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Omnimaga => News => Topic started by: DJ Omnimaga on December 02, 2011, 04:25:35 am

Title: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 02, 2011, 04:25:35 am
Hardware-related projects seems to be quite popular lately on calculator websites. First of all, KermMartian recently showcased another unconventional use of a TI-83+ graphing calculator: He connected it to a Floppy disk drive to play music. On top of that the music is controlled by the calculator! He has posted a video on Youtube that showcases it in action, playing music generated by his Z80 assembly application Mobiletunes and it is quite impressive.

He has posted a project page about this on his website (http://www.cemetech.net/projects/item.php?id=38), with more explanations. Maybe if you got several unused floppy disk drives lying around and lots of calculators, you could get in group with friends, form a band then play your favorite music pieces with their supposedly-for-math tools connected to a floppy drive? This also proves that floppy drives still have some uses even today too!


Besides that, there has been another hardware and electronic-related showcase recently, this time by Juju, on Omnimaga forums (http://ourl.ca/14247/266864). While the project is not directly related to TI and Casio graphing calculators (yet?), it is still great to see more calculator enthusiasts venturing into hardware-related stuff lately. His project is an home-made handheld console, using an arduino and is meant to be a school project, as he is into robotics and computer programming. On HCWP wednesday, he showcased it running a clone of Nick Disabato's calculator "classic" (http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/3/38/38229.html) and there has been a topic about his project with photos (http://ourl.ca/14247/266864) for a while on Omnimaga too.
(http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=11650.0;attach=10583;image)
Hopefully he posts a video of it in action soon, for those who missed it on the voice chat a night ago! We also hope he has something in mind about this project that involves calculators. :)


And finally, another forum member here, Keoni29, is planning to create his own version of Labpro. This topic (http://ourl.ca/12935/266021) has more information about it.
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: Juju on December 02, 2011, 01:11:46 pm
Yay electronics FTW! Also really nice Kerm and Keoni :)

Also my console, while not related to calculators, might be related since the LCD looks like a wide calculator screen with backlight. I might port more TI games on it.
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: Keoni29 on December 02, 2011, 01:20:58 pm
Yay electronics FTW! Also really nice Kerm and Keoni :)

Also my console, while not related to calculators, might be related since the LCD looks like a wide calculator screen with backlight. I might port more TI games on it.
Thank you :) It's partially my hobby, but it is school related. I have just received the PIC 16F628a and some other components. Now it's experimenting with them and I will eventually design the actual hardware.
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: aeTIos on December 02, 2011, 01:56:58 pm
Juju: How do you write programs for your console?
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: Keoni29 on December 02, 2011, 02:01:31 pm
Juju: How do you write programs for your console?
I guess that will be programming the arduino. It has usb.
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: Juju on December 02, 2011, 02:07:12 pm
Juju: How do you write programs for your console?
Pretty much the Arduino programming language, for now.
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: Eiyeron on December 02, 2011, 02:27:30 pm
Why the floppies sounds sounds like Portal2 sounds to me?
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: Keoni29 on December 02, 2011, 03:34:50 pm
Why the floppies sounds sounds like Portal2 sounds to me?
Maybe they recorded the sound of a floppydrive and used it in the game :P
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 02, 2011, 04:46:56 pm
Yay electronics FTW! Also really nice Kerm and Keoni :)

Also my console, while not related to calculators, might be related since the LCD looks like a wide calculator screen with backlight. I might port more TI games on it.
Thank you :) It's partially my hobby, but it is school related. I have just received the PIC 16F628a and some other components. Now it's experimenting with them and I will eventually design the actual hardware.
The only concern I have about your project is that maybe the name starting with "TI-N" will scare some people who witnessed the bugs of the TI-Nspire series and their overpricedness and they will think you plan to sell TI-Nterface for several hundreds of dollars and never test it for bugs. :P
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: Keoni29 on December 02, 2011, 05:10:37 pm
Yay electronics FTW! Also really nice Kerm and Keoni :)

Also my console, while not related to calculators, might be related since the LCD looks like a wide calculator screen with backlight. I might port more TI games on it.
Thank you :) It's partially my hobby, but it is school related. I have just received the PIC 16F628a and some other components. Now it's experimenting with them and I will eventually design the actual hardware.
The only concern I have about your project is that maybe the name starting with "TI-N" will scare some people who witnessed the bugs of the TI-Nspire series and their overpricedness and they will think you plan to sell TI-Nterface for several hundreds of dollars and never test it for bugs. :P
Fear not. It's a school project. It will be open source and open hardware so that anyone can build one if they want to.
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: Deep Toaster on December 02, 2011, 09:35:41 pm
Why the floppies sounds sounds like Portal2 sounds to me?
Maybe they recorded the sound of a floppydrive and used it in the game :P
Maybe they recorded it from a TI-83 Plus XD Nice work, KermM/Juju/Keoni. Hardware stuff sounds fun :D
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: epic7 on December 02, 2011, 10:06:15 pm
The new use for floppy disks.

I want one of those!
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: AzNg0d1030 on December 04, 2011, 09:57:37 pm
The new use for floppy disks.

I want one of those!
Good luck getting one :P
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: ElementCoder on December 05, 2011, 04:57:41 am
This is awesome :D Wonder what more we could do...
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: jmpmbs on December 08, 2011, 07:12:29 pm
nice
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: epic7 on December 08, 2011, 07:15:20 pm
Was that intentional? If not, delete them, its happened to me before :P. If so... Dont double post. Or in this case quadruple post XP
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: parserp on December 08, 2011, 07:15:43 pm
 <_< please don't spam.

EDIT: ninja'd! and his posts have been deleted.
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: Juju on December 08, 2011, 07:16:19 pm
Banned him anyway, hoping he learns his lesson. He kept posting stuff like 'nice' and 'good job' everywhere, prolly to get to 40 posts.
Title: Re: When calculator enthusiasts ventures into electronics and hardware
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 09, 2011, 12:21:51 am
It seemed like he wanted his post count up or something, because all posts are short and while constructive, seemed to be within a very short time span.