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[Jacques] thought his doorbell was too loud, so of course the first thing that came to mind was replacing the electronics and playing a WAV file of his choosing every time someone came knocking. What he ended up with is a very neat circuit: he used a six-pin microcontroller with 64 bytes of RAM to [...]

Tags:  wav file ram jacques pin-microcontroller wav-file doorbell microcontrollers  

Many motors offer a quadrature encoder that give feedback on whether, and in which direction, the motor shaft is moving. But if you’re clever about analyzing the data you can use a quadrature encoder to estimate motor velocity. [Jason Sachs] makes the case that it’s fairly easy to get this wrong. Lucky for us he [...]

Tags:  encoder quadrature velocity jason-sachs motor-shaft sachs microcontrollers  

An awful lot of microcontroller projects use timers to repeat an action every few minutes, hours, or days. While these timers can be as accurate as a cheap digital wrist watch, there are times when you need a microcontroller’s timer to measure exactly, losing no more than a few milliseconds a day. It’s not very hard [...]

Tags:  avr microcontroller accurate microcontroller-projects milliseconds wrist-watch microcontrollers  

To the casual observer this flower looks nice as its illuminated center fades in and out. But there’s hidden meaning to that light. Some of the blinks are longer than others; this flower is using Morse Code. [Renaud Schleck] wanted to try a few different things with his MSP430 microcontroller. He decided on an LED [...]

Tags:  flower something code morse-code morse renaud-schleck schleck msp430 microcontrollers  

We’re all familiar with overclocking desktop computers; a wonderful introduction to thermal design power and the necessities of a good CPU cooler. [Marcelo] wanted to see how far he could overclock a microcontroller – in this case an ATMega328 – and ended up with a microcontroller designed for 20 MHz running at 30 MHz. To [...]

Tags:  cpu-cooler microcontrollers desktop-computers microcontrollers  

[Steven Mackaay] added a simple user interface that implements a shutoff timer for his desk lamp. His project log comes in two parts, the breadboarding and the actual implementation. He wanted a few things out of the build. The first is an LED that would help him find the lamp in the dark. The second [...]

Tags:  desk lamp timer steven-mackaay desk-lamp breadboarding user-interface microcontrollers  

Hackaday’s own [Jeremy Cook] has been testing out the pyMCU board and managed to put together an animated block head that looks like it could be a foe in Minecraft. That’s thanks mostly to the block of foam he’s using as a diffuser. The face of the project is a set of LEDs. These, along [...]

Tags:  pymcu minecraft project jeremy-cook test-project foe microcontrollers  

For playing around with video signals and trying to create a an interesting microcontroller project, you can’t do better than the classic Pong. We’ve seen our share of microcontroller-based pong builds, but rarely have we seen an 8-pin microcontroller recreate every part of the first video game. [Tim] started his PIC12F1840-based Pong build with just [...]

Tags:  video microcontroller pong tim classic-pong microcontroller-project video-signals microcontrollers  

Powerful graphics cards are pretty affordable these days. Even though we rarely do high-end gaming on our daily machine we still have a GeForce 9800 GT. That goes to waste on a machine used mainly to publish posts and write code for microcontrollers. But perhaps we can put the GPU to good use when it comes [...]

Tags:  gpu machine leveraging linux-kernel powerful-graphics microcontrollers linux hacks  

An IFF system – Identification of Friend or Foe – are used by military aircraft in battle situations to determine if another aircraft is being piloted by a fellow aviator or an enemy. For the boots on the ground, friendly fire is generally regarded as a very bad thing, so a few students in [Bruce [...]

Tags:  aircraft system iff bruce fellow-aviator friendly-fire military-aircraft microcontrollers  

If you’re into microcontrollers you know the ability to think and perform math in binary is a must. [Joe Ptiz] has been looking for a way to keep from being distract by the math when coding while still keeping the binary strings in the forefront of his mind. The solution he came up with is [...]

Tags:  friend python math joe-ptiz binary-strings forefront microcontrollers  

Here’s an interesting tip that can help improve your ability to write assembly code. In an effort to remove the complexity of assembly code for an AVR project [Quinn Dunki] figured out how to use macros when writing AVR code with the GNU toolchain. Anyone using AVR-GCC should keep this in mind if they ever [...]

Tags:  code assembly avr gnu-toolchain quinn-dunki macro-assembly microcontrollers  

Check out the game of chess going on above. It’s a virtual game where each player uses a glove as the controller. Or course the game board and pieces are missing from this image. They’re displayed on a computer monitor which both players can see. The hardware rather simple, and we think it would be [...]

Tags:  game glove chess virtual-chess game-of-chess virtual-game microcontrollers  

This is a Geiger counter which charts its readings on a webpage. [Radu Motisan] put a lot of time into the build and it shows. This thing is packed with features and the hardware choices were the best combinations found through several iterations of development. In addition to radiation levels the sensor unit takes several [...]

Tags:  online station radiation geiger-counter hardware-choices radiation-monitoring microcontrollers  

This video game gives your thumbs a rest while stretching those vocal chords. The pair of microphones seen above control the video game on the LCD display. Saying “Biu” will launch a projectile while “ahh” adjusts the flight path. The system was developed by [Tian Gao] as a final project for his ECE 4760 course [...]

Tags:  video game biu flight-path vocal-chords projectile microcontrollers  

Here’s a rather exciting development for those who work with MSP430 microcontrollers. [M-atthias] worked out a way to implement USB 1.1 on a MSP430G2452. He’s bit banging the communications as this hardware normally doesn’t support the Universal Serial Bus. This is much like using the V-USB stack for AVR micros. The test hardware seen above uses an [...]

Tags:  msp usb bit universal-serial-bus test-hardware microcontrollers microcontrollers  

[Andrew Smallbone] wrote in with a link to his latest open source project. This is phatIO, a USB I/O device that uses a mass storage file system for control. The idea is that any operating system can manipulate files on a USB storage device. This enumerates as mass storage, and any alterations you make to [...]

Tags:  storage phatio system andrew-smallbone usb-storage-device mass-storage-file-system open-source-project microcontrollers  

[Steve] created an AVR programmer using an old USB keyboard. We feature a bunch of AVR programmers, but this one is made from parts that many people will have lying around. There are two components: the controller PCB from a USB keyboard, and an optocoupler for emulating key presses. In order to send data to [...]

Tags:  keyboard usb avr steve avr-programmers avr-programmer optocoupler microcontrollers  

[100uf] built an LED matrix shield for the MSP430 launchpad. His goal with this design was to have it play Conway’s Game of Life. It does just that, as you can see in the clip after the break. But it’s just waiting to learn some more tricks. After he tires of watching the cellular automaton he can [...]

Tags:  launchpad msp game cellular-automaton game-of-life conway microcontrollers  

Wanting to test his skills by building a webserver [Cnlohr] decided to also code a Minecraft server which allows him to toggle pins from inside the game. The rows of switches seen above give him direct access to the direction register and I/O pins of one port of the ATmega328. The server hardware is shown [...]

Tags:  server toggle minecraft server-hardware virtual-world direct-access microcontrollers  

If you’re flying through the air in a non-powered vehicle your rate of descent is something that you want to keep any eye one. With that in mind, [Adrian] decided to design his own Variometer (translated) what will have a place in the cockpit next to the other instrumentation. It emits a pitch whose frequency is dictated [...]

Tags:  variometer air aircraft adrian cockpit instrumentation pitch microcontrollers  

If you’re into adding electronics to your wearable items this little board will be of interest. The 1.6″x1.6″ board is called SquareWear and comes in several different flavors. It may be a bit of a surprise that this is not an Arduino compatible board. [Ray] tried a few projects with PIC microcontrollers and ended up [...]

Tags:  board squarewear microcontroller ray pic-microcontrollers compatible-board microcontroller-board microcontrollers  

If you’re looking for a way to push your comfort zone with that slick new microcontroller you’ve been working with we think [Morgan Gangwere] has the answer. He took his chipKit development board and used it as a demoscene platform. Demoscene refers to audio and visual demos written to squeeze as much entertainment out of [...]

Tags:  dev-board microcontroller comfort-zone microcontrollers  

[John] wrote in with a solution to a prototyping issue that has vexed us for quite some time. Above you can see the DIP friendly solution for dual-row pin headers which he came up with. With just a bit of easy soldering he now has a breadboard friendly device for prototyping. He starts by soldering [...]

Tags:  dip breadboard pin john dual-row pin-headers pin-header microcontrollers  

Whenever we hear about ECE 4760 we take notice. That’s because a ton of fantastic hacked together projects have resulted from the class. It’s offered at Cornell University and focuses on designing projects based on microcontrollers. We look at it as a ‘how to connect everything to your microcontroller’ guide. The good news for you [...]

Tags:  ece cornell lecture cornell-university microcontrollers microcontroller microcontrollers  

[Jay Kickliter] sent in his latest electronic business card. This time, his goal was to make it much cheaper so he could actually afford to give it away. He did pretty well considering the two week timeline he mentions. This card is using an MSP430 with the capsense library to light up some LEDs any [...]

Tags:  business capacitive card jay-kickliter electronic-business-card msp430 leds microcontrollers  

A couple of things strike us about this 8-voice 32 kHz synthesizer. First is the cleanliness of the prototype. As you can see, each part has plenty of room on its own board and all are interconnected by 10-pin IDC ribbon connectors. But you’ll have to see the video after the break to enjoy the [...]

Tags:  khz voice synthesizer cleanliness microcontrollers  

Back in 2011 we did a short roundup of some popular development boards.  We promised a follow up at some point, and that time is near.  We would really like to make this a fairly comprehensive list and there are always suggestions sent in after the article that we overlooked. This time, we’re asking that [...]

Tags:  board development time roundup development-boards microcontrollers  

[Timothy] is honing his microcontroller skills with this electronic dice project. In addition to giving him an opportunity to work on some code, the use of an 8-pin chip provides a design challenge for driving the twelve pips and providing a user input. The project started off with some $4 strings of LED Christmas lights. [...]

