Some new toys to play with

I have just finished up some work for a major deliverable at work; so I predict I have a little more time to work on more fun things.  In the last few weeks, I had some mail-order toys come in - this weekend I finally had some time to at least test them!

The first item is an Arduino Uno, to replace the Diecimila that got left in Montreal with the Laser projects. It's an Arduino - it works like Arduinos do.

The other thing I got though was a JY-MCU Bluetooth serial adapter, which promises to be a lot of fun to mess with.  First though, I wanted to make sure it works, so I need a simple USB TTL serial interface.  This is where the Arduino comes in handy, although in a slightly unorthodox fashion.

Arduino Uno without the chip but as a USB serial
adapter - however, in this picture I had Rx and Tx swapped

Rather than loading up a sketch that provides another serial port on other pins of the ATmega chip, I simply removed the chip and hooked the Bluetooth adapter up to pins 0 and 1.  So, I used the Arduino Uno board as just the plain USB serial adapter with TTL levels that I need.

With this setup I successfully managed to send data (using my Mac) from BT to USB and back; using screen as a terminal emulator.

I am looking forward to messing with all this again.

View of the labels for the BT adapter.

Other Projects

This being said, other projects are getting back on track, too. The (actually work-related) microphone array will get some well-deserved attention again.  And finally, I have been roped into helping out with the next edition of the Journée « Science & Musique » that is being organized here at IRISA/INRIA Rennes.  For now I am just helping out a little with the website (the old one can be seen here) but probably I'll get more involved with some of the exhibits as well. My atrocious french is a problem, but we'll see what happens.