View allAll Photos Tagged microcontrollers
BLIFNAR. Blinky Bug. LED-thingy. These all describe the SB-Firefly. This coin-cell powered microcontroller runs three LEDs through button selectable light blinking sequences with smooth transitions. Use the Firefly to teach soldering, have a late night blinky party, or hack into your own creation! This tiny application board comes with everything you need for a super small microcontroller project, battery included!
A state-of-the-80s bootloader programmer for the Motorola 68705 microcontroller.
The uC (left) feeds itself with the content of an EPROM (right)
Fun to build this in 2010
This is the schematic (part 1, microprocessor ) of my simple circuit to display music on a VGA monitor like on an oscilloscope.
For more details go to :
LOTS of bypassing. tantalum caps (orange) paralleled with .1uF (blue).
this is closely following the manuf recommended layout. I hope it was worth all this extra effort ;)
FPGAs at the Command Line
by Bob Smith
The problem with using Field Programmable Gate Arrays is that you have to learn a design language and then set up a fairly complex development environment to write programs in. That problem is addressed here. Page 49
Power MOSFETs Part 2
by Gerard Fonte
This time, we'll build two projects. The first is a transformerless voltage doubler that takes a DC voltage from 12 to 30 volts and doubles it. Unlike most other voltage doubler circuits, this design can supply amps of current. The second project uses a power MOSFET in a linear (rather than switching) application. Page 54
A Touch of Spice Part 3
by Peter Stonard
In this final part, take a look at oscillator circuits that create their own signal during simulation. Page 60
How To: A Guide to Soldering
by James Antonakos
Never soldered before? Now you can learn how! Page 64
Projects
Garage Access Goes Digital
Digital Electronics
by Jay Carter
Keypad access is a great convenience and with this unit you can trigger activiation of up to two Page 36
High Resolution Time-Lapse Movies Using a Still Camera
Digital Electronics
by Balakumar Balasubramaniam
CamTim is a digital hack to convert your camera into a high-res time-lapse camcorder. Page 41
Makin’ MIDI with mistrIXG
Computer Related
by Steve Russell
mistaIXG is a USB connected, PIC-basd synthesizer that will help you turn your computer into a music machine. Page 44
Columns
Techknowledgey
by Jeff Eckert
TechKnowledgey 2009
DNA analysis, owning a Cray, Navaztags explained, plus more. Page 12
PICAXE Primer
by Ron Hackett
Implementing a serial data link with the IR multi-board
This month, we're going to resolve the problem of the missing keypresses that we had last time with our SIRC system and then move on to accomplishing our final goal for the IR Multi-Board: Page 16
Open Communication
by Louis E. Frenzel
Converting To Digital TV
Fun with converter boxes and antennas. Page 24
Q&A
by Russell Kincaid
Q&A
CO2 laser power supply, a cycling circuit, LED replacement of incandescent bulbs, more. Page 27
The Design Cycle
by Fred Eady
A Reasonable Replacement For RS-232
I'm going to include USB interfaces on subsequent Design Cycle projects that require serial communications with a personal computer. Page 68
Smiley’s Workshop
by Joe Pardue
Smileys Workshop: An AVR C Programming Series (Part 7)
Last month, we learned about both of those binary 10 kinds of people. This month, we will apply it to understanding Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) to use in code for a wearable Butterfly Alarm Clock. Page 74
Near Space
by L. Paul Verhage
The Great Plains Super Launch 2008
GPSL - or The Great Plains Super Launch - is the largest annual amateur near space launch, and takes place every summer. This year, Near Space Ventures and CAP'n'Space hosted GPSL in Liberty, MO on August 1-2. Page 78
Personal Robotics
by Vern Graner
Pneumatics In Robotics
Let's dip our toe into some possibly unfamiliar waters as we explore the world of electronically controlled pneumatic actuators for hobby robotic and animatronic mechanisms. Page 81
Departments
Developing Perspectives
by Bryan Bergeron
Please visit our Developing Perspectives blog to read the full article and comment. Page 8
Sometimes we need to extend or add more I/O ports to our microcontroller based project; the question is how fast the response we need for these new I/O ports. Because usually we only have a limited I/O port left than the logical choice is to use the serial data transfer method; which usually only required maximum one to four ports for doing the data transfer.
Currently there is few type of modern embedded system serial data transfer interface widely supported by most of the chip’s manufactures such as I2C (read as I square C), SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface), 1-Wire (One Wire), Controller Area Network (CAN), USB (Universal Serial Bus) and the RS-232 families (RS-423, RS-422 and RS-485).
Microchip's Mobile Product Selector application for iPhone®, iPad® and Android™ smart phones and tablets, as well as a version of its Web site for mobile browsers, are all available today at the following links…
Apple® Application Available at App Store: itunes.apple.com/us/app/microchip-mobile-product-selector...
Android Application Available at Google Play: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microchip.andri...