Tags:  pair pic microcontroller timothy led-christmas-lights electronic-dice pin-chip microcontrollers  

Here’s an external display meant to help you keep track of your computer’s status. It connects via USB and is driven by a PIC microcontroller. It listens for a small set of commands, using those to implement a simple control protocol to drive the screen. [Andrew Gehringer] designed the device around a PIC 18F2550, which offers [...]

Tags:  lcd display pic andrew-gehringer pic-microcontroller control-protocol microcontrollers  

We’ve seen NES, SNES, Sega, and just about every weird controller Atari put out connected to microcontrollers, but connecting the N64 controller to a project has remained one of those seldom-seen, rarely copied endeavors, not often tackled by makers around the globe. [Pieter-Jan] decided to throw his hat in the ring and give reading an [...]

Tags:  controller microcontroller nes pieter-jan n64-controller microcontrollers  

[Nakul], [Nikilesh], and [Nischal] just finished posting about their entry in the 2012 Open 7400 Logic competition. It’s an encryption system based entirely on 7400 logic chips. The device operates on 8-bit binary numbers, which limits its real-world applications. But we bet they learned a lot during the development process. The encryption algorithm is based on a [...]

Tags:  encryption project logic logic-chips encryption-algorithm nischal microcontrollers  

[John] from MIT is working on a project to bring a little bit of interactivity to the hacks he does. Because his hacks receive much more attention on the Internet than in real life, [John] made it so clicking a button in your browser can change something in the real world. He calls his creation [...]

Tags:  internet fabulously touchit john interactivity hacks real-world microcontrollers  

This soldering nightmare is a configurable RFID tag which has been built from 7400-series logic chips. The beast of a project results in an iPhone-sized module which can be used as your new access card for security systems that uses the 125 kHz tags. The best part is that a series of switches makes the [...]

Tags:  logic tag rfid logic-chips rfid-tag iphone microcontrollers  

If you want to mess around with some microcontrollers but don’t really have a purpose in mind this project is perfect for you. It’s cheap, easy to assemble, and there’s blinking LEDs! [TigerUp] shows us how he  put together some LED matrix pendants using just five components. He calls the project Tiny Matrix, which is [...]

Tags:  led matrix project microcontrollers pendants hacks  

We see a lot of microcontroller based hacks around here, and it’s not hard to see why learning how to use microcontrollers is valuable to prospective engineeer. Unfortunately, microcontroller courses are dreaded by students since they focus on theory instead of application. In The First Lecure, [Colin] talks to a class of engineering students about [...]

Tags:  microcontroller engineering motivating colin engineering-students microcontrollers hacks news  

Here’s another offering when it comes to PIC programming from the Raspberry Pi. The design seeks to adapt the GPIO header so that it may be used for programming PIC microcontrollers, but this does involve a bit more than just physically connecting pins to the target chip. Most of the PIC family require a 12V [...]

Tags:  raspberry pic Programming pic-microcontrollers programming-pic pic-programming microcontrollers  

[Gpuhackr] chose his username to explain exactly how he spends his time. For instance, here he’s using an STM32 Discovery board to drive an AMD Radeon HD 2400 graphics card. The ARM microcontroller isn’t actually using the PCIe interface on the card. Instead, [Gpuhackr] has patched into the debugging interface built into the card itself. This [...]

Tags:  stm card pcie pcie-video-card graphics-card microcontrollers  

[André Sarmento] needed to connect a computer to an RS-485 bus. A simple converter can be sourced online, but the only thing he could find locally that was even close was a USB to RS-232 converter. He used that component to craft his own USB to RS-485 bridge. RS-485 is often used for remote sensors [...]

Tags:  adapter converter usb rs-485 rs-232 sensors microcontrollers  

Like many of us, [Jon] began his journey through the magical world of microcontrollers with an Arduino. For a beginner, the Arduino is a wonderful tool, but [Jon] quickly found himself limited by the platform. There are too few pins on the Arduino, and and the platform doesn’t really lend itself to extremely complex projects. [...]

Tags:  freesoc arduino platform jon magical-world microcontrollers kickstarter  

[Andrew] picked up a handful of these big STC 8051 chips for a song and dance. The problem he has with them is the clunky VB6 programming software that only wants to run on a Windows box. He buckled down and wrote his own programming software called stcdude. As you have probably guessed, it’s meant [...]

Tags:  stcdude Programming Software andrew windows-box programming-software vb6 microcontrollers  

[Limpkin] decided to give the whole embedded business card thing a try. Here is his finished project, a low-profile mass storage business card that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. Sure, the $6 price tag could score him a hundred paper cards, but those don’t light up like this one does! The main components [...]

Tags:  business card limpkin storage-business paper-cards microcontrollers  

Search around the Internet and you’ll find a landfill of forum threads asking how to drive the LCD screen from a dead laptop. The answer is always that there is just no way to do it. That’s because most of them use a Low-Voltage Differential Signalling protocol that just isn’t available through the hardware used [...]

Tags:  fpga lvds reuse low-voltage-differential forum-threads lcds microcontrollers  

Webkeys are small, inexpensive USB devices which launch a web browser when plugged into a computer. They’re given out as a promotional item, but they can be fun to hack as well. [Brad Antoniewicz] recently got his hands on one and decided to crack it open to see what he could accomplish. The majority of [...]

Tags:  webkeys usb disassembling brad-antoniewicz promotional-item usb-devices microcontrollers  

[Jordan] writes in to show us a project he has been working on called MbedConsole. Living up its name [Jordan] has managed to run a 640×480 VGA output, PS/2 port and console all from the mbed itself. We really mean from an mbed only; no extra hardware is required aside from a few resistors and [...]

Tags:  mbedconsole vga project jordan vga-output resistors ps-2 microcontrollers  

Imagine you’re stuck on a desert island, hundreds of miles away from the nearest person, and you finally have time to finish that project you’re working on. You have a single microcontroller, but you’re lacking a computer and you need to program an ATtiny13. How do you do it? [androidruberoid] figured out how to manually flash [...]

Tags:  Programming microcontroller time desert-island hundreds-of-miles attiny13 microcontrollers  

Over the last few years, [Michael] has been developing a PIC microcontroller board. He calls his project USBPIC, and with the addition of a few FET drivers, H-bridges, and LED drivers his homemade dev board can handle just about anything thrown at it. [Michael]‘s board is build around a PIC18F2455 microcontroller with both an In Circuit [...]

Tags:  board usbpic anything michael microcontroller-board pic-microcontroller dev-board microcontrollers  

We’ve been living a life of luxury, writing our microcontroller code in a text editor and using — of all things — a compiler to turn it into something the chip can use. [Dan Amlund Thomsen] shows us a different way of doing things. He’s actually crafting the operation codes for a PIC microcontroller by [...]

Tags:  code pic microcontroller dan-amlund microcontroller-code op-code pic-microcontroller microcontrollers  

[blueHash] uses this cheap development board as an AVR programmer. What’s interesting to us is that it solves the chicken-or-egg problem that is usually encountered when bootstrapping a programmer. We’ve written about this issue before. Most programmers use microcontrollers, which first need to be flashed using a programmer. But it turns out the chip on [...]

Tags:  programmer bluehash avr egg-problem microcontrollers microcontrollers  

[Blark] picked up a couple of Commodore 64 machines on Craig’s List so that he could play around with the SID chips inside. But there’s some other fun stuff in there and his attention was drawn to the PROM which stores the kernel. He thought it would be a fun adventure to build a ROM [...]

Tags:  dumping kernel fun craig sid sid-chips commodore-64 fun-stuff microcontrollers  

Meet the Art Controller, a new dev board available over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. It provides a drop-in solution for switching higher voltage loads (but not mains). The thing we like most about it is the ability to alter a switching delay without reprogramming the firmware. The board uses an ATtiny2313 for control. It’s [...]

Tags:  timing board relay art-controller relay-board mad-scientist dev-board microcontrollers  

ST Microelectronics keeps kicking out development boards to show off their new ARM processor line. Yesterday they issued a press release announcing the STM32 F3 Discovery Board. As their naming scheme implies, this carries an ARM Cortex-M3 processor, but compared to the F0 Discovery board (which we loved) it’s got several extra goodies built into [...]

Tags:  stm board discovery st-microelectronics dev-board processor-line microcontrollers  

[Andrea “Mancausoft” Milazzo] has been restoring old equipment which often contain EPROM chips. He thought he was all set with an EPROM reader which easily dumped the data from 2716 chips and a few others. But he found that the hardware was unable to read 2708 and 2704 chips. His solution was to build a [...]

Tags:  eprom dumper mancausoft andrea eprom-chips eprom-reader milazzo microcontrollers  

This device is a prank or gag that [Eric Heisler] came up with. It will intercept IR remote control codes and play them back after a bit of a delay. The example he shows in the video (embedded after the break) catches the television power signal from a remote, then sends it again after about [...]

Tags:  rickrolling prank control eric-heisler television-power heisler gag microcontrollers  

Here’s the first project we’ve seen for the new Stellaris Launchpad. It’s a frequency analyzer which displays a graph on an 8×8 LED module. What’s that you say? You haven’t received your new Launchpad board yet? Neither have we since they don’t start shipping until the end of the month. But [EuphonistiHack] works as a [...]

Tags:  launchpad frequency analyzer frequency-analyzer stellaris graph microcontrollers  

This game of Bomb Jack is the same as the original arcade version. The difference is that this hardware was built in an FPGA using schematics found on the Internet. We’re a little shocked by the complexity of such a project. We’ve been impressed before by the use of FPGAs to implement classic CRT vector [...]

Tags:  fpga game bomb jack bomb-jack arcade-version classic-coin microcontrollers  

About thirty cents and some wire are all it takes to start hacking extra features into this DX6i transmitter. The DX6i is a six-channel, two-mode transmitter used to control hobby airplanes and helicopters. There are several built-in features but [Ligius] found an easy way to add a few more. In the upper left portion of [...]

