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…
In my last blog post, I showed you the schematic of a I2C data logger I built. Here I will discuss some sample code used for this data logger and how to make it even more flexible.
There is a popular data logger shield out there designed for Arduino using a DS1307 real time clock chip. And that design makes data logging extremely easy if an Arduino board is used.
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.
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,…
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…
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…
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.
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.
This is what I ran into for the first time: I was flashing the chip the other day and after many successful runs I encountered the following infamous avrdude error:
DS89C430 and DS89C450 are two ultra-high-speed 8051-compatible microcontrollers from Maxim Integrated Products. One unique feature of DS89C430/450 microcontroller is that it has a ROM loader mode which can be used to program the microcontroller itself.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been experimenting with BQ3287, a real time clock module from Taxes Instruments. My ultimate goal was to eventually create a full fledged control platform based on this RTC module (more on this…
The Arduino development environment is probably the preferred development platform for the majority of Arduino users. It is lean and relatively easy to use. Quite a few examples are at your finger tip and even for people without much programming…
LM19 is an analog temperature sensor that operates over a while temperature range (-55 to 130 Celsius). It is very easy to interface it with a microcontroller due to is fairly linear voltage output.
ATmega328p does not provide any Digital/Analog conversion channels (although the D/A conversion can be simulated by means of measuring the PWM output). We can easily add up to eight D/A channels using either a LTC1665 (8 bit) or LTC1660 (10…