Ever since low cost modules based on the ESP8266 wireless microcontroller came on to the market the ESP8266 has become one of the most popular ways for hobbyists to remotely control their projects. It is the combination of a low cost but powerful wireless ARM microcontroller, combined with the accessibility of the Arduino IDE that…
The ‘Black Pill’ range of development boards offer an amazing level of features and processing power when compared to the popular Arduino range of development boards. Even some of the higher end Arduino boards such as the Due simply can’t compete when it comes to raw processing power, memory and features, and yet these little…
Although you may have never heard of the ESP8266, it has quietly been a huge success in the microcontroller world due to it’s impressive spec and incredibly low price. It is a small wireless microcontroller with built in Wi-Fi (802.11) capability, meaning that it can not only connect to most Wi-Fi access points, but is…
Recently we seem to be having a running theme for wanting to drive multiple displays from a single Arduino, and our latest library is no exception. To coincide with the release of a larger 1.3†version of our ever popular uOLED displays we have also decided to release a new Arduino library to make it…
To compliment two of our latest product releases we have now released a brand new Arduino library for controlling WS2812 based RGB LED products. You can check out the following compatible products for this library on our website here: Digitally controlled 8x RGB LED Light Strip (HCMODU0075) Flexible Digitally Controlled RGB LED strips (HCOPTO0028) Using…
We’ve now updated our HCMAX7219 led driver library to support serial dot matrix displays such as our dot matrix module shown in the above image. The library supports multiple drivers connected in series and a built-in alphanumeric font to make displaying text and numbers simple. With the new added commands it is easy to make a…
The MAX7219 LED driver is a handy IC for when you want to drive multiple LED’s. Although your Arduino may have plenty of digital IO pins for most applications, when you interface to LEDs such as seven segment displays or LED matrix modules you’ll very quickly run out of pins. The MAX7219 can take care…
So you’ve taken the plunge… You’ve decided to buy yourself an Arduino development board. You’ve figured out how to get the development environment installed and you’ve even managed to download the example blink sketch that most getting started tutorials will point you towards (http://blog.hobbycomponents.com/?p=51). This sketch is meant to be as simple a program as possible…
One of the things the Arduino environment does very well is to provide a quick and easy path into the world of microcontrollers and embedded control. One way it achieves this is to try and hide away the complicated low-level parts of programming a microcontroller. When writing code for an Arduino you generally don’t need…
Access your microcontroller from anywhere in the world (Part 1) Microcontrollers are an amazingly cheap way to automate and control the world around you, but in a world where a Wi-Fi connection is available almost anywhere it has not always been as proportionally cheap to get your microcontroller project connected to the outside world. That…