Tags:  hobby wire transmitter hobby-airplanes helicopters microcontrollers  

  C’mon, you know you’re not really going to do much today. You might as well spend that time learning some skills instead of watching funny cats. The Cornell ECE lectures on microcontrollers (ECE 4760 and ECE5760), taught by [Bruce Land], are available online for free. Not only do you get to enjoy these two [...]

Tags:  ece cornell time bruce-land funny-cats educational-time microcontrollers hackaday links  

Texas Instruments just open preorders for the new Stellaris LaunchPad. The boards won’t ship until the end of September, but if you don’t mind the wait you can get one for $4.99 including delivery (we’d wager non-U.S. addresses have to pay for delivery, but leave a comment if you know for sure several readers have reported [...]

Tags:  preorder launchpad delivery u.s. stellaris cortex microcontrollers  

A couple of Harvard researchers have developed a method of using digital barometers as a touch sensor. The good news for us is that they’ve open sourced the project, including Eagle board files, firmware, and details about the materials they used. The digital barometers were chosen for their characteristics, availability, and low-cost. The sensor uses an array of Freescale MPL115A2 [...]

Tags:  building touch sensor digital-barometers digital-barometer touch-sensors microcontrollers  

Every AVR microcontroller, from the ATtiny in your thermostat to the ATMega in your Arduino, stores its configuration in a series of fuse bits. These fuse bits control settings such as the multiplier of the internal oscillator (and thus the speed of the chip), or if the reset pin can be used as a GPIO [...]

Tags:  fuse avr microcontroller avr-microcontroller internal-oscillator reset-pin microcontrollers  

Over on the Hackaday forums, [Brian] introduced himself by showing off his new business card. Given his expertise is creating unique circuit boards, we can’t imagine a better way to show off his skills than an ARM-powered business card. [Brian] posted a more detailed write-up on his blog that covers his development process. He decided to use a [...]

Tags:  business card usb brian arm-processor business-card new-business microcontrollers  

As a learning experience [GeriBoss] put together an IR remote control receiver board for his PC. His want of volume control from across the room was reason enough to undertake the project, and he got to work with a 38 kHz receiver module and Manchester encoding in the process. The decoder portion of the project [...]

Tags:  receiver project control pc.-his manchester ir-remote-control manchester-encoding receiver-board microcontrollers  

AVR programmers can be bought for just a few dollars on the Internet, but if you’re building an expansion board with an AVR for your Raspi, this is the build for you. It’s a safe way of programming an AVR via the Raspi’s GPIO pins that uses an extremely minimal circuit. The AVR ISP interface [...]

Tags:  raspberry raspi avr avr-programmer avr-isp gpio microcontrollers  

Atmel’s XMEGA series of microcontrollers are neat little pieces of hardware; with a very fast clock, a ton of IO, USB, and up to 8 UART ports, these neat little chips serve as a nice bridge between AVRs and PICs and the very powerful ARM chips coming out on the market. Unfortunately, the XMEGAs don’t use [...]

Tags:  xmega isp Programming arm-chips avrs little-pieces microcontrollers  

[Natsfr] was looking for a single-sided PCB to host a PIC 18F4550. Not finding one he designed his own in Kicad and is sharing (translated) the spoils of his labor. This chip has USB capabilities which is why we see it used in a ton of projects. Almost all of them (including this USB input device [...]

Tags:  dev usb pic sided-pcb kicad dev-board microcontrollers  

[Giorgio Vazzana] turned his Raspberry Pi into a PIC programmer using a rather small collection of common parts. It supports about a dozen different chips from the 16F family. But we’d guess that software is the limiting factor when it comes to supporting more chips. Generally the problem with PIC programming is the need for [...]

Tags:  raspberry programmer pic pic-programmer pic-programming limiting-factor microcontrollers  

The days of the 8 bit Arduino may be quickly coming to a close. Sure, there will always be a place for AVRs in blinking LEDs and turning on relays, but for doing anything cool – playing MP3s, driving LCD displays, or running a CNC machine – you need the power of a 32 bit [...]

Tags:  ARM age bit arm-chips avrs arduino microcontrollers  

[Chris] continues cranking out the tutorials, this time around he’s showing how to use a CPLD for simple motor control. The demo hardware is pretty basic, he built his own FPGA/CPLD demo board a few years back which used a PLCC socket for easy interfacing. You should be able to use just about any gear [...]

Tags:  cpld motor control chris demo-board plcc-socket microcontrollers  

The Texas Instruments MSP430 Launchpad is pretty popular in hacks, likely due to its low price. TI has recently released a new C2000 Launchpad device that offers more power and peripherals for $17. This board uses the C2000 Piccolo processor, which is meant for DSP applications. Also included is an unrestricted version of the Code [...]

Tags:  launches launchpad texas billy-mays dsp-applications unrestricted-version microcontrollers  

Texas Instruments is trying to take the success it had with the LaunchPad and apply it to other chip architectures. The board seen above is their new C2000 Piccolo LaunchPad. It’s a development board for the F28027 chip. This 32-bit offering is a part we know nothing about. A first look shows a clock speed between 40 [...]

Tags:  launchpad piccolo chip chip-architectures dev-boards clock-speed microcontrollers  

[JMN] took some time to look at the MSP430G2553 mircocontroller (translated). Specifically, he was interested in the clock options and the low power modes. This chip is one of the upgraded processors which have been shipping with the TI Launchpad. Both the MSP430G2553 and MSP430G2452 come with the Launchpad development board. They replace the MSP430G2231 and [...]

Tags:  launchpad msp chip power-modes jmn msp430 microcontrollers  

Get your 8-bit gaming fix with this gaming shield for the TI Launchpad. It’s called the Launchpad GamingPack and was developed as part of TI’s 2012 Intern Design Contest. The team had just six weeks to complete the project. The video after the break starts off with some fast-motion PCB layout. It is followed by [...]

Tags:  launchpad shield gaming design-contest six-weeks microcontrollers  

When working on his quadcopter project [Matt] decided it would be best to build a robust controller for the device. He had never sent off a PCB design for fabrication, but took the plunge and ended up with a compact and reliable PCB on the first try. One of the first things that comes to [...]

Tags:  pcb designing quadcopter matt pcb-design robust-controller plunge microcontrollers  

[Dino] is about three-quarters of the way through his talking box project. He’s completed one of the two boxes, and is showing off the technique he uses to marry motion with sound in order to mimic flapping lips with the box top. You may remember [Dino's] first look at the EMIC2. It’s a single-board text [...]

Tags:  box way project dino three-quarters single-board microcontrollers  

[Matt Evans] took a closer look at the popular (and cheap) STM32F0 Discovery development board and realized he could get a second board out of the deal. The Discovery board is designed to advertise ST Microntroller’s STM32F0 microchip; which with 8k RAM, 64K Flash, a bunch of peripherals,  48MHz clock, and a low price is [...]

Tags:  stm board price k-flash matt-evans microchip closer-look microcontrollers  

[Joe Colosimo] is putting on a show with his PCB business card project. The idea isn’t new, but his goal is to keep it simple and undercut the cost of all other PCB cards he’s seen. This is the third generation of the board design, and he’s just waiting on some solder mask solution before [...]

Tags:  business pcb card joe joe-colosimo solder-mask colosimo putting-on-a-show microcontrollers  

Need a tiny web server? [Rob] over on the 43oh forums made an Ethernet booster pack for the very popular TI MSP430 microcontroller. If that’s not enough, [Rob] also put together an all-in-one solution with a MSP430 and Ethernet controller that can be powered by a battery. Along with the web server that fits in [...]

Tags:  server web msp rob ti-msp430 tiny-web booster-pack microcontrollers  

[Alan Burlison] is working on an Arduino project with an accelerometer and a few LEDs. Having the LEDs light up as his board is tilted to one side or another is an easy enough project a computer cowboy could whip out in an hour, but [Alan] – ever the perfectionist – decided to optimize his [...]

Tags:  tutorial leds project alan-burlison alan computer-cowboy burlison accelerometer microcontrollers  

This is the readout which [Remick] added to his stationary bicycle. It displays heart rate, calories burned, and a few other items to help motivate his workout routine. Back when he was ordering a TI Chronos watch he also picked up a heart rate chest strap and receiver. The receiver can be read using a [...]

Tags:  heart-rate-monitor stationary-bicycle workout-routine microcontrollers  

This digital picture frame physically rotates in order to match the image’s orientation. [Markus Gritsch] built the frame, including a Python script to translate the photos to a format which makes the best use of the 2.4″ LCD screen. The screen is addressed in 8-bit parallel by a PIC 32MX120F032B processor. Image are read from an [...]

Tags:  image frame picture markus-gritsch digital-picture-frame image-orientation microcontrollers  

The Arduino IDE is an abstraction layer for the AVR chip which the board is based around. So it’s no surprise that it is now possible to use the Arduino IDE with the TI Launchpad board. This makes it dead simple for beginners to play around with the inexpensive and low-power MSP430 platform. This is [...]

Tags:  launchpad ide arduino avr-chip abstraction-layer microcontrollers  

Here’s a 6-channel logic analyzer shield for the MSP430 Launchpad. It manages an eyebrow-raising 16 million samples per second. The prototype seen above is made on a hunk of protoboard with point-to-point soldering. [oPossum] did lay out a PCB — which is just 50mmx50mm — but has not had any produced quite yet. He calls [...]

Tags:  analyzer msp logic channel-logic-analyzer protoboard launchpad microcontrollers  

It usually takes a bit of work to gain confidence when it comes to using new parts. [Glitch] got his hands on this OLED display which is manufactured by Sabernetics and wanted to give it a whirl before building a project around it. He grabbed his Bus Pirate to help learn the ins and outs [...]

Tags:  display bench bit bench-tools oled-display whirl microcontrollers  

It seems like hacker-friendly ARM development boards are just exploding into the market right now. Here’s one we haven’t looked at yet. The SolderCore is made by Rowley Associates and is packed with features which help to explain the $80 price tag. [CharlieX] just ordered one and posted a bit about his first day with [...]

