton of gibberish.
The response from the Forum was that the RS232 output was not only […]

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The GPS to computer serial cable that I originally purchased for my eTrex was about six feet long. For this project, I wanted a much shorter cable, so I didn’t have to coil up a load of cable and try to find space for it on the cross bars of the motorcycle handle bars. I […]

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That’s what I’m getting so far when I hook up my eTrex to the Arduino. An example is shown below:

Rather disappointing considering that when hooked up to my computer and running Hyperterminal, notorious for sucking, it works perfectly, outputting nicely readable lines. Grrrrr. Ah well. I’ll figure it out. And if not, integrated GPS units […]

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The new Arduino board I ordered on the day before Thanksgiving arrived today. Talk about quick service. Not a lot to post, since all I’ve done is unpack and load a basic test program. When I ordered the Arduino Duemilanove I also purchased the USB breakout board for the Arduino Pro. Below is a picture […]

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A little poking around online and then fidgeting with a multimeter and the Garmin connection cable provided the following information on the cable pinouts:

On my cable the fourth pin, Power, did not correspond to any of the serial connector pins. That’s fine, and probably to be expected. I had no plans to use it for […]

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I have to give more kudos to SparkFun. Despite their website saying they were going to be closed until Monday, the order I placed on Wednesday went out yesterday. Should be here soon.
In the meantime, I’m gathering the other parts and figuring out how to get them to interact. Here’s what I have so far:

The […]

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One of my goals for next summer is to drive my motorcycle up the Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay. I’ve already got a list of gadgets that will likely be going with me, including my mobile amateur radio and camera gear.
A big nerd like myself, that just didn’t seem enough. Enter the picture you see […]

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First, credit where credit is due. I found this flash game in the Something Awful thread about addictive flash based games.
If I can roughly translate the German title of this game, it’s called “The Institute: Psychiatry for mishandled stuffed animals” and that’s exactly what the game is about. You have a cast of five stuffed […]

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My laptop died. Just out of warranty, too. Damn it. I think it’s just the hard drive. It boots up, but the moment you try to do anything useful, it locks up and the hard drive makes a rhythmic thunking noise. It’s got a good beat, but you can’t dance to it. I’ll figure it […]

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All good things come in threes; Neapolitan ice cream, stooges, celebrity deaths. So I figured one last run through of this game was required before I set it on the shelf to gather dust along with Battlefield 1942, Duke Nukem and Doom. But before I could do that, I needed a theme. Something to make […]

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