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Welcome to The Lab Book Pages. A collection of electronics and computing information. You can find out more about this site on the about page.

Recent changes and additions to the site are listed below.

	26 Jul 2010 - Single Acting Oscillating Steam Engine A single acting oscillating steam engine.
	26 Jul 2010 - Steam Engine Simulator This steam engine stimulator allows you to try different engine dimensions for common engine formats, such as single and double acting oscillating engines. It can be run directly from the web page, or downloaded to be run locally.
	8 Jul 2010 - VTK Files in Mayavi Mayavi is a 3D data visualisation tool. It's very handy for making nice plots of various scientific data. This page describes one approach for using Mayavi for displaying data generated outside the Mayavi API. A python script is also provided that watches for changes in the data file and automatically update the visualisation.
	21 Apr 2010 - Gumstix OpenEmbedded Setup After trying to rebuild OpenEmbedded for Gumstix recently, I ran into loads of problems. I've updated this page to include solutions.
	11 Mar 2010 - FIR Filters by Windowing Creating FIR filters using the windowing technique is simple and quick to do. This page describes the process for creating low pass, high pass, band pass and band stop FIR filters.
	11 Mar 2010 - Creating PNGs using libPNG The libPNG library can be used for creating PNG image files. This page describes the process of creating a PNG file from an array of floating point values. Very handy for saving graphs.
	04 Feb 2010 - Waveform Generation Functions A collection of c functions for generating wav files of various waveforms such as simple tones, frequency sweeps and white noise.
	29 Jan 2010 - Working with Wav Files Routines for handling wav files, such as reading and writing in c and GNU Octave.
	21 Jan 2010 - FPGA Configuration Some tips on FPGA configuration, including Impact batch mode and USB FPGA configuration under Linux.
	11 Sep 2009 - VHDL I²C Controller Modules This is a very handy module if you are dealing with I²C and FPGAs. It gives you a programmable I²C master that allows you easily interface to multiple I²C devices.
	11 Sep 2009 - Site Statistics Page A collection of site access statistics. The data is gathered using Google Analytics, exported using the Google Analytics Data Export API, parsed with PHP and plotted using Google's Chart API.
	01 Sep 2009 - Digital Switch Debouncing The section on digital debouncing has been updated. It now contains a full description and VHDL module for debouncing switch signals using a digital circuit.
	22 Aug 2009 - Otsu's Threshold Method Otsu's method is an algorithm for reducing a greyscale image into a binary image. This page describes the theory and provides a Java implementation.
	17 Aug 2009 - Robot Wheel Encoder The wheel encoder page has now been updated with a sample VHDL module and testbench.
	11 Aug 2009 - Blob Detection Algorithm The algorithm described on this page can be used for finding blobs (regions of connected pixels) within monochrome images. A demo program using the algorithm is supplied. The code is in Java, but can easily be ported to other languages.
	15 May 2009 - Java: Direct Image Buffer Access This page section describes how to create a buffered image with access to the underlying image data, very handy if you are doing image processing tasks.
	07 May 2009 - Quick PicoBlaze Program ROM Update The PicoBlaze is a very handy simple 8bit microprocessor. This page describes how to update the program ROM without having to resynthesise, place and route your design after every code change. A real time saver!
	23 Apr 2009 - Linux Running on XUP-V2Pro FPGA Board This page describes how to get Linux running on a XUP-V2Pro Xilinx FPGA board. It is based in the PetaLinux distribution and runs on the MicroBlaze softcore.
	22 Feb 2009 - Pipelined Processor Simulator This Java based simulator will help those wishing to learn about pipelined processors get a deeper understanding about how they work. It is completely programmable and comes with a simple Conway's Game of Life demo.
	21 Feb 2009 - Robot Wheel Encoder Detecting wheel motion is a common task in robotics. This page includes information on setting up a simple system for detecting the amount and direction of wheel rotation.
	15 Feb 2009 - Real time Dynamic Web Pages This page describes some techniques for creating web pages that update their content to reflect changes in dynamic data.
	02 Nov 2008 - Atmel AVR Toolchain A set of instructions on setting up a AVR development toolchain, including how to use a Xilinx DLC5 (Parallel Cable III) cable to program an AVR using its JTAG interface.
	15 Jun 2007 - Tektronix Scopes The start of a few notes on Tektronix Scopes. So far, it only contains information on using the screen capture function.
	14 Jun 2007 - LCD Module Driver A simple VHDL LCD module driver.
	29 Mar 2007 - Parallel Port Info Some information on making use of a PC parallel port for general IO.
	01 Jan 2007 - XUPV2Pro Info A crib sheet for details on the XUP-V2Pro FPGA development board.
	31 Oct 2006 - HTML Symbol/Character Reference A set of tables containing codes for symbols and characters for use in web pages.
	12 Jul 2006 - PDF Joining How to combine multiple PDFs into a single PDF file; handy for printing and storing books that are only available in separate sections.
	13 Apr 2006 - HW RNG A project I'm working on needs a digital hardware random number generator. This page describes the RNG used and how it fares at producing random numbers.
	28 Feb 2006 - Java Primitives Added a new page for Java related items. At the moment it only contains information on java primitives.
	27 Jan 2006 - VCC VW-300 Page The VCC VW-300 is a FPGA development boards, this new page contains some useful info and links to data sheets.
	04 Jul 2005 - Bash Tips A few sections of code that could be useful when writing bash scripts
	04 Jul 2005 - SSI Info Some info about SSI that I always forget.
	19 Jun 2005 - Links Set up the links page.