Tags:  quick dev soldercore rowley-associates price-tag hacker microcontrollers  

[FlorianH] wanted to get video out working with his BeagleBone but he just couldn’t figure out how to make the kernel play ball. Then a bit of inspiration struck. He knew that if you plug in the official DVI cape (that’s the BeagleBone word for what you may know as a shield) the kernel automatically [...]

Tags:  beaglebone video kernel play-ball inspiration microcontrollers  

The LCD displays for Nokia phones have seen a ton of use as easily interfaced displays for Arduino or other microcontroller projects. Usually, these LCDs are only used for displaying a few lines of text, or if someone is feeling really fancy, a small graph. Shame, then that we don’t see more complicated and computationally [...]

Tags:  video microcontroller bit microcontroller-projects nokia-phones lcd-displays microcontrollers  

Parallax has done something that is unthinkable for most microcontroller manufacturing companies. They’ve decided to throw their support behind an open source toolchain based on GCC. That’s right, instead of fighting to get your code compiling on a platform whose example code uses crippleware, you can actually download, compile, and start using this toolchain without code size [...]

Tags:  code parallax source manufacturing-companies open-source microcontrollers  

Here’s [FlorianH's] setup for driving a PlayStation Portable screen with an FPGA. He’s using the DE0-Nano board to do this, and the first order of business was to establish a way to connect the two. He did a great job of etching his own breakout board, which has some traces that are less than 10 [...]

Tags:  fpga board screen nano playstation-portable order-of-business microcontrollers  

  This setup is used to control a model railroad. Well, not entirely this setup. [Gerhard Bertelsmann] already has a proper railroad controller, and it just happens to offer CAN bus communications. He’s using OpenWRT and a cheap router to connect the bus to the network. Originally he wanted to use a Raspberry Pi board [...]

Tags:  can router bus gerhard-bertelsmann bus-160 openwrt choos microcontrollers  

Yep, that blue light is blinking and I made it happen. I’ve been hard at work since I got my free STM32F0-Discovery board in the mail. Most recently I put together a starting template for building STM32F05x project on Linux. You’ll still need to install your own tool chain (I’m using the Code Sourcery G++: [...]

Tags:  stm template building discovery-project sourcery tool-chain microcontrollers  

Of course putting a microcontroller into sleep mode or changing the clock rate has an effect on the power consumption of the chip, but what about different bits of code? Is multiplying two numbers more efficient than adding them, and does ORing two values consume more power than NOPping? [jcw] wanted to compare the power [...]

Tags:  code power effect clock-rate power-consumption sleep-mode microcontrollers  

MyHDL is a Python module that brings FPGA programming into the Python environment. [Christopher Felton] tipped us off about a simple tutorial he just finished that gives an overview of how the module is used. You may remember hearing about PyCPU a couple days ago which can run very simple Python code on a FPGA. There [...]

Tags:  python-module python-programming python-code microcontrollers  

So here’s the scenario. You’re the boss and everyone needs to kiss up to you speak with you about important project details. You need a receptionist, or a creative employee who will build a calendar display the lets people check if you’re free to chat. It works by querying a Microsoft Exchange server for the guy’s calendar. [...]

Tags:  calendar bossy scenario microsoft-exchange-server creative-employee project-details microcontrollers  

Last Wednesday I posted a video review of the new STM32F0-Discovery board which is built around an ARM Cortex-M0 chip. I speculated that it should work with the open source project aimed at programming these discovery boards. I tested it out and a connection could be made, but no code could be flashed. So I [...]

Tags:  open-source-project video-review cortex microcontrollers  

[Emanuele] is using Google Docs to log his temperature sensor data automatically (translated). We can see a few benefits gained by using this system. One is that you don’t have to visit the site of the logging hardware to harvest the data, another is that Google will automatically graph the data for you. Of course this [...]

Tags:  docs google data sensor-data temperature-sensor emanuele microcontrollers  

[Suraj] has been working with some larger MSP430 chips with won’t fit on the Launchpad board. But that’s okay because he built a shield and wrote a guide about using the Spy-Bi-Wire protocol for programming the chips. SBW is a four-wire interface. In the past we’ve used all of the board’s programming connections for in circuit [...]

Tags:  wire-protocol wire-interface s-programming microcontrollers  

While [Vinod] says he’s not an expert in this sort of thing, we really like his audio spectrum analyzer build from a simple microcontroller and LCD display. It is a well-studied fact that every audio waveform – a recording of your voice, for instance – is just the sum of many, many sine waves. These sine [...]

Tags:  analyzer spectrum microcontroller vinod audio-spectrum-analyzer audio-waveform sine-waves microcontrollers  

There are few things more frustrating than being in the middle of working on a project and realizing that you are missing some crucial component that ties the whole thing together. According to Murphy’s Law, this sort of thing will only happen when parts are completely impossible to procure. If you’re ever hunting for a [...]

Tags:  thing touch pencil pencil-and-paper sensors microcontrollers  

If you’d like to start experimenting in DSP, or just want to build a guitar pedal, here’s the project for you. It’s an audio echo using just a microcontroller from the fruitful workshop of [Vinod]. For his circuit, [Vinod] fed the output of a small electret microphone into a small amplifier, and then into the [...]

Tags:  delay dsp microcontroller vinod electret-microphone guitar-pedal digital-delay microcontrollers  

You can find all kinds of LCD screens in broken electronics. But it’s often a chore to figure out how they are controlled if you don’t have a working device that can be used to sniff the communications protocol. [Justin] grabbed this character LCD screen from an old Brother printer and decided to see if [...]

Tags:  lcd salvaged screen justin communications-protocol lcd-screens character-lcd microcontrollers  

We’re used to [Sprite_TM] rolling out his own hacks hot on the heels of new concepts. Now we’re glad to see that [Jeff Ledger] is doing the same thing here. He was inspired by a Kickstarter project which vows to let you use fruit, clay, and a number of other common (but weird for this [...]

Tags:  sprite bananaphone fruit jeff-ledger hot-on-the-heels hacks microcontrollers  

Here’s two builds that print text to a TV with only two pins: Still Alive with an Arduino After seeing all the builds that play Still Alive, [Bob] decided to take a 1972 amber monitor and recreate the cut scene at the end of Portal. The build uses the TVout library for Arduino. There were a few problems [...]

Tags:  arduino microcontroller pins microcontrollers  

[Sulaiman Habsi] and two classmates put together a Morse Code interpreter as a class project at Sultan Qaboos University. The system listens to a morse code signal using a microphone, then translates that input to text which is displayed on this character LCD. The breadboarded circuit feeds an audio signal from the microphone, through an OpAmp, [...]

Tags:  signal interpreter microphone morse-code sultan-qaboos-university morse-code-signal classmates microcontrollers  

[Shane Burrell] decided to spend some time learning how the keypad on the his Kenwood TM-710A APRS radio mic works. It uses a different technique than you might think. Normally a grid of buttons is scanned as a matrix to detect keypresses, but this hardware actually counts pulses on a serial wire to take each [...]

Tags:  aprs keypad wire shane-burrell aprs-radio radio-mic keypresses microcontrollers  

[Andy Brown] wanted one level converter to rule them all, so he set out to build his own which included plenty of options. The chip at the top and center is a pretty neat little device. It’s an NXP 74ALVC164245DL. In addition to having an incredibly long and seemingly meaningless part number, it contains a pair of [...]

Tags:  level plenty conversion andy-brown level-converter microcontrollers  

The folks over at Gadget Gangster have been working on a music visualization system using a Parallax Propeller. The visualizations are awesome in their early-90s demoscene way, and of course we love anything using the oft under-appreciated Propeller. The project is called Video Beats and it generates music visualizations in the style of a blocky but very [...]

Tags:  propeller music visualization music-visualizations music-visualization visualization-system microcontrollers  

This project from a few years back is an interesting take on a metal detector. Instead of building a detection circuit, [Bruno Gavand] replaced the external clock crystal with an inductor. Here you can see the inductor coil next to the PIC 12F683. You can see two components jumping from one breadboard to the other. [...]

Tags:  clock-crystal external-clock inductor microcontrollers  

[Michael Ossman] wrote in to show off his newest project. He calls it the Firefly cap, which we think is something of a play on words. You can see that it serves as the cap of a Mason jar, but it also uses a supercap instead of a rechargeable battery. Posts about firelfly jars go [...]

Tags:  mason-jar supercap ossman microcontrollers  

If you have an idea for a fairly simple USB device but don’t want to invest in the more expensive microcontrollers, this library will be of interest to you. It’s a software implementation of the low-speed USB protocol for PIC 16F628. You can pick these up for around $2, and it just takes a few [...]

Tags:  pic-16f628 software-implementation speed-usb microcontrollers  

[Ben Peoples] works in theatrical electronics. Sounds like fun, and here’s an example of the kind of stuff he does. We’re not sure what event this installation was used for, but if the elevator ride needed something flashy just think of what the party room must have looked like. These HDTV screens on the ceiling [...]

Tags:  sounds-like-fun elevator hdtv microcontrollers  

[Minifloat] is using his TI Launchpad development board as an In-System Programmer for AVR chips (translated). There are a ton of homebrew AVR programmers out there, and using an Arduino for ISP is quite popular. But recently we searched for a way to use the Launchpad as a programmer and didn’t find one. We’d venture [...]

Tags:  launchpad programmer avr avr-programmers isp-programmer system-programmer microcontrollers  

klBASIC is a BASIC interpreter written in C for AVR microcontrollers. [Karl Lunt] developed the project based on an assembly language BASIC interpreter for 68HC11 chips written by [Gordon Doughman]. The transition from assembly to C bulked up the code, so you’ll need a beefy AVR chip in order to store all of it. The [...]

Tags:  gordon-doughman karl-lunt avr-microcontrollers microcontrollers  

A while back, [DragonMinded] picked up a bunch of old arcade and pinball parts from a guy on Craigslist. These parts sat around for a while until a really neat plasma dot matrix display was found in the corner of a box in his garage. Doing the only reasonable thing, [DragonMinded] figured out how to [...]

