While building, I'll chat all about Fletchtronics and how I started up a hobby / part-time evening business that is paying for itself and not breaking the bank. A blog post with a more detailed description of the content, and room for Q&A in comments will accompany each video. Update: Here is a link to all the 100 Bumble-Bs in 10 Days blog posts.
This tutorial explains how to connect a Bumble-B to an MCP3204 analog to digital converter and read the analog values using the userial program supplied with Bumble-B. The tutorial should work well for other boards that userial runs on, consult your local documentation for the correct pins.  Bumble-B and MCP3204 Breadboard Test Setup
Hopefully this tutorial will also give the basic idea of how to use the SPI features of userial more generally. This enables you to communicate between Bumble-B and interesting new devices without writing new software to test the peripheral.
UPDATE: Preorders are closed. This product is not going to be created because of lack of interest. We will probably offer a game pad at some future time, but not this one. Meantime, you can build your own joyticks and gamepads using Bumble-B The DIYPad is coming soon to fletchtronics! It is a hand-held game controller that shows what the Bumble-B is capable of. It's the perfect gift for anyone curious about microcontrollers and electronics who also has an interest in making or playing computer games. The DIYPad is a kit that requires soldering, so make sure you have a soldering iron and some solder handy. The supplied Bumble-B ships with joystick firmware pre-installed that will work on any operating system that supports USB HID joysticks. That includes pretty much all modern computer operating systems and platforms. The full source code is supplied (see below for link), ready to be expand and enhanced with custom code.
So if you've been reading fletchtronics.net you've been hearing a lot lately about Bumble-B. I promise to blog about something else soon, just this one more :-)  Swarming Bumble-Bs
So you want to build USB enabled devices. Bumble-B is here to help! It is a breakout board for Atmel's at90usb162 microcontroller, along with supporting hardware and USB connector. It is DIP-24/600mil shape, and works very well on a breadboard. You can program Bumble-B without any special hardware and using entirely free and open source software from Atmel and the AVR community. This makes Bumble-B a self-contained AVR development kit that you can start working with instantly, with no special tools. Bumble-B: breadboard mojo
You can use the default Bumble-B firmware, a program called userial to communicate over i2c, SPI, or do general purpose IO bit-banging without writing code. When you use Bumble-B to build HID devices such as keyboards, joysticks, mice, or build CDC virtual serial devices, Bumble-B works without drivers on all modern computer platforms. The development environment is also supported in all modern operating systems including Linux, Windows, and Macintosh. You can read a bit about the history of Bumble-B and the preloaded firmware in the Fletchtronics blog. Read more about how people are using Bumble-B here. Bumble-B Related Links:
Out of stock.Bumble-B version 2 is on the way and will be here within a couple weeks (will update this with a date when possible). Version 2 uses ATMega32u2 and is pin and firmware compatible with Bumble-B version 1. The main difference is the updated microcontroller and possibly a switch for changing power modes instead of the three pin header.  Customer Quotesbtw, i did manage to plug it in. and it does work. damn fine craftsmanship too dfletcher! <laen_> Also, my bumble-b has gone through the wash three times. |
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From December 26 2009 through January 4 2010, I invite you into the process of building 
