The mbed website has a community-contributed area called the "Cookbook", which is becoming a bit like wikipedia for electronic components. Each page collects together information for a component you might want to hook up to mbed, with a library and wiring information needed to get you up and running in a flash.

Here is a summary of a few things you have been cooking up recently...

First up, it looks like Nakumura-san has been busy working with a Sparkfun LinkSprite Colour Camera, and has published a first version of a library to control it:

You can see the results on his Camera LS Y201 Cookbook page, and a picture of what I can only guess is his room!

Stephane has been working away on a 3.2" touch screen from 4D systems:

You can see a writeup and a library on the 4D SGC TFT Screen cookbook page. This should be a great way to add interactive menus and controls to machinery or other devices that run separate from a computer but need complex controls.

There was already a library for the SRF08 ultrasonic rangefinder, but we've also put up an example library for the cheaper SRF05 Ultrasonic Rangefinder:

This is a great device for things like measuring distance, or obstacle detection. Head over to the SRF05 cookbook page for the hello world and library to get this one going.

Andy has put together a library for the MAX7456 onscreen display chip:

This lets you do text overlay on a PAL or NTSC signal. There is a MAX7456 breakout board for it available from Sparkfun. Check out his MODMAX7456 Cookbook page for all the details.

Gerrit has put together a library to control a Si570; a frequency synthesizer controlled vi I2C:

Apparently, this is a very popular device for those experimenting with amateur radio. You can read more on the Si570 cookbook page.

All these contributions are likely to be a work in progress, but they will always be a great starting point to avoid reinventing the wheel. And as you use them, please feel free to add information, insights and improvements!

If any of your projects have sprung information and libraries around different devices and peripherals, or your notebook is filling up with information that could be really useful to others, why not have a go at starting a cookbook page for a device to collect it all together.

Happy cooking!