Tags:  display matrix plasma dot-matrix-display reverse-engineering pinball microcontrollers  

It seems [Charles Moyes] and [Mengxiang Jiang] won’t suffer from the sore wrists and thumbs from an Atari controller any longer. They built a version of Pong played by concentrating and relaxing while wearing an EEG headset. Right now, there’s only enough hardware for one player; when the player operating the red paddle concentrates the paddle [...]

Tags:  paddle player pong charles-moyes sore-wrists moyes eeg microcontrollers  

[Kyle] and an a few of his classmates are wrapping up a microcontroller interfacing class at Purdue and thought it best to send in the results of their efforts. It’s a version of Super Smash Bros. made by just bitbanging pins on a microcontroller. The hardware for the project is based around a Freescale 9S12c32, an updated [...]

Tags:  microcontroller smash-bros freescale microcontrollers  

[Johan's] been working on a chunk of code for about seven years and he thinks it’s ready to help you with your next project. He calls it D1 (The One) and it lets you receive asynchronous data without the need for a hardware USART. It’s capable of working with signals from an IR or RF [...]

Tags:  asynchronous-data chunk johan microcontrollers  

[Shane] is building a new house and wants some, “subtle home automation” as he calls it. His first project is hooking up a small heater to the Internet, and judging from his demo video everything is going swimmingly. [Shane]‘s project is built around an mbed microcontroller that connects to the Internet via an Ethernet connection. The mbed [...]

Tags:  household-devices home-automation google microcontrollers  

[doragasu]‘s wife is always misplacing her keys. To solve this problem, [doragasu] created a small Bluetooth-enabled key fob that is able to remotely sound an alarm when commanded to by a cell phone. The case and LiPo battery of [doragasu]‘s project comes from a small photo frame key fob. The LCD display and PCB of [...]

Tags:  doragasu bluetooth fob photo-frame lcd-display project-comes-from microcontrollers  

[Sebastian] is learning Morse code and CW radio, and of course he needed a telegraph key. Instead of using the terribly unergonomic paddle style key, he built a capacitive touch iambic key over the course of a few evenings. An iambic key usually has two switches. When one switch is closed, it will transmit a [...]

Tags:  telegraph touch course sebastian morse cw-radio telegraph-key paddle-style microcontrollers  

[Dustin Andrews] built this add-on board which works as a proximity sensor. He wanted a standalone sensor for his Arduino projects which would use a single pin as a trigger. This lets him alert the Arduino when an object approaches the sensor without the need for polling or extra code on the Arduino side of [...]

Tags:  arduino proximity sensor dustin-andrews proximity-sensor microcontrollers  

We’re going to have to take [Mike's] word for it that he built Conway’s Game of Life with high-definition video output. That’s because this screenshot is his only proof and it looks a bit fuzzy to us. But we are interested in the project which used an FPGA to generate a 1080p VGA output of [...]

Tags:  life game conway mike game-of-life vga-output video-output microcontrollers  

Don’t mind me, I’m just listening to some tunes during our poker game. Well, that and getting some electronic coaching about poker odds. This board lets you wiggle your toes to input the upcards, and those in your hand. After each entry the gadget will tell you your odds of winning the hand. Take it [...]

Tags:  board poker hand don poker-odds poker-game gadget microcontrollers  

[Vinod] has done a lot of work with microcontrollers, but this is his first try at displaying graphics using composite video. He had a small PAL television on hand, and an ATmega32 which just needs a stable clock source and a few resistors to get things going. There are a lot of other hacks around [...]

Tags:  lot experimenting bit vinod pal clock-source atmega32 displaying-graphics microcontrollers  

[Quinn Dunki] just reported in on the latest iteration in her computer project which is called Veronica. This time she added RAM to increase the VGA performance of her build. Like just about every other part of the project, [Quinn] knew what she wanted to do, but had to overcome a lot of issues along [...]

Tags:  quinn vram project veronica quinn-dunki boot-logo computer-project microcontrollers  

[Bob Alexander's] most recent project is a hack saw resizable ARM breakout board. He wanted to start using more ARM microcontrollers in his projects and went for a breadboard friendly design. It uses a 40-pin dip package, but if you need the horsepower but not the I/O you can literally cut it down to size. [...]

Tags:  board ARM resizable bob-alexander pin-dip-package microcontrollers microcontrollers  

[Chris] put together a bunch of common components to create this wireless pan and tilt system for a security camera or a robot. The motorized base is simple enough, using two servos to make up a mount for the digital camera. In this case he used a parts package which is designed to mount the servos [...]

Tags:  bunch Wireless camera chris tilt-system wireless-pan servos microcontrollers  

Building a capacitance meter is a great exercise. If you’re feeling quite safe in your digital-circuit-only life, this will push just far enough out of the comfort zone for you to see there’s nothing to fear in adding analog circuits to your designs. Here, [Raj] compares a voltage divider and RC timer to calculate the value of [...]

Tags:  capacitance understanding meter capacitance-meter voltage-divider analog-circuits microcontrollers  

The biggest benefit to using the BeagleBone is it’s 700 MHz ARM processor. If you’re just messing around with basic I/O that power is going unused, but [Nuno Alves] is taking advantage of its power. He built a PDF password cracker based on the $85 development board. We recently saw how easy it is to [...]

Tags:  beaglebone password pdf pdf-password-cracker arm-processor s-700 microcontrollers  

[vinod] wanted to familiarize himself with AVR assembly programming, but wanted to do something a little more ambitious than simply blinking an LED. While the completed build does blink a few LEDs, we love that e decided to implement multitasking on his microcontroller. The program [vinod] came up with uses round robin scheduling to give one of [...]

Tags:  vinod assembly avr assembly-programming multitasking microcontrollers  

[Joby Taffey] just rolled out a serial bootloader for the Chipcon CC1110/CC1111 processors. The project is called CCTL and aims to make prototyping with the Girltech IM-ME a bit less tedious. Up until now firmware for the device had to be pushed in with a GoodFET or TI proprietary programmer which was quite slow. But this [...]

Tags:  serial bootloader chipcon girltech joby microcontrollers  

[Radu Motisan] wrote in to share a cool project he has been working on lately, a pulsed microspot welder/cutter. The device is capable of spot welding thin metals such as foils and battery tabs by sending a pair of high current pulses between the two electrodes whenever [Radu] presses the trigger button. The cutting portion [...]

Tags:  welder radu cutter thin-metals current-pulses capacitive-discharge microcontrollers  

Here is [Voelker] showing off his FPGA-based camera hardware. He picked up an ov7670 camera on eBay for about $10 and set to work pulling pixels and processing the images. He’s now able to grab thirty frames per second and push them to his own Java display application. He’s using the Papilio board and if you [...]

Tags:  fpga camera module camera-hardware camera-module ebay microcontrollers  

Armed with four wingtip-mounted Sienar Fleet Systems L-s9.3 laser cannons and a SFS P-s5.6 twin ion engine, the TIE Interceptor has become the scourge of the Rebel fleet, nearly capable of out-running and out-maneuvering the beloved A-wings of Nomad Squadron. Because of [Matt]‘s tireless work, we can now visualize TIE Interceptors on approach with our targeting computers [...]

Tags:  fleet tie oscilloscope d-graphics matt tie-interceptor laser-cannons fleet-systems microcontrollers  

[Vinod Stanur] just finished another hobby project by building a WAV audio player using a microcontroller. He had started development a while back using a PIC microcontroller. But the chip he was using didn’t have enough SRAM to allocate as a playback buffer. When he got his hands on an ATmega32 his mind turned back [...]

Tags:  pic-microcontroller atmega32 hobby-project microcontrollers  

While his wife was out-of-town [James] jumped at the opportunity to do some snooping around with her Chevy Tahoe’s parking assist sensors. We can understand how pulling parts out of someone’s car would make them none too happy. But we find it hilarious that it’s a leased company car he’s tinkering around with. But we’re [...]

Tags:  wife parking car james chevy-tahoe company-car sensors microcontrollers  

[Kayvon] thought that the TV-B-Gone was a fun little device and wanted to build one, but he didn’t have an AVR programmer handy. Rather than picking up some AVR kit and simply building a replica, he decided to give his PIC skills a workout and build a Microchip derivative of his own. The PIC-based TV-B-Gone [...]

Tags:  avr pic tv-b-gone avr-kit avr-programmer microchip microcontrollers  

[Cesar] recently got a PSP display up and running with his FPGA development board. That’s a nice project, but what we really like is that he set aside a lot of time to show how it’s done every step of the way. This isn’t just a tutorial on that particular screen, but an overview of [...]

Tags:  lcd fpga game cesar fpga-development-board lcd-control nice-project microcontrollers  

Here’s a bulky tutorial that will round-out your understanding of ZigBee wireless communications (translated). The protocol is great for hobby electronics projects because it uses low-power short range wireless devices to build a mesh network. The guide covers both hardware and software, but also takes the time to explain what that hardware is doing in the [...]

Tags:  zigbee tutorial Hardware zigbee-wireless hobby-electronics electronics-projects microcontrollers  

Find you’re running out of memory and paying for more expensive chips just to plug this feature gap? Many of the upper offering of chips have the option of adding SRAM thanks to an on-chip hardware feature, but if you don’t have that this 512k SRAM add-on board can be used with any chip that [...]

Tags:  board feature sram chip-hardware hardware-feature prototyping microcontrollers  

[Raphael Abrams] does a lot of freelance work, but he has trouble accurately keeping track of the hours he has put in for his clients. After trying various applications and methods of logging his time, he finally decided to build a device that worked just the way he liked. He calls his device the “Freelance [...]

Tags:  freelance device time raphael-abrams puncher raphael microcontrollers  

This gnarly beast has near-magical qualities. [Sprite_TM] patched it together as a dongle which attaches to a JTAG header (we’re fairly certain this is not a standard footprint for that interface though). He uses it to push code to an FPGA after that device boots. Why? Well, there’s several reason, but the most generic answer [...]

