Take Flight with Feather entries: Stemma Host and Backpack and 8-bit Counter FeatherWings #FeatherContest @Hackaday @DigiKey @Adafruit

The Take Flight with Feather Contest is running from now to December 31st – see all the details in the kickoff post!

We’re going to highlight entries posted on Hackaday.io two at a time. Here are today’s entries:

Stemma Host and Backpack

By Cedar Grove Studios:

These FeatherWings were designed to provide Stemma and StemmaQT connections for host Feathers (like the Feather M4 Express) and to permit certain FeatherWings to act as standalone Stemma devices.

The Stemma Host FeatherWing has two dual-connector pads that can be either Stemma 2.0mm pitch or StemmaQT 1.0mm pitch. The Host board can be configured for UART (RX/TX) or I2C (SDA/SCL) communications at 3-volt or 5-volt levels.

The StemmaWing Backpack board stacks onto a FeatherWing that uses UART or I2C communications, furnishing the attached wing with +3.3-volt power harvested from the connected Stemma cable. The Backpack also provides two dual-connector pads.

These designs were derived from working prototypes but as of this writing are untested.

8-bit Counter Featherwing

By sirmylesavery:

This Featherwing is an 8-bit counter, with corresponding LEDs. It uses 2 SN74HC191DR 4-bit up/down presettable, cascadable, counters from TI in series to generate an 8-bit counter. The Feather provides power, clock signal, direction, counting enable, and resetability. The 8-bits are connected to 8 LEDs, so that you can visually see the bits counting up. The speed and direction of the counting are controlled by the Feather. You can also reset the counter to zero with the Feather. All you need to do is jumper any of the available Feather pins to the appropriate control pins, upload your code, and off you go.

This project is based off of a similar 8-bit counter I built out of components I found at my school’s student-run Makerspace. That counter used a 555 timer to generate the clock signal. This project is very simple, but still fun to make.

Want to learn more about Feather? See the Awesome Feather list for details.


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