Did you know each Arduino has a unique serial number in its USB interface that you can use to distinguish one Arduino from another? If you deal with multiple Arduinos, knowing exactly which one is plugged into your computer can be a real time-saver. But actually getting at this serial number and mapping it to COM ports can be challenging.

For Windows computers, here’s “listComPorts”, implemented both in GCC C code and in VBScript, both available from my usbSearch github repository.

It gives the COM port number, the manufacturer name, the USB Vendor ID and Product ID (VID & PID) and [...]

Eagle is a great cross-platform, free-for-non-commercial-use tool for many of us designing own own circuit boards. But it has a pretty glaring omission: the ability to import vector artwork to use as board outlines, logos, etc. You can import bitmaps via the finicky “import_bmp.ulp” ULP add-on, but bitmaps can’t work for board outlines. So we struggle with Eagle’s rudimentary vector drawing tools or have boring rectangular or circular boards. I think I’ve found a way to robustly transfer vector artwork from Illustrator to Eagle. Below I show an “amoeba” vector shape in Illustrator being [...]

I was invited to be a speaker at O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference. It’s a conference mostly about mapping technologies, location-based services, and interesting new location-aware mobile apps.

I spoke about RFID and NFC, in the context of the release of the new NFC-capable Android phone, the Google Nexus S. Having an RFID reader in a phone could cause a big change in how we interact with the world around us. I talked about what RFID and NFC technologies are, how they work, some examples of them in the world and on Android, and how to add [...]