Most liked posts in thread: VINTAGE BEEB HARDWARE PROJECTS... DISCUSSED...

Brilliant, fellas.

We'll get our heads (and asses) together and see what interesting project we can come up with for our old workhorses to perform in today's Brave New World...

 

Been reading up on this, the Beeb can accept voltages of 0v - 1.8v on the analogue port so there needs to be a way of dropping the voltage of the sensor down from 5v
More thought required.

 

Paul well setting bits ...
just AND with the value you already have
LDA #5 ;(b00000101)
AND b11000000 ; Setting bits 7 & 6 'A' should now read b11000101 you didnt say what bits..
STA $D019 ;

Paul we only learn from our mistakes, as long as we don't repeat those same mistakes of course, and nobody is to old to learn new stuff, sometime we just have to chuck out what we don't need; to replace it with something new ..

 

Sorry to hear Graham, days like that are hard to go through..

As soon as stress hits me then I get very like that, my poor old head with it's depression starts telling me bad things to do to me but I'm aware enough to not really listen. It's not voices, just my depression takes over to a degree. The last thing I need is to hear other voices in my head, its busy enough as it is

Glad you are pain free, backs are troublesome items and rarely let you off the hook when they have issues so it's nice to hear that you did get better.

Right, off to work out why Numen demo won't work off the AVG (for me) yet runs fine from SD-Max..Can't be the U1MB as it works off the SD-Max, everything else seems to work yet others with the same firmware get it to load direct from the cart..Weird..

As for the AND scenario, I was just using random code, my maths was never good, need to read up on how AND OR and the others work. I guess its the whole notion of why you have to set bits that sort of puzzles, I'm just used to slapping numbers in addresses. I sort of see why but then I start to get confused....Put it down to maths IQ -200

 

Project #1 - Using Light Dependant Resistors (LDRs) - resistors which decrease in resistance as the light shining on them increases.

A couple of suggestions to follow (taken from Practical Hardware Projects for the BBC Micro by J Telford), ie. build a

LIGHT METER​

featuring one or more of these capabilities:

Night Light

Dusk/Dawn Light

People/Object Detector

and Light to Sound

Clearly this first project to be discussed is not a million miles dissimilar to the project kit which you can get pre-built for 8bit Ataris in the AtariLab (Dickinson College) series but hopefully, discussing such DIY electronics topics here might well lead to hardware home-brew construction "spin offs" for other micros, eg. Amstrad, Sinclair and Oric machines.


Atarians - look no further than here for your ready-built electronics fun with light module:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/ATARILAB-LIGHT-MODULE-W-Cartridge-NEW-NEW-IN-BOX-800-XL-XE-/140966936238

 

My old lot Maplin did loads of rather dodgy kits for various British micro's including the Atari (well we were an official dealer). For me the most fun was the SP0256 speech kit but as S.A.M. was about it wasn't as popular as it could have been. Sadly I felt that most of the kits we did for various micros's were more just to have an item for them than as actually being that useful.

 

Thanks for those "inputs" from Paul & Matt there... if you'll excuse the pun?!

Some good points raised as bolt-on speech synthesis modules were always a source of heaps of fun (get your micro to talk like a dalek and then ring grandma up and put "Auntie Beeb" on to talk to her... endless japes, I'll be bound.

As Matt points out, the AtariLab comes in several modules too and you'll need the basic interface one as well as these light and sound add-on packs in order to be properly set-up to rock and roll with your Atari classic but they're a great way in to trying out "projects" which are ready to use "out the box" with a guide on suitable experiments to try out. Again, as suggested, we might hear from folks who have successfully used their AtariLabs with other micros using a compatible 9 pin Atari joystick type interface.

Anyway, here goes with the first set of notes on parts, coding and projects using light/sensors on the Beeb and I hope to go on to discuss other possible applications such as: DIY burglar alarms, robots, buggies, light pens and the like so please do chip in if you've got some ideas/veroboards/projects to share with the rest of the forum...

 

LOL!

Carbon monoxide detector available too, Rich?

 

Yep mate!
https://www.cricklewoodelectronics.com/Carbon-Monoxide-gas-sensor-module-for-Arduino-MQ-7.html

 

All joking aside it should be possible to turn the Beeb into a Gas alarm in theory. The Methane is more for a confined space tester for working in a sewage works ( in a past life I did this ) The Monoxide tester would be more useful in the home as a lot of us have Gas fired boilers in the UK.

 

You see, Rich, every cloud (of mustard gas) has a silver lining - Paul's parfum!

 

There's no 5V line on the beeb?

 

Sounds like a conflict some place, but you are likely to know more than me on that one.. I just get too technical are boring unfortunately Oh and haven’t learnt from that ...