Tags:  code dongle jtag generic-answer magical-qualities microcontrollers  

[Boris Landoni] put together a guide to using an inexpensive 3-axis accelerometer with Arduino. The chip that he chose for the exercise is an MMA7455L made by Freescale. It’s got a lot of nice features packed into it, using hardware to do some of the things you’d need software for with other chips like reporting [...]

Tags:  accelerometer catch arduino boris-landoni cheap-accelerometer axis-accelerometer microcontrollers  

The V-USB library is a pretty handy piece of code that lets you add USB connectivity to ATtiny microcontrollers (it was previously named tinyUSB). But if you’ve ever looked into adding the library to your own projects you may have been stymied by the complexity of the code. There are many examples, but there’s a lack of [...]

Tags:  library usb v-usb usb-firmware usb-library handy-piece microcontrollers  

[Quinn Dunki] got some free stuff from Element14 to evaluate, including this Mircrochip WiFi module. It’s been used as the centerpiece of an Arduino shield in the past, and she grabbed a copy of that library to see if it would play nicely with an ATtiny chip. What follows is a struggle to de-Arduino the [...]

Tags:  arduino attiny wifi quinn-dunki microcontrollers centerpiece microcontrollers  

[William] developed this temperature candle as a tool to help keep babies safe as they sleep. It seems that ambient temperature has an effect on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). This device is meant to alert you when room temperature is outside of the recommended envelope. The board hosts an eight-pin PIC microcontroller (12F683P), a [...]

Tags:  infant-death-syndrome pic-microcontroller sudden-infant-death-syndrome microcontrollers  

This fractal viewer is a great way to get your feet wet with Field-Programmable Gate Arrays. The project will give you some experience working with video output, user input, and a whole bunch of math and memory management. [Hamster] built it using the Papilio Plus board which hosts a Spartan 6 FPGA. This continues his [...]

Tags:  csi viewer fractal field-programmable-gate-arrays papilio memory-management microcontrollers  

If you’ve ever wanted to program a microcontroller “in the cloud,” you might want to head over to Inventor Town, an online IDE that allows you to write and compile firmware for the MSP430 series of microcontrollers. After logging in with your Google account, you’re presented with a ‘My Projects’ page. From there, you can [...]

Tags:  internet program microcontroller microcontrollers google Software development  

Let’s get this straight, [Alex] is going to show us how to make controllers like this one? Where do we sign up? Even without seeing it in action we want one, but the urge to build is even greater after he shows it off (check the clip after the break). He’s a design student who [...]

Tags:  wait sign modular alex s-a-design urge microcontrollers  

Check out this 6-pin MSP430 microcontroller. What’s that you say? TI doesn’t make a 6-pin MSP430? True, Texas Instruments doesn’t make one, so [Greg] grabbed his Demel and a cutoff wheel, and chopped up a larger uC to arrive at this package. It may sound a bit crazy at first, but when you think about [...]

Tags:  msp microcontroller doesn greg cutoff-wheel true-texas demel microcontrollers  

[Sprite_TM] was tapped to build a rather large quiz buzzer system. Judging from his past work we’re not surprised that he seemed to have no trouble fulfilling the request. As the system is not likely to be used again (or rarely if it is) he found a way to finish the project that was both [...]

Tags:  sprite quiz system quiz-buzzer buzzer-system microcontrollers  

We’re really not supposed to start a feature like this; but this hack is awesome. It’s a game of Snake implemented by an FPGA dev board. It uses a 16×16 LED matrix as the display and an SNES controller for input. So far it sounds like a very normal version of the game. But as [...]

Tags:  fpga game snake snake-game vhdl hack microcontrollers  

[M. Eric Carr] built this a long time ago as his Senior Project for EET480. It’s an electronic version of the ball-in-maze game. We’ve embedded this video after the break for your convenience. The game has just one input; an accelerometer. If you’re having trouble visualizing the game, it works the same as this Android-based [...]

Tags:  ball-in-maze creativity game m.-eric-carr maze-game eric-carr bit-sound microcontrollers  

There are many microcontrollers available to make robots with, but few that are built with the exact features that you would need to construct one. Meet the [EMGRobotics  MSP430G2553] robot controller board. At $15 without the CPU or $17 with a [MSP430G2553] already plugged into the socket, this control board may make some Arduino enthusiasts [...]

Tags:  board emgrobotics robot robot-controller robot-control exact-features microcontrollers  

[Vinod Stanur] is working with a mouse input and a microcontroller driven LED matrix. The mouse cursor is tracked inside of a window by Python and the resulting coordinates on the LED grid are illuminated. He calls it an LED matrix “Paint Toy” because one of the features he’s included lets the user create pixel [...]

Tags:  led matrix mouse vinod-stanur mouse-cursor mouse-input mouse-movements microcontrollers  

Behold this ATtiny85 based EEPROM programmer. It seems like a roundabout way of doing things, but [Quinn Dunki] wanted to build to her specifications using tools she had on hand. What she came up with is an ATtinyISP USB programmer, pushing data to an ATtiny85, which then programs an EEPROM chip with said data. The [...]

Tags:  programmer eeprom attiny quinn-dunki eeprom-programmer roundabout-way microcontrollers  

[Andy Brown] has been working on a series of tutorials revolving around the STM32 processor family. He’s using the STM32plus development board, with an STM32F1 ARM Cortex M3 processor to drive a couple of different full color graphic LCD screens. His latest installment shows how to read from the touch screen included with both displays. [...]

Tags:  stm touch screen andy-brown lcd-screens processor-family microcontrollers  

[Eric Gregori] recently spent some time messing around with a Hexbug Spider, and wrote in to share some modifications he made to the toy. In its unaltered form the robot can be controlled remotely, and while it’s fun to play with, the excitement is short lived. Using a TI MSP430 along with a small motor [...]

Tags:  ti-msp430 gregori excitement microcontrollers  

We love the extra touches that [Andrianakis Haris] added to his two-zone electronic thermometer. It includes features that you just wouldn’t find on a mass-market commercial product because of issues like added cost. For example, you can see that the PCB juts up above the LCD display, allowing the module to be mounted on a [...]

Tags:  andrianakis over-engineering thermometer electronic-thermometer haris lcd-display microcontrollers  

[Fezoj] likes to play around with microcontrollers and decided that he wanted to try a Bus Pirate as a new tool in his adventures. Since it’s open hardware he had his own board made and populated it himself. The trouble is, he works only with AVR chips and doesn’t have a PIC programmer. No problem, [...]

Tags:  program pic atmega pic-programmer atmega8 open-hardware microcontrollers  

[Scot Kornak] got his hands on the new STM32 Discovery Board. He got his as a free giveaway, but at only $18 he probably would have picked one up anyway. His one complaint about the device is that he dual pin-headers which break out the ARM processor’s pins are not the most convenient for hooking [...]

Tags:  ARM board breakout scot scot-kornak pin-headers arm-processor free-giveaway microcontrollers  

Prolific Hack a Day author [Mike S] has been playing in his lab again and he’s come up with a neat way to talk to microcontrollers with an LCD monitor. The basic idea behind [Mike]‘s work isn’t much different from the weird and/or cool Timex Datalink watch from the 1990s. Despite the fancy dev board, the [...]

Tags:  microcontroller monitor comm mike dev-board timex microcontrollers  

[Achu Wilson] was watching TV when he saw an ad for Volkswagen’s latest Passat, which happens to come equipped with a park assist mode. This essentially allows the car to park itself with little to no user interaction. While these systems come as a pricey add-on option, he figured he could build something similar in [...]

Tags:  self build car wilson achu watching-tv passat microcontrollers  

Stepper motors are pretty easy to control with a microcontroller. But if you’re looking to run then at a high number of revolutions per second things get tricky pretty quickly. [Uwe's] been learning about and building stepper drivers for years, and recently he decided to build a high-performance driver based on a MicroChip reference design. [...]

Tags:  speed microcontroller stepper uwe performance-driver reference-design microcontrollers  

The beta version of Pyxis 3 is now available. Skewworks continues to develop the ARM operating system, and with the transition to version 3 they’ve given it a new name: Gadgetos. One big difference from Pyxis 2 is that the new kernal is closed source. But they’ve taken steps to ensure that the OS is [...]

Tags:  pyxis beta gadgetos kernal beta-version operating-system microcontrollers  

[Phil] uses both his computer’s speakers and a set of headphones while working at his desk, but he was growing tired of constantly having to remove the headset from his sound card in order to insert the speaker plug. He’s been meaning to rig something up to make it easier to switch outputs, but never [...]

Tags:  plug switcher tiny phil audio-switcher sound-card headphones microcontrollers  

The echo box performs exactly as its name implies. If you tap out a rhythm on the lid, it will tap the same thing back to you. Except it isn’t tapping to make the sound, but vibrating. The concept is similar to the Knock Block. In that hack, a piezo element detected a rapping on [...]

Tags:  box name sound echo piezo-element echo-box rhythm microcontrollers  

Reading from a large number of inputs, like this piano keyboard, can be tedious. Even when multiplexing there’s a lot to keep track of. But if you choose the right microcontroller, you may have hardware assistance. Here’s an ATmega640 is using it’s external memory interface to read the key matrix. You may remember the Open [...]

Tags:  matrix memory interface external-memory-interface input-matrix hardware-assistance microcontrollers  

[Hamster] wanted to take a look at division operations when the chip you’re using doesn’t have a divide instruction. He makes the point that the divide instruction takes a lot of space on the die, and that’s why it’s sometimes excluded from a chip’s instruction set. For instance, he tells us the ARM processor used [...]

Tags:  processor instruction division hardware-division arm-processor division-operations microcontrollers  

[Nicholas] wanted to add some flair to his RC car. In addition to the headlights that you see above, there’s brake lights, and a horn that plays “Dixie” like the General Lee in the Dukes of Hazard. All of this is triggered by the wireless controller, but he figured out a way to monitor the [...]

