Developer and self-described “curious tinkerer” Tyler Klein has constructed a enterprise card format pocket calculator with a distinction: it is tailor-made particularly to builders working with microcontroller targets.
“The HexCalc is a enterprise card-sized calculator designed for microcontroller builders,” Klein explains. “It helps hexadecimal, decimal, and octal bases, making quantity illustration simple to know with binary visualizations and ASCII characters. The calculator performs customary arithmetic and specialised features like bit math (AND, OR, NOR, XOR), modulus, bit shifts, and 1’s and a pair of’s complement.”
The HexCalc goals to be a useful pocket-sized instrument for the microcontroller developer. (📷: Tyler Klein)
Designed, as Klein says, to slot in the footprint of a regular enterprise card, the calculator options an array of tactile push-button switches organized round a colour 240×240 LCD to the higher left. This gives a multi-functional person interface, which works past merely printing out the numbers you punch in.
“The HexCalc works in [hexadecimal, decimal, and octal] bases and makes it a bit simpler to visualise how these numbers are composed by their underlying bits,” Klein explains. “Merely punch in a quantity and a binary visualization seems under. As well as, the ASCII character that represents every 8-bit chunk seems on the left.”
The calculator’s show affords a useful visualization instrument — and might even assist with colour codes. (📷: Tyler Klein)
As you’d anticipate from a calculator, the HexCalc may calculate — although, Klein warns, it operates fully on integers, with no help for floating-point arithmetic. “Customers can set bit depth (8, 16, 32, or 64 bits) to simulate real-world programming environments,” the maker provides of the calculator’s extra superior options. “Moreover, it encompasses a colour mode to transform and visualize 16-bit and 24-bit colour codes straight on its TFT display screen, offering a great tool for builders working with colour knowledge.”
Extra info, together with a schematic and invoice of supplies, is on the market on Hackaday.io; Klein has indicated that the supply code will likely be printed quickly, after a couple of minor bugs have been ironed out.