Limpkin's blog

Means to extract solar energy are not new, but I'm still not seing anything solar-powered in my everyday life... Why is that so ?
Moreover, when you're trying to get some numbers on how much solar energy you could expect to harvest in an indoor environment, well... you basically don't find anything either...
So, let's build a platform that can finally give some info about the possibility to use solar energy to power your projects !

Yes! For those interested in meeting me (and asking lots of questions I'm sure ), I will be in New York City during the third week of September.
I will be present at the Open Hardware Summit on the 15th of September to present two demos: my RGB LED Matrix and my Bluetooth remote control.
Thus, I've been working during these last days on them... click on "continue reading" to know the latest advancements .

I have to admit, I am usually not the biggest fan of interpreted languages and high level programming. But in this case, they were very convenient.
This is thus a small article about what you can do in 3-4 hours with Matlab and a FTDI USB connectivity to your project. As an example, here is a project where my webcam output (well, kind of) gets displayed on my led matrix:

Yes, the title says it all... this was a pretty long project!
The project that I am going to detail here started when I bought in Bali (Indonesia) a very nice painting that one of the local artists made. At the time, this Buddha head made me think that I could make nice effects by playing with its lighting...

Hey Guys!

As I am just making some presentation about what I'm currently doing (that I can't tell you everything about it, sorry ), let me show you a picture of a small PCB I made (7 * 9 mm) with a LTC2445 24 bits ADC from Linear Technology on one side and 2 decoupling capacitor + 2.5V 0.25ppm noise, low drift voltage reference on the other! Click on "continue reading" to see the picture...

I just noticed that I was starting every entry with a "hey guys", so I'll try to do differently this time
You'll see that I slightly arranged my blog to make it look more attractive & easier to browse through. Your feedback is more than welcome! In a few days I'll be posting here my matrix project, i'm sure you'll be amazed! Stay tuned...

Hi everybody!
I'm sure you've been curious to know what I was doing since my last article here....
Well, I've been working on a few projects for Logitech that I can't describe to you as they have to stay confidential...
All I can say is that one was about RFID (Atmel U2270B and U3280M, very great stuff for RFID), and the second I'm working on right now involve the use of the TI OMAP3530 (ARM Cortex A8 + DSP TMS320C64), and a NXP LPC3230 (ARM9 processor that Crossworks supports, thus very easy to program on) with Wifi, camera, IR & VGA screens...
A similar OMAP3530 project can be found here, its development team is very very nice & welcoming, it really worth looking at!
I really hope that I'll be able to publish on this blog my RFID project in the coming months, I'm sure you'd be interested.
Now the good news... In parallel with my actual projects (when I have the time), I'm working on a LED matrix project involving the use of 3 64*32 bicolor leds matrices and an ATMEL FPSLIC (AVR + FPGA); that I'll publish here once it is done!
Stay tuned, it should really be easy to produce, very easy to program and will be connected to a PC

Hey everyone!
This time I will present a project I made with 2 of my friends during 3 weeks at the end of my third year in my engineering school. I never thought I could work that much on a project: from 8h00 to 24h00 everyday...