Category Archives: AVR

PIR controlled LED matrix display

Sometimes it’s handy to have a message display when persons enter a specific area. Having the message appear only when someone approaches brings more attention it, and can be useful for holiday displays, directions or warnings. In this project by Jer from Volts and Bytes, an Atmega8 is used to activate a Sure Electronics 0832 […]

Atmel AVR Xplained dev boards

Atmel has announced their AVR Xplained series of dev boards. Atmel AVR Xplained is a series small-sized and easy-to-use evaluation kits for 8- and 32-bit AVR microcontrollers. It consists of a series of low cost MCU boards for evaluation and demonstration of feature and capabilities of different AVR familie. Example projects and code drivers are […]

QTouch library for Atmel MCUs

The Atmel QTouch Library is a royalty-free software library (GCC and IAR™) for developing touch applications on standard Atmel AT91SAM and AVR microcontrollers. Developers can use it to integrate touch-sensing capability into their applications by linking the library into firmware. The library can be used to develop single-chip solutions for many control applications or to […]

Protostack 28 pin AVR development board v1.6

Daniel writes: Back in July last year we released version 1.5 of our28 Pin AVR board. Since then we’ve had a lot of feedback and have just released version 1.6, which has 4 improvements over version 1.5. The size of the IDC/Dual row area has been increased from 2×8 to 2×9 holes. We added square […]

Arduino-Lite: lightweight AVR library

The RoboPeak Project has developed a lightweight AVR library known as Arduino-Lite. The code is a lightweight high-performance firmware library for AVR MCUs developed based on the original Arduino project. In addition to the usual Atmega8, 168, 328 and 1280, it also supports the Attiny2313, Attiny26, Atmega48 and Atmega88. Its developers claim that compared to […]

Keyglove Arduino/AVR-powered keyboard substitute

Here’s a keyboard-glove prototype in development by Jeff Rowberg. The Keyglove is a glove-based USB input device that provides full keyboard control, designed for wearable and mobile computing and to assist the disabled. According to Jeff: The Keyglove is a portable Arduino/AVR-powered glove that uses touch combinations (for keys) and an accelerometer (for the mouse) […]

ExpEYES: new open source learning initiative

ExpEYES is an open source hardware/software learning initiative from the PHOENIX project of Inter-University Accelerator Centre, New Delhi, India. It is a framework for developing science experiments, demonstrations and projects and learning science and engineering by exploration. The expEYES hardware, based on an Atmega32 clocked at 8 MHz and interfaced to the PC via an […]

Short notice: AVR Studio 5 webinar

Atmel is presenting a free webinar on March 17, 2011 on AVR Studio 5. This one hour presentation will begin at 8:00 AM PDT and will cover the Visual Assist Solution Explorer project manager, the AVR Software Framework for AVR XMEGA and AVR UC3 and more including many example projects. You can download your copy […]

Atmel announces new CryptoAuthentication chip

Atmel today announced the release of the ATSHA204 the first turnkey, optimized authentication device to include a 4.5Kbit EEPROM and a hardware SHA-256 accelerator. Fully tested ASF software libraries are available for Atmel AVR® and ARM®-based microcontrollers and are integrated within the new AVR Studio® 5. Contemplated uses include industrial, consumer, energy metering, home automation, […]

Atmel releases AVR Studio 5 beta

Atmel has released the beta version of their Atmel® AVR Studio® 5, the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for developing and debugging embedded Atmel AVR® applications. Version 5 provides one development environment for all 8-bit and 32-bit AVR microcontrollers. Features include an integrated C compiler, new project wizard, and an improved editor displaying code suggestions, shortcuts […]

Short notice: Free Atmel Webinar

Atmel is offering a free webinar on Designing with Atmel 6-pin tinyAVR Flash microcontrollers TODAY (February 24, 2011) at 8:00 AM PT. The purpose is to present an advanced feature overview of the Atmel tinyAVR 6-pin family of Atmel picoPower® devices, highlighting the key benefits and design techniques for reducing your system size requirements and […]

Atmega644 rock paper scissors game

Students Ling-Wei Lee and Kevin Tang at Cornell University developed a version of the rock paper scissors game using an Atmega644, CMOS camera module and a 2×16 LCD. Their project requires the human player to wear a glove that has black tape on each finger. Upon a signal from the LCD, the player plays their […]

Penguin Atmega32 game system

vladutz2000 has published plans for an overclocked Atmega32 based 8-bit game system. Dubbed the Penguin, this project runs the chip at 27 MHz instead of the usual 16 MHz and uses a 128×64 monochrome KS0108 based display along with a speaker and handful of resistors and pushbuttons. The schematic couldn’t be simpler and it, along […]

Capacity tester for rechargeable batteries

BrianH has posted a useful Instructables project that tests the capacity of rechargeable NiMh and NiCd batteries. The circuit is based on an Atmega168, and functions by draining the AA batteries (from 1 to 3 batteries) then computes and reports the capacity in mAh. It uses a Nokia 5510 graphic LCD to report battery condition […]