## HB-25 LabVIEW VI

A couple of years ago I bought a Made In USA robot platform from Parallax Inc. which has been standing around doing nothing. The time is NOW, to get it up and running.

The platform includes 2 x HB-25 motor controllers which I want to interface to LabVIEW.

This VI maps an input which range form -100 to 100 to an input which will work with the HB-25 in mode 1.

## Linear Mapping of Input Range to Output Range

Whenever you mix sensor input values and electronics, you always get a situation where the data read from the sensor needs to be interpreted or changed or scaled to be used by your control software.

Mapping or scaling a linear range of input values to a linear range of output values is as easy as: $y=mx+c$

## Bio-metric Attendance

Attendance is part of any learning environment. If you do not attend the lectures or practical sessions, your chances of failure increases.

For years I took attendance either by making a class list available for the students to sign or by calling out each student's name. But this was only part of the process! The other part involved entering the attendance onto either a spreadsheet or web based system in order to gather some statistics. For small classes this might not be an issue, but for large classes... It becomes a mess!!

Since I love automation, I decided to design a bio-metric attendance solution using a fingerprint scanner, an Arduino Mega and an ITDB3.2 inch TFT LCD.

## Voltage Conversion Hack

Have you ever wanted to convert 3.3V to 5V? Well I had to recently come up with a hack since I did not have the correct driver logic chips.

Here's how...