The Humane Personal Computer combines the ease of Arduino development with the excitement of a classic stand-alone television-and-keyboard PC.
The novel design of the Humane PC offloads the complex NTSC/PAL video signal generation to a second dedicated AVR microcontroller. This makes writing video applications on the main microcontroller a breeze – as easy as writing text and VT52 control codes to the serial port, thanks to firmware from the TellyMate project.
A third AVR microcontroller is dedicated to implementation of a USB device, thanks to the AVR V-USB Project. The default firmware pemits programming the device over a serial port, using the Arduino bootloader, without the need for any hardware programmer. However the USB microcontroller can be used to implement any USB device profile, or used as a co-processor for general use.
The Humane PC comes with number of integrated peripherals to play with, including a Micro-SD Card reader, a PWM audio out device, four buttons, an IR receiver and transmitter, and a PS/2 keyboard connector.
Features
3 Atmega328p Microcontrollers – one for video, one for USB, and one for general computing.
NTSC/PAL composite video output for display on any TV
B&W 38×25 character text or simple graphics display
VT52 + H19 video terminal emulation
Accepts PS/2 Keyboard
Micro-SD Card Reader
PWM Audio output
Completely Open Source design
Infrared LED and reciever
Micro-USB powered
Fully programmable USB controller (atmega328p) allows use as a variety of USB slave devices
Main MCU is serial programmable via USB
Expansion headers compatible with most Arduino expansion shields
4 input buttons
Optional aluminum case with powder coat finish
Programable using C/C++ libraries, or via Arudino IDE
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How about using the dual serial ports of a Sanguino for I/O rather than two separate Arduino’s?