Stuff you'll need

I’ve been working out for a few months, and recently really increased my intensity at the gym, and have been modifying my diet to help me gain weight. I’ve discovered that smoothies are a great way to get extra calories and protein in my diet, and are quick and easy before going to work out.

The thing is, yogurt is kind of expensive. You can buy a whole gallon of milk for what you’d pay for a quart of yogurt. By making your own, you can get four times the yogurt for the same price!

There are lots of instructions on the internet for making your own. I followed the steps at wikiHow and had success the first time.

Here’s the stuff you’ll need:
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The latest MAKE: magazine bemoans the weakness of modern chemistry sets, as I did back in 2006, and comes to the same conclusion that the Thames &  Kosmos Chem C3000 is the best available today. Even better, they offer hints on how to get goodies that aren’t in today’s chemistry sets.

Read about their hints for filling out your home lab on the MAKE: blog: Great balls of fire! Make your own chemistry lab.

After getting my Automator Workflow running as described in the last post, I was ready to go and do some programming on my PICkit™. I wanted to get my LED cross fader going, and was thinking that pulse-width modulation (PWM) was the way to go. But how do I do that? I searched far and wide on the net, but only found high-level language routines, or references to PWM modules built into other PIC microcontrollers — not the 12F675 that’s part of the PICkit.

I stumbled upon Jal, created by Wouter van Ooijen, but now a GPLed project on Sourceforge. I initially skipped over it, because the info on Sourceforge indicates only a very limited number of processors supported, but the author’s page has some Jal source code specifically for the 12F675 — surprise, a simple LED flasher!

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Otto the Automator.
Is this icon appropriate or what?

Since I’ve gotten back into robotics, I’ve been getting ready to do some projects for the R2 unit. After accidentally loading the wrong program on to my PICKit with Andrew Rahn’s nifty little GUI interface to usb_pickit, I decided to try something completely different. What better time experiment with Tiger’s Automator tool?

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If you’re using Mac OS X and need to use Roscolux colors in your graphics program, I’ve got a little gift for you: a color palette for the Apple Color Picker.

Download Rosco RGB Approximation color palette (8kB).

Once you’ve downloaded it, UnStuff it and follow these steps to install it:

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It took almost all weekend, but I have completed my first step in learning to program PIC microprocessors. This first step was the traditional newbie “Flashing LED” program. It really took a lot to get there, but I’ll show you how I did it.

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My PICKit™ 1 Flash Starter Kit came yesterday, and after I got off work I started playing with it. First thing I did was plug it in and said, “Oooo! Look at the sequentially flashing LEDs! And the potentiometer on the board changes the speed! And the button changes the direction!”

Since none of the development software that comes with it runs on the Mac, I fired up MacrocASM, read the chip, and saved the hex file so I could put it back. Then I erased the chip and tried to re-load my saved hex file.

No flashing LEDs. What did I do wrong?

The next few hours were spent trying to figure that out. I even pulled the hex file of the pre-loaded LED flasher off the PICkit CD, and it still wouldn’t run after loading. I tried MicroChip’s unsupported programmer app for Mac OS X, still no go. The chip wouldn’t verify. Uh oh. I broke it.

Screenshot of usb_pickit. Click to enlarge.

Finally, Google showed me the way. I found a Linux command-line programmer utility called usb_pickit. The author thoughtfully included a pre-compiled binary for OS X, and even a little test program to write to your chip.

I downloaded the program, then fired up Terminal. I ran the OS X binary (usb_pickit.OS_X) and wrote the little test.hex file. Ta da! Flashing LEDs. Not the same flashing LEDs as before, but at least I know I didn’t kill my board.

I still haven’t gotten the original demo to re-load, but that’s okay. I’m going to move on to trying to write some code and see what I can do. Unfortunately, the documentation for MacrocASM is a little thin. Most of the MPASM compiler macros and directives don’t work, so a lot of the programs you can find online won’t even compile. I have not yet figured out how to convert them to MacrocASM — the compiler preprocessor doesn’t seem to be implemented (at least it’s not in the docs, except for a stub), and MPASM macros like BANKSEL aren’t there at all.

I just want to write my own LED flasher. I’ll keep you posted.