Tags:  radio sound flair nicholas general-lee dixie radio-controlled-vehicles s-brake dukes-of-hazard microcontrollers  

We find it interesting that PIC and AVR programming is very common in hobby electronics but ARM doesn’t have nearly the same foothold. This is partly because there’s a knowledge barrier involved with making the transition (the other part is probably the lack of DIP packaged chips). But if you’ve worked with 8-bit microcontrollers you [...]

Tags:  primer ARM Programming hobby-electronics usart foothold microcontrollers  

[Arshad Pathan] let us know about his latest project, a modular code lock that can be adapted to many different situations. The user interface is made up of a character LCD screen and a 3×4 keypad. For this example [Arshad] is using a stepper motor as the locking mechanism. When the board is first powered [...]

Tags:  arshad lock full featured-security character-lcd stepper-motor microcontrollers  

Here’s an interesting article about reading data from shift registers using less than three pins. 74HC165 shift registers are a popular choice for adding inputs to a microcontroller. They have a parallel input register which can be read using the latch, then shifted into a microcontroller via the data and clock pins. For those counting, [...]

Tags:  shift pin microcontroller clock-pins shift-registers parallel-input microcontrollers  

So you’re getting better at programming microcontrollers and now you want to do several things at once? You know better than that, microcontrollers are only capable of processing one thing at a time. But if you’re clever with your coding you can achieve something that behaves as if several things are going on at once. [...]

Tags:  microcontroller bit field programming-microcontrollers field-structures c-bit microcontrollers  

[Andrew] is trying to buckle down and hammer out his PhD project but was surprised by the sorry state of the configuration options for his FPGA/ARM dev board. Using JTAG was painfully slow, so he studied the datasheet to see if there was another way. It turns out the Xilinx FPGA he’s using does have [...]

Tags:  fpga serial config andrew xilinx-fpga phd-project sorry-state microcontrollers  

If you want people to really be impressed by your projects it’s often better not to have a fully finished look. In this case, we think hooking the stripboard version of FIGnition up to your TV will raise a lot more eyebrows than the PCB version will. [Julian] put together a guide to building the computer on [...]

Tags:  version fignition stripboard julian flint pcb-version simple-computer eyebrows microcontrollers  

So we saw this tip come in and thought–oh, another POV device. We watched the video (embedded after the break), took a sip of coffee, then almost sprayed the beverage all over the computer when we realized that this uses a diy sensor to synchronize the POV image. [Ch00f] came up with the idea for [...]

Tags:  accelerometer image diy pov bauble sip microcontrollers  

You might already have the hardware on hand to easily interface I2C and SPI devices with Python scripts on your computer. The board seen above is an FT-2232 breakout board. These chips are often used to facilitate JTAG programming via USB, but they have other features that might be useful to you as well. The [...]

Tags:  board python spi python-scripts bridges chips microcontrollers  

Looks like the Lightweight USB Framework for AVRs (LUFA) has just been ported for ARM microcontrollers. NXP recently released a package for their LPC Cortex M3 family of ARM controllers. You won’t find a reference to LUFA on their nxpUSBlib description page (which we think is kind of sad), but if you grab a copy [...]

Tags:  ARM usb lufa arm-processors microcontrollers cortex microcontrollers  

[Quinn Dunki] is looking to augment the tools she has available at her electronics bench and built the HEX Out as a mock-logic sniffer. The device reads 8 or 16-bit inputs, showing the current state of those connections on a 7-segment display. This requires that you’re comfortable reading Hex codes, but if you’re not it’s [...]

Tags:  quinn hex bus quinn-dunki hex-codes data-bus microcontrollers  

[Blaise Jarrett] has been grinding away to get the WebSocket protocol to play nicely with PIC microcontrollers. Here he’s using the PIC 18F4620 along with a Roving Networks RN-XV WiFi module to get the device on the network. He had started with a smaller processor but ran into some RAM restrictions so keep that in [...]

Tags:  websocket pic protocol blaise-jarrett pic-microcontrollers roving-networks blaise microcontrollers  

We’ve all seen them – those fireplace DVDs that seem to pop up on grocery store endcaps and get traded in white elephant gift exchanges. If you don’t happen to have a fireplace in your home they might make a reasonable solution, but [Nick] from the Gadget Gangster thought it would be far better if [...]

Tags:  white-elephant-gift winter-evenings gift-exchanges microcontrollers  

[Will] wrote in to share a useful add-on he designed for the ChipKIT UNO 32, a 12-port temperature sensor board. Constructed for one of his customers, the shield accepts any 2-wire 10k thermistor sensors, outputting the readings to a small LCD screen. The screen is supported by some code put together by his associate [crenn], [...]

Tags:  temperature shield chipkit thermistor-sensors sensor-board temperature-sensor microcontrollers  

Small and more powerful… what more can you want? This is the newest BeagleBoard offering, called the BeagleBone. It’s packed with some pretty intriguing features, but let’s take a tour of the hardware first. Like its predecessors, the BeagleBone sports an ARM processor. This time around it’s a TI AM3358 ARM Cortex-A8. It will ship with [...]

Tags:  beaglebone friend ARM intriguing-features beagleboard arm-processor microcontrollers  

The advent of integrated USB peripherals in microprocessors (PIC, AVR, etc.) has certainly taken a lot of the work out of developing USB devices, not to mention reducing the silicon parts in these designs. But do you know what you’re doing when it comes to controlling them with user-friendly applications? [Simon Inns] is lending a [...]

Tags:  usb advent pc-side simon-inns usb-peripherals usb-devices microprocessors microcontrollers  

[Chris] just posted his latest tutorial which shows you how to read position data from a resistive touchscreen. These devices are fairly simple, and since they’re used in a lot of consumer electronics you can pick one up for a few bucks. This looks like it is overstock for an old Palm device. The interface [...]

Tags:  tutorial reading position chris resistive-touchscreens resistive-touchscreen palm-device microcontrollers  

If you have ever traveled around Europe, you are likely familiar with parking discs. Required in many countries that would rather not deal with parking meters, these devices are placed in the front of a car’s window, and indicate when the vehicle was parked. When parking enforcement officers come through the area, it makes quick [...]

Tags:  disc hacked parking parking-enforcement-officers parking-meters europe microcontrollers  

[Bertho] really enjoyed pawing through the pile of projects submitted to the 7400 logic contest. But one thing kept hitting him with the vast majority of the entries: decoupling capacitors were missing from the circuits. If you’ve worked with microcontrollers or digital logic chips you probably know that you’re supposed to add a small capacitor [...]

Tags:  logic pile bertho decoupling-capacitors logic-chips digital-logic microcontrollers  

This project shows you one possible way to use HTML5 to fully integrate sensor data from a microcontroller into our technological lives. Now, when we saw this tip come through our inbox we thought it would be an interesting example to learn from but we weren’t ready for how truly cool the setup is. Take [...]

Tags:  html wicked sensor sensor-data microcontroller inbox microcontrollers  

[Arko] was compelled to purchase an iclicker to use in some of his college courses. It’s similar in size to a television remote control except it only has six buttons and it communicates via radio frequency instead of infrared light. The idea is that classrooms have a base station that the instructor uses, and he [...]

Tags:  iclicker Hardware snooping television-remote-control arko infrared-light microcontrollers  

[Joel] dug up this hack that he pulled off over ten years ago. It’s inspired by the Nintendo PowerGlove, and uses flex sensors to react to movements of your fingers. The interesting thing is, he built these optical flex sensors himself. He likes to say that this is a ghetto fiber-optic setup. The inlaid diagram [...]

Tags:  powerglove nintendo building joel flex-sensors ghetto microcontrollers  

[Marcus Gritsch] wanted to do his retro gaming using retro hardware… or at least using some retro hardware. Although he was playing his Commodore 64 games in an emulator, he figured that using an original controller would boost the nostalgia quite a bit. This is a vintage Competition Pro joystick that has buttons and a [...]

Tags:  retro Hardware joystick marcus-gritsch commodore-64-games vintage-competition competition-pro-joystick microcontrollers  

[Rajendra] found an easy way to make a USB temperature logger. He already had a USB to UART adapter that takes care of the heavy lifting. On one end it’s got the USB plug, on the other a set of pins provide a ground connection, 3.3V and 5V feed, as well as RX/TX lines. To [...]

Tags:  temperature logger usb temperature-logger usb-plug heavy-lifting microcontrollers  

[Larsim] worked out the timing necessary to read button and joystick data from an N64 controller using an ATtiny85 microcontroller. The project was spawned when he found this pair of controllers in the dumpster. We often intercept great stuff bound for the landfill, especially on Hippie Christmas when all the student switch apartments at the [...]

Tags:  controller attiny input n64-controller dumpster great-stuff microcontrollers  

If you’re gaming on the road, or just don’t have a die with the right number of sides on hand, an electronic polyhedral die will be quite handy. [Marcus] built this using a printed circuit board of his own design, and we think an electronically simple project like this is a great way to get [...]

Tags:  die gaming electronic marcus printed-circuit-board electronic-die polyhedral microcontrollers  

Ultrasonic rangfinders are a cheap and easy way to gather obstacle avoidance data. When added to a servo motor they form something of a scanning radar for near-proximity objects. In this implementation, [Rui Cabral] is driving the servo, and collecting data from the sensor using a PIC 18F4520. The servo rotates 180 degreees, taking sensor [...]

Tags:  radar servo ultrasonic ultrasonic-rangefinder obstacle-avoidance servo-motor microcontrollers  

Tinywrench is [Tanjent's] take on a motor controller board. It aims to replicate all of the functions that a standalone motor controller chip offers at as low a cost as possible. Early results are in. It works, and as seen can be assembled for about $8. The top of the device offers a terminal block [...]

Tags:  controller tinywrench motor motor-controller-board controller-chip terminal-block microcontrollers  

[Fernando] sent in a tangential project update that uses an ATtiny45 to play Pong on his television. Last time we looked in on his work he had just finished getting the eight-pin chip to display a big number on the TV via the VGA port. This expands on the idea while he continues to wait [...]

