Hardware-related projects seems to be quite popular lately on calculator websites. First of all, KermMartian recently showcased another unconventional use of a TI-83+ graphing calculator: He connected it to a Floppy disk drive to play music. On top of that the music is controlled by the calculator! He has posted a video on Youtube that showcases it in action, playing music generated by his Z80 assembly application Mobiletunes and it is quite impressive.

He has posted a project page about this on his website, with more explanations. Maybe if you got several unused floppy disk drives lying around and lots of calculators, you could get in group with friends, form a band then play your favorite music pieces with their supposedly-for-math tools connected to a floppy drive? This also proves that floppy drives still have some uses even today too!


Besides that, there has been another hardware and electronic-related showcase recently, this time by Juju, on Omnimaga forums. While the project is not directly related to TI and Casio graphing calculators (yet?), it is still great to see more calculator enthusiasts venturing into hardware-related stuff lately. His project is an home-made handheld console, using an arduino and is meant to be a school project, as he is into robotics and computer programming. On HCWP wednesday, he showcased it running a clone of Nick Disabato's calculator "classic" and there has been a topic about his project with photos for a while on Omnimaga too.

Hopefully he posts a video of it in action soon, for those who missed it on the voice chat a night ago! We also hope he has something in mind about this project that involves calculators.


And finally, another forum member here, Keoni29, is planning to create his own version of Labpro. This topic has more information about it.

Yay electronics FTW! Also really nice Kerm and Keoni

Also my console, while not related to calculators, might be related since the LCD looks like a wide calculator screen with backlight. I might port more TI games on it.

Thank you It's partially my hobby, but it is school related. I have just received the PIC 16F628a and some other components. Now it's experimenting with them and I will eventually design the actual hardware.

Juju: How do you write programs for your console?

I guess that will be programming the arduino. It has usb.

Why the floppies sounds sounds like Portal2 sounds to me?

Quote from: Juju on December 02, 2011, 01:11:46 pm

Yay electronics FTW! Also really nice Kerm and Keoni

Also my console, while not related to calculators, might be related since the LCD looks like a wide calculator screen with backlight. I might port more TI games on it.

Thank you It's partially my hobby, but it is school related. I have just received the PIC 16F628a and some other components. Now it's experimenting with them and I will eventually design the actual hardware.

The only concern I have about your project is that maybe the name starting with "TI-N" will scare some people who witnessed the bugs of the TI-Nspire series and their overpricedness and they will think you plan to sell TI-Nterface for several hundreds of dollars and never test it for bugs.

Quote from: Eiyeron on December 02, 2011, 02:27:30 pm

Why the floppies sounds sounds like Portal2 sounds to me?

Maybe they recorded the sound of a floppydrive and used it in the game

Maybe they recorded it from a TI-83 Plus Nice work, KermM/Juju/Keoni. Hardware stuff sounds fun

The new use for floppy disks.

I want one of those!

Good luck getting one

nice