So, Graxe was kind enough to drive down and share all his awesome gear with me.  I decided to take a bit of video last night, as he was unpacking.  The video is a little dark, as it was an impromptu session.  The battery was almost dead, so the video cuts out near the end.

Adventures in RepRap Land from Morgellon on Vimeo.

Fear not… after a trip to the Chinese buffet, we plan to return and do more electronics work.  We also plan on taking some more video and pictures… hopefully a little better quality this time around

Scanning through the specs of the Illuminato, I was very impressed!

• 42 Digital I/O pins!! 6 of which can be Analog
• Layout still supports “standard” Arduino shield too!
• Code compatibility, works with IDE (backwards compatible with Arduino sketches)
• Powered by an Atmega645, double the code space and a faster code download speed.
• 10 white surface mount LED’s on backside of board (controlled with bling() function)

There are several videos from the Liquidware guys showing off the Illuminato

Looks like the Illuminato is already up for sale at the Liquidware Store for $34.99 US.

• You can read the release post and all good information at the Liquidware Blog!

http://antipastohw.blogspot.com/2009/01/introducing-illuminato-100-gnu-gpld.html

I used the documentation from the RBBB Freeduino located here (pdf).

ATMega168 Pinout for Arduino

RBBB Schematic

The first step is to build the power supply.

You need to test it to make sure you are getting ~5v

Then you build the basic Freeduino

And plug your power supply into the Freeduino

I used two led’s, one for power indication and one for pin 13.  if you dont use these you can loose 2 resistors and 2 led’s.

I put one of these on a perfboard

There is no way to program the chip on the breadboard or on the perfboard, other than taking out the chip and using an Ardunio to send sketches to it. (yes i know about other ways, but you still have to pull the chip out)

So I finished the breadboard up with FTDI

So now I can use a FTDI cable and send data to and from my breadboard Duino.

Mine has a few fancy features (other than lots of wire).  For example I have some headers for plugging up an LCD and some for a FTDI cable.

I also have some headers for additional ground, 5v, and 9v from the battery.

For some reason this thing works and is around the same footprint as a regular Arduino, just a bit taller.  I also learned a few things, the led’s for serial communication come from the FTDI chip on fancy Arduinos, as does the 3.3 volts.

Here is a pic of my new baby along with some other boards.

Paul from Modern Device sent in 3 rBBB’s, 2 P4 RS232 to TTL Serial Adapter Kits, 2 LCD117 Serial LCD Boards, 2 16×2 blue LCD’s and a Serial Cable.

Lady Ada from Adafruit Industries gave us a Motor Shield and a Wav Shield.

NKC Electronics sent in 3 x Freeduino USB kits and 2 x Freeduino serial kits.

I owe each of these folks something and I am working on it.  Please check out their stores for the coolness.

As usual, I had no idea how these things work, so I started plugging in wires and using a standard analog input sketch. That did not work at all, after I heard something pop I knew I was not on the right track. Then I started looking for some help. I still have not found a datasheet, but I found a graphic that made things work for me. My exact model is the OPB3902.

There are four pins on the bottom of these things, two to work the emitter (E) (pins 1 and 3) and two for the detector (D) (pins 2 and 4). Two resistors are needed, a 330 Ohm (orange orange red) and 2.2 K (red red orange).

I mounted the Optical Sensor on a proto board, having carefully cut off the plastic bump on the bottom of the sensor. I also used a led with a 1K (brown black red) for signaling when something was activating the switch. According to the drawing 5 volts would work, so that’s what I used, along with analog pin 2 for input and digital pin 12 for the signaling led.

After running my sketch and dumping the sensor reading to serial I found that it idled at ~929 and when the sensor was activated it was ~1020.  This is great, no problem to see a change of state, so I wrote a bit more code to activate the led.  I did not include a delay as I wanted the led to react quickly.

Here is my code, feel free to do with it as you will!

/*
Demo for a slotted optical sensor.

I am sure that someone elses code is in here somewhere
*/

int inputPin = 2;    // select the input pin for the potentiometer
int ledPin = 12;   // select the pin for the LED
int val = 0;       // variable to store the value coming from the sensor

void setup() {
  pinMode(inputPin, OUTPUT);  // declare the ledPin as an OUTPUT
  pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {

  val = analogRead(inputPin);    // read the value from the sensor
  Serial.println(val);

  if(val > 950){
    digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);  // turn the ledPin on
  } else {
    digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);   // turn the ledPin off
  }
}

I am very excited to know how to set up this sensor.  Next time I am going to find some with the hook up wires already soldered and heatshrinked on.  For those that are curious, that is a Freeduino from NKC under there.

Here are some flickr pictures of the Sanguino.

Sanguino

• atmega644P core
• 32 total general purpose I/O pins (some are multipurpose)
• 8 analog pins
• 6 PWM pins
• 64K flash memory
• 4K RAM
• 2K EEPROM
• completely through-hole construction
• breadboard compatible
• 100% open source
• compatible with Arduino 0012 with minimal hacking

Sanguino: Arduino’s Big Brother from Zach ‘Iowa’ Hoeken on Vimeo

Differences between Sanguino and Arduino
Website for Sanguino