Today the stencils from OSH Stencils arrived for the Swiss precision timer project. I used to work with steel stencils for all my previous projects, therefore the polyimide film (3mil) ones feel very flimsy to me. I will see how...

I am working on several projects and one of them is called “Swiss-Precision Timer”. It is no art-related project, but like like a small utility. The prototype boards were produced by PCBWay in very good quality. It is a two-layer...

In this article, I will discuss how you write custom patterns for your snowflake decoration. It is an advanced topic and there are a number of prerequisites. Nevertheless, it is rewarding to you see your very own pattern displayed on...

In this short article, I explain the requirements to flash a custom firmware to your Pimoroni snowflake decoration. I assume you know a little bit about programming and already worked with an Arduino Uno or Adafruit Feather. Required Hardware For...

Here I briefly document a very realistic candlelight effect you can build with very few components. It works best is placed in a jar or behind a screen, where the actual ring is not visible. You will find all the...

If you own an original snowflake kit or produced boards from the sources, you have to wire them by yourself. The pre-assembled kit from Pimoroni comes with some nice flex-cables, but you may want to replace them with more decorative...

In version 1.2 of the snowflake firmware, I added a configuration mode, using a button attached to the data in of the first element. The States The attached button can issue two actions: a short press and a long press....

The sparkling lights on the real snowflake decoration are stunning and beautiful. Yet, it seems to be impossible to capture the effect with a video. After some experiments, I created a new video with a simple effect applied. It does...

From the beginning of the snowflake project, I tried to create photos or videos which capture the actual beauty of the decoration. Here are the two more recent videos I created: Differences to the Real Impression I am not happy...

We have some great news about my Snowflake Decoration: Starting today, you can buy an assembled version of the project from Pimoroni that can be shipped worldwide. Pimoroni did an excellent job on this project. No soldering is required at...

I added more modules to the HAL layer. The Hitachi LCD driver is now in a stable state. It uses a MCP23008 chip-based backend to reduce the number of wires required to access the display. Video Parts This demo uses...

If you read the previous articles about event-based firmware, modularisation and templates, you may wonder how to combine all these concepts in your firmware. I created a working firmware example, based on an event loop. In contrast to the minimal...

Error handling in firmware is a difficult task. If you decide to ignore errors, the best you can expect is a deadlock, but you could also damage the hardware. When reviewing existing code, I often find boolean return values or...

You may be familiar with enum values, but do you know about enum classes? This great feature was introduced with C++11 to solve several problems with the regular enum declaration. Now I will explain the enum class declaration and demonstrate...

Templates are a powerful feature of the C++ language, but their syntax can be complex. Here I will continue with the second part of the article. Although the examples I provide are for the Arduino Uno and Adafruit Feather M0,...

Did you read my article about C++ templates for embedded code? You learned how to use function templates. This post adds a practical example to this topic. Bit Manipulation You may be familiar with bit manipulation code like this: For...

Templates are a powerful feature of the C++ language but their syntax can be complex. This causes some developers to not use them, while others are concerned that templates might cause bloat to the compiled code. I will explain how...

This article is just a short follow-up article for “Write Less Code using the ‘auto’ Keyword”. Structured binding is something handy, introduced in C++17. Therefore, only the latest compiler will support it. If you are mainly write embedded code, you...

This article is for embedded software developers with good knowledge of C or C++, but struggle with large and complex projects. If you learn developing embedded code, e.g. using the Arduino IDE, you find plenty of small example programs. It...

In my opinion, preprocessor macros and the outdated #include mechanism are one of the worst parts of the C++ language. It is not just these things are causing a lot of problems, even more, it is very time consuming to...

The auto keyword was introduced with C++11. It reduces the amount of code you have to write, reduces repetitive code and the number of required changes. Sadly, many C++ developers are not aware of how useful this keyword is. Especially...

In your program code, you often have to deal with values which have a given unit. The problem is, this unit is often completely lost. If you do not add the unit as a comment or as part of the...

After writing the article about event-based firmware, I realised there are some misunderstandings how real-time counter are working and should be used. Especially there is a misconception about an imagined problem if such counter overflows. In this article, I try...

Should you use a class or a module with a namespace for a singleton interface in your firmware? I found there are many misunderstandings which lead beginners to make a wrong decision in this matter. With this article, I try...

In the first part of this article, we explored the general concept of event-based firmware. For the first part, please click this link. The introduced concepts were directly tailored to one specific firmware. Now let us develop the concepts further...