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Travel Tripod

I the last two years I only owned a Gitzo GT3541LS tripod with an Arca Swiss Monoball P0 ball head. I really like this combination as the tripod from Gitzo’s systematic series can handle up to 18 kg load capacity with a maximum height of 146 cm without a center column which tends to make a tripod unstable. The tripod is made of carbon and weights only 1.72 kg plus about 350 g from the ball head, but together with the ball head and a Kirk quick release clamp it has a closed length of about 65 cm. This is way too much to put it easily inside a back pack for travelling! Thus, on my recent trips I left my Gitzo tripod at home and only carried a GorillaPod Focus with me (You might want to have a look at my GorillaPOD SRL-Zoom vs. Focus comparison). This is better than nothing, but on my trip to Grand-Teton- and Yellowstone-National-Park I regretted not bringing a real tripod. My next trip will bring me to Costa Rica with all of its nature and so I wanted a real tripod which I could carry around easily! continue reading »

Compiling AVR Toolchain under OS X Lion

Atmel‘s official toolchain for programming its AVR devices is AVR Studio. AVR Studio 5 is Windows only, but uses the gcc as its C compiler which is open-source. A viable option for Mac users is to use CrossPack, which contains precompiled versions of everything you need to develop for AVR devices, but it does not always use the latest version available.

As I’m planning to use the new ATxmega128B1 I need a newer version and so I wanted to compile everything by myself. This article gives a brief overview how to compile everything. continue reading »

Agilent DSOX3EMBD: I²C and SPI serial decoding

Last week my DSOX3EMBD software upgrade for my Agilent DSO-X 3014A oscilloscope arrived, which enables serial triggering and analysis for the I²C and SPI procotol. In this article I want to give a brief overview what is possible with the upgrade and how it looks like. continue reading »

DYMO Rhino 4200 Beschriftungsgerät

Vor ein paar Tagen habe ich bei Reichelt elektronik das Beschriftungsgerät Rhino 4200 von DYMO entdeckt. Statt 89,95 € kostet es im Angebot in der Promotionszeit bis zum 30. März 2012 nur 79,95 € und es gibt noch Lithium-Ionen-Akku und Netzteil gratis dazu, so dass man keine sechs Mignon Batterien benötigt. Da ich in nächster Zeit einige Kabel verlegen und aufräumen möchte, war ich sehr angetan von der Möglichkeit Schrumpfschlauch zu bedrucken und auch spezielle Modi für Kabelfahnen und Schellen zu haben und habe gleich zugeschlagen.

Der Ersteindruck ist gut: Ein großes Display und die QWERTZ-Tastatur machen die Eingabe sehr komfortabel. continue reading »

I²C via USB on OS X using FT232H

Many sensor chips use the I²C bus, sometimes called TWI or SMBus, for communication. Most microcontrollers support I²C also natively and if not I can be implemented easily in software. Connecting I²C devices to a PC is much more difficult as soldering them onto the mainboard (where a SMBus can be found usually) is not a viable solution. Up to now I usually used a Atmel AVR microcontroller in teamwork with a FT232R (a standard USB↔RS232 converter).

The USB 2.0 successor of the FT232R, the FT232H, has a Multi-Protocol Synchronous Serial Engine (MPSSE) included which is designed to support serial interfaces such as I²C, SPI or JTAG at speeds up to 30 Mbps. This sounded to me as an interesting option to test I²C and SPI devices directly from my PC. continue reading »