Colin found cheap 3” touchscreen LCDs on eBay for just $7. He bought a bunch of them and developed a breakout board. This LCD doesn’t have an integrated controller, you need to use a high power microcontroller to drive the LCD and run the touchscreen. Colin used a PIC32 and the pinout, protocol, and firmware […]
Category Archives: project logs
DIY SILtheDIL adapter
Many development modules come with DIL headers on each side of the board. This makes them totally unusable with a breadboard. To remedy this Arakis built an adapter that converts 2X20 dual row headers to a 40 pin single row of headers . It can either be used to directly stick a module into a […]
PIC 16F1507 SSOP20 breakout board
After buying a few PIC16F1507s from Microchip, Dolabra is building a breakout board for their SSOP 20 pin package. Earlier this part was not supported by PICKIT2, and he had no way of programing them. As a stroke of luck Microchip added an updated device file for the PICKIT2 and saved him a lot of […]
DC power supply monitor with GLCD display
Here is a project built to provide a DC power supply with a GLCD interface: This power supply monitor is intended to measure the voltage and current of a DC power supply, and continuously display these values on a 128X64 pixel LED backlit GLCD display. Ezflyr built it for his aircraft ground power supply, but […]
Competition Pro retro joystick USB adapter
Markus decided to reuse an old Commodere 64 Competiton Pro joystick, so he added a USB adapter to it. The retro joystick uses a simple interface over the D-SUB 9 connector, using one connection for each movement direction and one connection per button. He used a PIC24FJ64GB002 microcontroller to translate the native joystick interface to […]
HAKKO soldering pencil driver update
Arhi compares his soldering iron driver with commercially available products. After designing and building a open source soldering station for Solomon or Hakko soldering pencils, he posted a full analysis of his project. While his driver has some overshoot, once it stabilises the temperature has less swing then the original drivers. With some PID tuning even better […]
DIY door lock reminder
Pppd got tired of forgetting to lock his door so he made a door lock reminder. Once you open and close the door the device starts buzzing and doesn’t stop until you lock it. It is battery powered and uses ATtiny13, two reed buttons, and a buzzer – though you’d need to initially know the parts […]
AM sofware radio using Arduino
Markus built a software AM radio transmitter using the Arduino. The audio signal is fed to the ADC input through a decoupling capacitor. A PWM output pin directly drives a capacitor inductor circuit with an antenna. The schematic and firmware are available.
Simple USB DIY Li-ion battery charger circuit
arup shared his USB DIY Li-ion battery charger circuit in the project log forum. The circuit uses both op-amps of an LM358 to control the charging of a single cell lithium ion battery. Charging automatically stops when the battery is full, and it is possible to charge batteries that have gone below the undervoltage limit. Power […]
DIY GLCD clock project
ezflyr posted his GLCD clock PIC project: The project is based around the 75×52.7mm 128×64 Graphic LCD. The time keeping is delegated to a battery-backed Dallas DS-3231 RTC. A PIC 16F876A is used to tie it all together. The PCB was designed to fit nicely behind the display. It is operated via two push buttons, which allow […]
MSP430 LED Matrix Toy
Markus Gritsch posted his MSP430 LED Matrix toy in the project log forum: I just did a quick little project using an MSP430 and two 595 shift registers to drive a small LED matrix display, suitable for beginners. Two push buttons are used as inputs and a buzzer is connected to a timer output to […]
Openrobots intertial measurement unit dev-board
tinito has been working on an open source Intertial Measurement Unit to help with robot telemetry. Eagle files are published at github: The IMU is supposed to be high-end, implementing state-of-the-art data filtering, best low-cost MEMS sensors available and many features to compete with commercial IMUs used in robotics at a fraction of the price… […]
GLCD clock with large graphical LCD
ezflyr posted his GLCD clock with large graphical LCD in the project log forum: I’ve made quite a bit of progress on my GLCD clock project in the last week or so. I’ve now got the time keeping routines, and the GPS ‘sync’ routines working flawlessly. When connected to a GPS receiver, the clock will […]
Debounced breadboard keypad
phirephly posted a debounced breadboard keypad in the project log forum: I’ve been getting tired of having to wire up buttons and paste in debounce code (or wire up debouncers for TTL projects) every time I want any kind of user input. I was browsing around Maxim’s site, when I stumbled upon the MAX6816-6818 series […]
Small AVR matrix toy
Greeeg posted his small AVR matrix toy in the project log forum.
Universal soldering iron driver update
arhi added PID control to the DIY soldering station. This graph shows that the temperature stays solid even on a wet sponge and in a glass of water: As you can see 280sec into the test I pushed the soldering iron on the dump sponge and held it there until 320sec then I let it […]
Final universal soldering iron driver update
arhi posted the final update on his universal soldering pencil driver: This is I think “final” version of this design. Not much to be done here (except change the mcu and then push more functionality to it). It works, the Solomon handle works perfectly (Ktype thermocuple sensor) and the HAKKO (ptc sensor) works satisfactory (I’m […]
PIC-based TV-B-Gone turns off TVs up to 10meters away
exapod built a TV-B-Gone using a PIC 18F2550 microcontroller and a few LEDs. It runs the IR Toy port of Adafruit’s TV B Gone kit firmware.
UPOV keychain update
exapod finished the UPOV persistence of vision keychain. A tilt sensor synchronizes the image for a high-quality POV effect. Project files are available in the forum. Congratulations on your first SMD build! This project made Hack a Day too. Via the project log forum.
UPOV keychain update
exapod posted an update on the UPOV keychain. Via the forum.