Mobile Web Site Available Online: www.microchip.com/mobile
The low-cost, low pin count PIC12LF1552 is Microchip’s smallest (2x3 mm UDFN package) and lowest-cost PIC® MCU with hardware I2C™ support, and includes a four channel 10-bit Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) with hardware Capacitive Voltage Divider (CVD) support for capacitive touch sensing. Additionally, this new MCU features 3.5 KB Flash program memory, 256 Bytes RAM, a 32 MHz internal oscillator, low-voltage operation from 1.8V to 3.6V, and low power consumption for active and sleep currents of 50 µA/MHz and 20 nA, respectively. For more info visit, www.microchip.com/get/LFWT
The latest Microchip TCP/IP Stack, downloadable from www.microchip.com/tcpip, includes an SSL module, which enables secure, encrypted communications between two nodes on an unsecured network. It supports both client and server functionality, while providing fast 128-bit ARCFOUR encryption for bulk data transfers.
Microchip's new PIC24FJ128GC010 family of microcontrollers. This family is an analog system on a chip that integrates a full analog signal chain, including Microchip’s first ever on-chip precision 16-bit ADC and 10 Msps 12-bit ADC, plus a DAC and dual operational amplifiers (op amps), along with eXtreme Low Power (XLP) technology for extended battery life in portable medical and industrial applications. For more info, visit: www.microchip.com/get/6T4J
This module indicate bus values and notify value changes by a beep. This device is useful for digital electronic designs and troubleshooting.
Microchip today announced a new series of its low-cost, high pin count 32-bit PIC32 microcontrollers (MCUs). By blending the key features of Microchip’s existing PICM32MX1/2 and PIC32MX5 MCU families, this latest PIC32MX1/2/5 MCU series delivers designers the benefits of a rich peripheral set for a wide range of cost-sensitive applications that require complex code and higher feature integration at a lower cost. With up to 83 DMIPS performance and large, scalable memory options from 512/64 KB Flash/RAM to 64/8 KB Flash/RAM, these new PIC32MX1/2/5 MCUs are ideal for executing the Bluetooth® audio software required for low-cost Bluetooth audio applications, such as speakers, consumer music-player docks, noise-cancelling headsets and clock radios. Flexible, easy-to-use CAN2.0B controllers are also integrated into these MCUs, with DeviceNet™ addressing support and programmable bit rates up to 1 Mbps, along with system RAM for storing up to 1024 messages in 32 buffers. This feature allows designers to easily employ CAN communication schemes for industrial and automotive applications. For more info, visit www.microchip.com/PIC32MX-Page-110314a
Showing how one spacer (8.25mm) has a male thread one end and female the other. the longer (12.5mm) spacer has female M3 threads both ends.
Lightning Screen
by Harry Goldman
For those interested in high voltage phenomena, this device will prove to be an impressive performer.
Properly Selecting Electronic Components: Part 2
by Vaughn D. Martin
This month's tutorial covers capacitors and inductors.
Experiments with Alternative Energy
by John Gavlik
Learn the fundamentals of renewable Energy with this new educational series. This month: Solar Energy.
NixieNeon Clock
Nuts & Volts Special
by Joe Croft
Time for another cool clock design using nixie tubes.
TestMaster Quiz Box
Electronic Gadgets
by John L. Brittan
Run your own game shows at home with this fun build.
Techknowledgey
by Jeff Eckert
TechKnowledgey 2009 | August 2009
Topics covered include lasers with curves, the smallest DC/DC concerter, quantum error suppression, plus other info you won't want to miss.
PICAXE Primer
by Ron Hackett
Programming Your Serialized LCD Display
This month we’re going to turn our attention to some of the details of programming the display. Specifically, we’ll investigate two of the most useful features of LCD displays: scrolling a long line of text across the relatively small width of the display and creating custom characters to enhance the functionality of the display.
Personal Robotics
by Samuel Aaron Ward
Solar Tracker
Phrases such as “going green” and “carbon footprint” have become ubiquitous and even trendy. The United States Green Building Counsel (USGBC) has even developed a green building rating system called LEED by which new buildings are designed to be as energy efficient as possible. Those with the knowledge to innovate technologies for renewable resources might soon find themselves highly sought after!
Q&A
by Russell Kincaid
Q&A | August 2009
Audio comb filter, high current/low voltage amp, time delay circuit, plus more.
The Design Cycle
by Fred Eady
USB To Ethernet Using Microchip’s Free Stacks: Part 1
This month, the mountain man is coming to town as the coders at Microchip have put together a brand new TCP/IP Stack to support the new Ethernet ICs and wireless Ethernet modules that are coming out of the pipe.
Smiley’s Workshop
by Joe Pardue
Smiley’s Workshop: An AVR C Programming Series (Part 13)
More ALP Projects.
Open Communication
by Louis E. Frenzel
How To Achieve One Gigabit Per Second Data Rate Over Wireless
Longer distances, interference, and other environmental issues usually prevent that, but what we get is typically enough. With the new 802.11n standard, Wi-Fi speeds will be going up as more of the access points adopt the multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technology that will make 100+ Mbps common.
Developing Perspectives
by Bryan Bergeron
I got this board because I needed a development platform for one of my microcontrollers. At the same time, I ordered an Atmel AVR ISP MkII programmer, which I wanted to use because it is a native USB device and is a little easier to use on the Mac. Of course, it turns out that the programmer has a different type of ISP connector than this board was expecting.
