The GnuVision Blog

The FreeBird gets a new Home!
The Bird can now sing in Lua. Because I don’t have shared libs enabled for the avr32, I had to plug the functions statically into the interpreter core. With Lua, this is so sweet and simple!
By the way, what is this GnuVision?
A New Vision, for a New Age!
More to […]

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Passive Infrared detectors are used to sense motion. I am right now experimenting with such a device from Parallax. For once, this is a sensor which works with 3.3V, so the interface with the AVR32 processor is simple. Whenever movement is sensed, the output of the device goes HIGH and then LOW. Placing an […]

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The FreeBird now has `1-bit’ vision! I am experimenting with the QRD1114 reflective object sensor. It’s a small IR LED and a phototransistor combined in a single 4-pin package. Light reflected from an object placed close to the sensor controls the conductivity of the transistor.
Things to do immediately: (a) Start working with gEDA once […]

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Visit the Bird’s Home!
See the
bird in action! (Google video)
The board is running on a single 9V `Energizer’ (similar to Duracell) battery. It works even when the voltage drops to about 7.7V! Some u-boot environment variables have been set so as to make it boot from the SD card and run an init script […]

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If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

If you are a student at MIT, your first step into the world of CS/Electrical engineering would be via this
amazing course which […]

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