Stefano has completed work on a holiday project known as the DIY Santa Claus Singer with Flyport. It is built around an animated Santa Claus decoration with the control switch bypassed with an NPN transistor. The switch is controlled over the internet via the Arduino/ethernet shield combo which responds to Twitter messages. Part one of […]
Category Archives: project logs
AVR-based PIC24FJ programmer uploads Bus Pirate firmware
Fezoj made an AVR-based PIC24FJ programmer to upload the firmware on his homemade Bus Pirate. The circuit consist of an ATmega8, a MAX232 serial port IC, and a few passives. He succeeded in programing his Bus Pirate and has released his source files on github. Via the forum. Get your own handy Bus Pirate for […]
Portable software defined transceiver: Power supply
Jason has been working on a portable software defined transceiver design for the past year. Every day this week he’ll discuss a different part of the hardware in a series of guest posts. You can chat with the designer in the forum. Today’s post is about the power supply: It’s not as exciting (to me) […]
Santa’s ATtiny13 LED hat
Mark mounted ATtiny13 controlled Christmas LEDs into a santa cap: Here is the post demonstrating the circuit nicely mounted in an Altoids tin, powering lights I’ve put inside my Santa hat. Via comments.
ATmega fuse recovery board
Mick built the ATmega fusebit doctor. It is a fuse recovery board for the ATmega family of microcontrollers. An ATmega8 uC uses the parallel programing method to reset the fuses for supported uCs. It is very easy to use. Just place your broken uC into a designated socket and press the button. Via the forum.
Portable software defined transceiver: Mixer
Jason has been working on a portable software defined transceiver design for the past year. Every day this week he’ll discuss a different part of the hardware in a series of guest posts. You can chat with the designer in the forum. Today’s post is about the quadrature sampling detector. Here’s the design for the […]
nedoCPU-32 PIC32 breakout build and review
Schazamp received a nedoCPU-32 32bit PIC breakout board from Shaos. He built stuffed it and got a simple “blink LED” firmware to run on it quickly. This is a nice board, and I’m looking forward to messing around with it. It might be a good starting point for trying to adapt the chip-kit Arduino bootloader […]
Ultra-small vusbtiny AVR programmer
Philip wanted to make the smallest vusbtiny AVR programmer possible. His design incorporates both an edge PCB and a mini-B cable connector for the USB. Vusbtiny is a AVR programer based on the V-USB virtual low-speed USB firmware. V-USB is a software USB engine for AVR devices that don’t have hardware USB serial interface engines. […]
Portable software defined transceiver: VFO
Jason has been working on a portable software defined transceiver design for the past year. Every day this week he’ll discuss a different part of the hardware in a series of guest posts. You can chat with the designer in the forum. Today’s post is about variable-frequency oscillators. The VFO is the heart of any […]
Soldering iron driver v2 build
Fcobcn received some soldering iron driver V2 PCBs from Arhi. He used replacement parts for those components he couldn’t find locally. The version 2 unfortunately only supports thermocouple type soldering pencils. Our recommendation is to use the V2 driver with ether the cheaper Solomon SR-976 pencil, or the more expensive Weller PES51. Support for PTC […]
Custom PSoC3 development board updates
Kartik continues to develop his custom PSoC3 dev-board. In this update he was mainly concerned with adhering to USB guidelines. Another major change is the removal of a crystal oscillator. After checking out some Cypress development boards, Katrik noticed that most PSoC boards use an internal IC clock instead of crystals or oscillators. So he […]
Transistor tester breadboard build
Arhi had some free time so he decided to test out the transistor tester. He built it on a breadboard, and quickly got it running. I was waiting for some app to compile for past few hours so I breadboarded this baby. Works like a charm :D … I had some issues programming atmega8 with […]
DIY Arduino Leonardo clone
Here (machine translation) is a DIY single-layer version of the Arduino Leonardo. The blogger goes into detail on how to build one yourself. Everything is covered from preparing and etching your own DIY board, to fine pitch soldering of the ATmega32u4 IC. Once you have built your board, they show you how to upload a […]
Digital surface level detector
Shawon made a surface level meter that indicates when the surface of an object is not level. He used an SCA610 single-axis accelerometer to take the measurements. A PIC16F684 microcontroller controls the angle indicator LEDs and a buzzer. You can check out the video of his circuit in action below. A bubble or spirit level […]
Tiny USB Li-Po battery charger
This is a tiny, easy to make USB Lithium-Polymer battery charger. It’s based on the MAX1555 charger IC.
USB Analog/digital logger
Arhi started started working on a USB/UART analog and digital logger: It’s a simple USB logger that can log 12 analog and 3 digital channels + data from MAX6675 (thermocouple driver). It sends the data via usb or uart. We think this is a very useful device that has a place on every bench top. […]
Driving Nixie tubes
In the second article about his Nixie tube clock Luca shows how to drive Nixie tubes with a microcontroller. The first article covered the power supply, we covered it here. Nixie tubes are started with a high initial voltage Vigh, around 150-180volts. Once ignited they work at a maintaining voltage Vm, and consume a average […]
Soldering iron driver update
Arhi continues to develop the universal soldering iron driver. This is a rendering of the third generation PCB. The soldering iron driver can use soldering pencils with K-type or PTC type temperature sensors like Solomon, Hakko, and Weller, to name a few… Generation 3 has a reworked analog section. It that now fully supports PTC […]
Homemade Bus Pirate and AVR-based PIC24F programmer
Josef built this homemade version of the Bus Pirate. Unfortunately he didn’t have a programer to upload the firmware, so being a good hacker he designed and built his own. The programer is AVR based and uses a MAX232 IC to interface with the computer. He promised to post the AVR firmware, and the programing […]
Rave Rover
Chris built the Rave Rover, a portable LED matrix dance floor. It consists of a platform that has built in electric motors, speakers, and a computer. The top of the platform has 121 RGB modules that are controlled by the computer over an Arduino. Check out the video of it in action at Dragon*Con 2011