If you really need a floppy drive, but need some high capacity reliable media or have more control over process, try this Floppy drive emulator based on PIC32 microcontroller. It actually uses a SD/MMS memory to store information. It was specially designed for Amiga computer, but can be used for other computers as well.

Floppy drive emulator connects to keyboard and monitor so this way microcontroller could produce an overlay menu for virtual floppy configuration. Emulator even has a floppy disk sound emulator by using a piezo speaker. Floppy emulator can emulate two floppy drives at same time and can coexist with another real floppy drive. It supports full FAT32 file system and can understand SDHC cards. Real Atari fans should find this project really useful.

Yeah you heard right – model jet planes can also be powered by turbine engines. And it seems that it isn’t as easy as regular propeller motors. Model turbine engines can reach RPM up to 180000. Smallest ones can be about 3” of diameter. Well let’s leave these technical details to ones who deal with them. And let’s see where microcontroller comes in.

In fact to do proper control without microcontroller can be pretty hard as turbine engines are quite complex. A PIC32MX microcontroller is selected as a control unit which performs as closed loop control unit which actually measures engine RPM and exhaust gas temperature, air speed  in order to decide how much fuel to inject. Other features of ECU include: throttle input as PWM, UART, and 2.4GHz remote display. Module actually is made so that it would fit a radio controlled airplane model. Seems like a great toy for advanced modelers.

The main challenge of LinkInk Digital Pen project was to address most popular shortcomings that were noticed in most digital pens found on market. Besides this you can do lots more with your own digital pen – add more features or expand functionality by reprogram it. So this is a PIC32 digital pen equipped with 3 axis accelerometer, force sensor, Flash storage and microphone.

Digital Pen equipped with such bunch sensors is able to track pens 3D position what allows writing on any surface, so later any drawing could be imported to any image software. Integrated microphone allows record audio notes along with digital writing. Pressure sensor enables to make your drawing line width variable. This digital pen is equipped with USB interface – so along with flash memory it can be used as regular USB flash drive. This makes easy data transfer. What about controlling? There is no much space for buttons or other input devices. So with Accelerometer it is possible to control pen with gestures. PIC32 microcontroller is powerful enough to be equipped with even more peripherals and features like 3D mouse, CCD camera, Laser pointer, digital ruler, mp3 player, pedometer, etc.

Most of 3D scanners are tied to computer and has to be carried around to make it work. But what if you need small portable 3D scanner that would work without computer connected to it. This PIC32 based prototype supposes to be mobile that could be used in areas like archeology, architecture and for any other 3D object scanning.

3D scanner works as most scanners do – a low intensity laser scans surface of object that rotates at angle of 360 degrees. Digital camera captures reflected beams and transmits data to PIC32 which generates TXT file. File can be stored to SD card or USB flash drive. With this data you can reconstruct objects 3D image with popular software like AutoCAD , 3DMax, Maya or any other.

If you are a beekeeper this project can be a good start towards better beekeeping. It is based on PIC32 microcontroller and has tons of sensors and interfacing that allows controlling many parameters in order to sustain near ideal conditions in a bee hive. If you know a little about bees, the probably you are aware about bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), when number of worker bees drops and this way rest of them aren’t able to maintain hive.

So it is better to prevent this factor than fix damage later. This is where PIC32 based monitor (so called PIC’n The Beehive) comes in. It monitors ambient and hive temperatures, humidity, rain, dew point, wind speed, relative air pressure, and daylight intensity. It is also capable of measuring hive and bee weight and Mite count as well. Due to condition changes controller can ventilate hive, regulate temperature, entrance opening. It also can simulate rain to keep bees inside. All data can be accessed via multiple interfaces like USB, RS232, RF channel and even via WEB interface. This is what modern bee life should look like