So, this is a Olimex development board for Atmel AVR 20-pin microcontrollers, modified it to accept input from the AVR ISP MkII, which has a six-pin output connector. The header that I added is at the bottom of the board.
Read more about getting started programming the AVR on the Mac here.
Building our own digital clock is one of the dreamed project by most of the hobbyist or anyone that want to learn or involve seriously in the embedded system world; the ability to integrate time, day and date to the embedded system is one of the important knowledge that should be known by any embedded system designer. Today’s technology makes life easier as all these capabilities has already built nicely inside the Maxim (Dallas) DS1307 Real Time Clock (RTC) chip. For more information please visit www.ermicro.com/blog/?p=950
Microchip announced an expansion of its eXtreme Low Power (XLP) PIC® microcontrollers (MCUs) with the PIC24F “GB2” family. This new family features an integrated hardware crypto engine, a Random Number Generator (RNG) and One-Time-Programmable (OTP) key storage for protecting data in embedded applications. The PIC24F “GB2” devices offer up to 128 KB Flash and 8 KB RAM in small 28- or 44-pin packages, for battery-operated or portable applications such as “Internet of Things” (IoT) sensor nodes, access control systems and door locks. For more info, visit: www.microchip.com/get/GNUT
The chipKIT™ Wi-Fi® Shield enables users to implement wireless projects with the chipKIT line of 32-bit PIC® Microcontroller boards, such as the new uC32™, or existing Uno32™ and Max32™ boards and the free, Arduino™ compatible chipKIT IDE—called the Multi-Platform IDE, or “MPIDE.” For more info visit www.digilentinc.com/chipkit.
JCNC - CNC G-Code Viewer and GRBL PC Terminal Software www.jtronics.de/software/jcnc-cnc-steuerung.html
Sometimes we need to extend or add more I/O ports to our microcontroller based project; the question is how fast the response we need for these new I/O ports. Because usually we only have a limited I/O port left than the logical choice is to use the serial data transfer method; which usually only required maximum one to four ports for doing the data transfer.
Currently there is few type of modern embedded system serial data transfer interface widely supported by most of the chip’s manufactures such as I2C (read as I square C), SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface), 1-Wire (One Wire), Controller Area Network (CAN), USB (Universal Serial Bus) and the RS-232 families (RS-423, RS-422 and RS-485).
MCUs offering extensive connectivity interfaces, powerful performance and robust hardware-based security.
The short M3 nylon spacers are 8.25mm long over the hexagonal part, and the long ones are 12.5mm. A better length, for this purpose, would be 10mm.
The Nixie Watch project plods on! Software development begins.
Every project needs to go through this phase, at least in my scheme of handling things.
Here we see the Development Environment of Kings hosting an Atmel ATTiny861 microcontroller (MCU). Just out of shot is my laptop, upon which I wrote software for the MCU that causes it to blink an LED. This is a nice quick way to make sure that I haven't fried the chip and that I've wired everything up properly. For the programmers out there, I consider this step to be the "Hello World" of MCU programming - though this implementation is a bit more sophisticated than it needs to be; the LED blink is driven by a timer interrupt.
This version differs from the IN-14 clock version linked above in that it's all powered by batteries. One of the challenges of designing the watch software will be to set it up so that the MCU draws a minimum of power - not a pressing issue for a clock which is going to be plugged in to a wall socket, but critical for a thing like this which I would like to run for months on a trickle of current.
The little black box in the center right contains 2 AA batteries, which are standing in for the single lithium watch battery which will run the MCU in the real watch. Below it is the display power supply with its own battery. Getting the MCU and display working together is going to be the tricky part. To conserve power, the MCU will run a program that will cause it to immediately shut itself off - but not quite all the way off; it'll be just awake enough to notice when the display power supply fires up. That is, when the watch's wearer presses the button to show the time. At that point the chip will awaken, fetch the time from a crystal-based real time clock chip (not yet wired up), and start showing it on the nixies. When the wearer releases the show-time button, the display power supply will be disconnected and the MCU will notice that, stop trying to display the time, and hibernate again.
Interestingly, if you find such things interesting, this is the way most battery powered computerized widgets work; for instance, games on the Nintendo Game Boy (which I used to program, back when I was younger and even dumber) spend most of their time with the main processor asleep like that. At least they do if they were written well.
After a bit more fiddling I will be able to wire this to the display prototype and it will start being a watch - at least in the functional sense. Trying to wear the prototype on your arm would be like wearing a very geeky buckler.
Microchip announced a new series within its high-performance PIC32MZ family of 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) that features an integrated hardware floating point unit (FPU) for high performance and lower latency in intensive single and double-precision math applications. This new 48-member PIC32MZ EF series also offers a 12-bit, 18 MSPS analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for a wide array of high-speed, wide-bandwidth applications. Additionally, the PIC32MZ EF supports an extensive DSP instruction set. This combination of DSP instructions, a double-precision FPU and a high-speed ADC improves code density, decreases latency and accelerates performance in process-intensive applications. For an overview of the PIC32MZ family, please visit: www.microchip.com/PIC32MZ-091415a