Tags:  pin-chip vga-port pong microcontrollers  

[Jamie] built his own USB connected arcade controller. We’ve been seeing a lot of these lately, and they usually involve soldering buttons to a keyboard PCB. But [Jamie] decided to go a different route and use his own microcontroller. This method always gets a bit hairy when it comes to deciding how to connect it [...]

Tags:  arcade controller usb jamie arcade-controller microcontroller pcb microcontrollers  

A few months back, [Phil] was looking to get into PIC development, but he couldn’t seem to find a simple development board for the PIC16F883 microcontroller he wanted to use. Since no retail offering had exactly what he was looking for, he decided to put together a dev board of his own. He spent a [...]

Tags:  pic-development dev-board diy microcontrollers  

This game storage box will also keep score for you. [Marcus] built it for playing the card game Munkin, but some clever programming could adapt it for most needs. The hardware is built around an ATtiny2313 to do the thinking, and a MAX7219 to drive the 7-segment displays. Each player has their own two-digit score [...]

Tags:  storage game box marcus max7219 clever-programming storage-box microcontrollers  

[Quinn] over at Blondihacks has been working with AVR microcontrollers a lot recently, and wanted a quick way to program the ATtiny13a (her current AVR of choice) while the chip is still seated in a breadboard. To speed up code revision and testing, she built a small programming header that she calls the Bread Head. [...]

Tags:  head avr bread bread-head avr-microcontrollers code-revision microcontrollers  

For less than $100 you can buy a little tracking module that will upload your location to a satellite. But you’ll only get latitude and longitude information. [Natrium42] spent some time reverse engineering the hardware, and the communications protocol, to allow custom data to be transferred using a SPOT module. The flat fee for the [...]

Tags:  spot information satellite latitude-and-longitude communications-protocol satellite-tracker microcontrollers  

Here’s an open source RFID cloner design that is about the same size as a standard RFID key card. It doesn’t need a battery to capture key codes, just the magnetic field generated by an RFID reader. You can see the functionality demonstrated in the video after the break. By holding the bottom button as [...]

Tags:  passive tag rfid bottom-button rfid-reader rfid-tag microcontrollers  

UPDATE: As several readers have already noted, these things sold out very quickly – in less than 15 minutes!  Big thanks to Basic Micro! If you have been considering the purchase of a Basic ATOM Nano product, but you weren’t quite ready to lay down the cash for a dev board and Nano microcontroller, boy [...]

Tags:  atom micro basic nano nano-giveaway dev-board 15-minutes microcontrollers  

[Mike] has been filling up a rather intense wiki entry outlining how to run uClinux on a DE0-nano FPGA board. This is an inexpensive dev board that will run you somewhere between $80 and $100. Right off the bat he goes into a hefty list of the reasons that this is a foolish activity. To name [...]

Tags:  fpga board nano mike fpga-board linux-kernel dev-board microcontrollers  

[Mike Shegedin] makes full use of an 8-pin microcontroller with this ATtiny13-based dice project. With a maximum of six I/O pins (that includes using the reset pin as I/O) he needed a couple of tricks in order to drive 14 LEDs and use a momentary push button for user input. We’re certainly familiar with the [...]

Tags:  use hacks attiny mike-shegedin pin-microcontroller reset-pin leds microcontrollers  

[Brad] was asked by his Sister to design a motion-based alarm that would help her catch her son sneaking out of the house at night. Obviously this didn’t need to be a long-term installation so he decided to throw something together that is only active at night and can be battery-powered. What he came up [...]

Tags:  motion night alarm brad microcontrollers  

The team at LeafLabs was looking for something cool to do with their new ARM development board. [AJ] asked if anyone had ever played around with Python, so [Dave] cooked up an implementation of PyMite and put it on a Maple board. While the writeup is only about blinking a LED with a microcontroller, they’re [...]

Tags:  board python microcontroller dave writeup microcontrollers  

An inductor and 8-pin microcontroller are all that make up this barebones RFID tag. You might have done a double-take when first seeing the image above. After all, there’s nothing hooked up to the power and ground pins on the chip. As [Ramero Pareja] explains in his post, the power is actually supplied via the [...]

Tags:  power tag rfid pin-microcontroller ground-pins rfid-tag microcontrollers  

Servo8bit is a library for AVR microcontrollers that allows you to drive servo motors without the need for a 16-bit timer. Obviously, this is quite useful for smaller chips that only have 8-bit timers and it is specifically targeted at the ATtiny45 and ATtiny85 microcontrollers. The library offers 256 steps of resolution, and can drive up to [...]

Tags:  library servo attiny servo-motors microcontrollers hacks microcontrollers  

Okay, you’ve got a six-pin microcontroller with 1k of program memory, 32 bytes of SRAM, and it can’t be programmed using an In-System-Programmer. Do you think you can use it to develop a game? [Wrtlprnft] managed to build a Simon Says game based on the diminutive device that has four buttons and four LEDs. Judging [...]

Tags:  game hacks attiny simon-says pin-microcontroller simon-says-game system-programmer microcontrollers  

[Parker Dillmann] is nearing the end of the prototyping process for his Propeller development board. He wanted a tool that let him work on projects without the need for a bunch of equipment, while still maintaining the ability to extend the hardware when necessary. His last dev board used a large piece of protoboard to host [...]

Tags:  board propeller development parker-dillmann protoboard dev-board microcontrollers  

[TZ] has been using ATtiny microcontrollers to read and pass along data from his Harley Davidson motorcycle. The image you see above is using an ATtiny 4313 to read data from the J1850 bus. The J1850 protocol is an older standard which may not be available in newer vehicles. But if your vehicle has it, [...]

Tags:  motorcycle bus attiny harley-davidson j1850-protocol j1850-bus harley-davidson-motorcycle microcontrollers  

[Alan Parekh] and his daughter [Alexis] just premiered their entry in the Avnet Dog Days of Summer contest. It’s a game called Karate Chop that is basically an electronic Simon Says. The video after the break shows a demonstration of the device. When switched on it’ll play a little tune and start cycling the LEDs [...]

Tags:  daughter karate chop alan-parekh summer simon simon-says karate-chop daughter-alexis summer-contest microcontrollers  

A couple of weeks ago we put up a post titled Addressing Microchip’s open source problem where we talked about some of their shortcomings as far as open source code goes, specifically the TCP/IP stack and the USB stack. The comments were predictably fairly negative. The interesting part here is that Microchip actually listened. If [...]

Tags:  tcp microchip usb open-source-code usb-stack ip-stacks microcontrollers  

[Gadre] built his own ATtiny project without using any batteries. It’s an electronic Dice (or die if you’re being critical) which uses induction to charge a storage capacitor to act as the power source. The voltage generator is made from a tube of Perspex which houses a set of rare-earth magnets. At the enter of [...]

Tags:  gadre hacks attiny rare-earth-magnets storage-capacitor electronic-dice microcontrollers  

Yup. We have all been there. You throw together a really elaborate Arduino project that only really needs a couple pins, far fewer than the Arduino’s native microcontrollers have to offer. Well fear not, [Thatcher] has solved just this problem by adding some ATTtiny cores to the Arduino IDE. His blog details the process from [...]

Tags:  arduino project attiny thatcher microcontrollers cores hacks  

[Clifford Wolf] wrote in to let us know about a project he recently completed called EmbedVM. It’s a virtual machine for AVR microcontrollers. The package has a relatively small overhead, taking up about 3kB of program memory. The VM can execute 74,000 instructions per second, and runs asynchronously from the microcontroller. As [Clifford] demonstrates in [...]

Tags:  avr machine virtual clifford clifford-wolf avr-microcontrollers program-memory microcontrollers  

[Fernando] is working on creating a game at home, with live scoring displayed on a large LCD TV. He’s keeping mum as to what the game entails, but he was more than happy to spill the details on how he planned to use the television as a wireless scoreboard. The writeup is the first part [...]

Tags:  video game vga fernando video-output writeup lcd-tv microcontrollers  

[Youchun Zhang] and [Annie (Wei) Dai] found a way to differentiate vowel sounds using an ATmega644 as their final project for a microcontroller design class. Voice recognition is not out of the ordinary, but most of the time it uses a computer, smart phone, or specially designed hardware. This implementation uses an ATmega644, a microphone [...]

Tags:  vowel recognition atmega dai annie vowel-recognition vowel-sounds microcontroller-design microcontrollers  

If you’ve got an ARM development board gathering dust in the corner of your shop, perhaps you could repurpose it as an oscilloscope. [Arend-Paul Spijkerman] was able to use an mbed and LPCXpresso as the hardware end of an oscilloscope. He didn’t use a standalone screen as a display, instead opting to push the scope [...]

Tags:  ARM oscilloscope development paul-spijkerman gathering-dust oscilloscopes microcontrollers  

We’ve got to admit, we’re pretty much cheapskates when it comes to buying electronic bits online. Whether its microcontrollers or PCBs, we hate to part with money. So, we were pretty excited to hear that Texas Instruments is dishing out deals two weeks at a time to hackers, makers, and the like. Several of you [...]

Tags:  penny web site penny-pincher cheapskates microcontrollers news  

[Rajendra Bhatt] wrote in to share the latest in a series of PIC tutorials, which covers the microcontroller’s Sleep mode – a very useful tool for limiting current consumption in battery-powered applications. He discusses how to put the PIC in sleep mode, as well as some common mistakes to watch out for, such as accidentally [...]

Tags:  mode pic stretch pic-tutorials sleep-mode very-useful-tool microcontrollers  

[Victor's] girlfriend works at a museum and enlisted his expertise in designing an interactive detective game for kids visiting the museum. The vision was for the kids to discover phone numbers that they could call for clues. Originally he planned to display the clues on a character LCD, but obviously it’s much neater to hear [...]

Tags:  museum wonder sister victor detective-game game-for-kids interactive-museum microcontrollers  

Microsoft has thrown its hat into the open source hardware hobby market. Their offering is called the Gadgeteer. We’d love to tell you all about it, but the big M didn’t make it very easy to find out about the device and it’s addons. When we set out to find what processor is running on [...]

Tags:  microsoft arduino attempt open-source-hardware hobby-market gadgeteer microcontrollers