Wide-band RF Field Strength Meter

Field strength meter is extremely useful when working with RF devices. It can be used to quickly diagnose whether a transmitter circuit is working, and can be used to detect RF signals in the environment.

Read More →

RF Data Link Using Si4021 And Si4311

Among the many commercial ISM band RF transmitter and receiver ICs, I have found that Silicon Labs‘ Si4021 (transmitter IC) and Si4311 (receiver IC) are surprisingly easy to work with. Only a few commonly available external components are needed to…

Read More →

AVR LC Meter With Frequency Measurement

I have been thinking about building an LC meter for a while since I do not have a multimeter that is capable of measuring inductance and while the multimeters I have can measure capacitance, they are not able to give…

Read More →

My New DS1052E Oscilloscope

I used to own an all-transistor, single channel 10 MHz analog oscilloscope. While it was not adequate by nowadays standard, it served me quite well for many years. The scope was later sold and I had been thinking about getting…

Read More →

ZIF Arduino Prototyping Board

The official Arduino Duemilanove board is an excellent tool for prototyping. For most of the users, it is a very solid platform for various MCU experiment circuits given the number of readily-made shields available.

Read More →

A High Current TRIAC Controller Using Arduino

One of the goals in my previous timer project was to achieve the ability to control multiple electronic devices using the precise time signal generated by the RTC chip (bq3287). For electronic devices using up to a couple of amperes,…

Read More →

A Digital Level Using Accelerometer

To measure how flat a surface is, you typically will need a level of some sort. In this article, I will show you a digital level I made with an accelerometer. It is extremely accurate, capable of measuring inclination as…

Read More →

POV And POV Image Encoder

One of my recent projects was to build a POV display device. There are already many microcontroller based POV devices out there, but most of those I have seen use around eight LEDs and have fixed font types. So I…

Read More →

Apache2 Logrotate

Whenever I setup a new web server, I always like the idea of keeping the Apache logs roated on a daily basis. While the procedures for changing the log rotate frequency is pretty straight forward, I have seen a lot…

Read More →

Weekend Server Upgrade

I have finally got around to upgrade my web server. The server I have been using was an old Pentium III about 10 years old. It had been serving my website quite well over the years till recently.

Read More →

An Arduino Compatible Using CP2102

Standard Arduino boards use FTDI’s FT232RL to interface with computer’s USB port. Since FT232R is just a USB to UART converter, it is possible to build an Arduino compatible USB interface using other USB to UART chips.

Read More →

Clock Synchronization Via I2C (TWI)

When I was doing the clock/stop watch project last month, I mentioned that I intended to add I2C (TWI) communication functionality so that I could get time from this clock and use it as timer signal to control other electronics.

Read More →