KS0108-based Graphic LCD overview

Raj shows how to interface GLCDs with KS0108 controllers to PIC uCs. He covers the protocol used, LCD memory mapping, and how to write up the firmware using microC compiler.

The use of a graphical LCD (GLCD) drastically changes the look of your project. It provides more freedom for presenting data than the HD44870 based character LCDs. Today we will see how to interface a KS0108 (name of the display controller chip) based GLCD to a PIC microcontroller. This experimental tutorial is divided into two parts. In the first part, we will see how to write a firmware for the PIC microcontroller to initialize the GLCD and send data to plot points and lines on the screen. The second part will focus more on exploring the built-in GLCD Library of mikroC Pro for PIC compiler to display more complex texts and objects.

Em:Blocks PIC24 and PIC32 plugin for Code::Blocks IDE


Code::Blocks is an open source IDE designed around a plugin framework to make it easy for users to extend/improve it without having to touch one line of Code::Blocks’ source code. Em::Blocks is one such plugin which adds PIC24 and PIC32 development functionality to the Code::Blocks IDE.

Jim via the contact form.

Test Nixie tubes with a flip of a switch

This Nixie tube tester has an 11 position switch to change the displayed digits.

A simple device for testing and/or healing Nixie tubes of IN-18 type. An 11-pole switch is connected in series with a 50 KΩ pot (+ 470 Ω resistor for safety), powering from an 180V DC source. Normal operation at 2 mA is shown. For healing tubes, one can double the current (4 mA), baking the tube for several hours in order to remove cathode poisoning. Enjoy !

Via Electronics-Lab.

Small 10 mW thermogenerators available retail

This device is a tiny SMD thermogenerator that harvests heat energy to generate up to 10 milliwatts of power. Dev boards are available at Mouser for a mere $700 retail.

In case of Micropelt devices, one side is placed near the heat source and the other side has a fixed heat-sink on top of it.

The top part, as seen in the picture above, is soldered “upside-down” through a hole in a PCB. This is the hot end.

The bottom part, as seen here, is the cool end. It sits over the PCB and requires a heat-sink. Here’s what it looks like implemented.

Via Electronics-Lab.

Logic Sniffer client: New signal display component

Jawi uploaded a preview of the new signal display component for the Logic Sniffer application. OLS is a java client designed to run on multiple platforms including Windows, Linux, and Mac.

You can download this mock from ols.lxtreme.nl, which should run on Windows, Linux and OSX (only the latter is heavily tested ;)).

A list of changes/improvements made so far:

  • the need for speed; the drawing routines are optimized in such extent that the component can handle large data sets quite easily (up to 10M samples tested);
  • look and feel; I got assistance from Marius in the design of the look and feel. He helped me greatly in improving the default look and provided two new ways of showing annotations (more on this later);
  • keyboard navigation; the zooming can be controlled from the keyboard now (+/=, -/_, 0 and 1). Additional navigation features can be added easily (moving left/right with cursor keys and such);
  • cursors can be added from the timeline as well as the signal view; right clicking a cursor now provides a real context-sensitive popup menu;
  • cursors can now be placed in ‘snapped’ to a signal edge.
  • CTRL/CMD + mouse click allows you to easily jump to a future signal edge
  • renaming of channel labels can be done by right clicking it;
  • channels can be reordered by drag-and-drop. Channels can also be moved to another channel group with this;
  • channels can be “disabled”, meaning that they are drawn as if they were continuously low;
  • cursor, measurement and acquisition information is now presented in separate windows that can be docked/undocked/moved at will.

Via the forum.

Logic Sniffer: Vote for signal display annotation style

Jawi is developing a new version of the Logic Sniffer client app. He’s currently deciding on which style to use for annotation. Help him out by casting your vote in the forum.

The OLS client supports the annotating of data to present additional information along with the signal data. For example, many of the decoding tools use annotations to represent the decoded data. For the new signal display component, I’d like to implement a new style of annotation rendering that is both useable regarding its presentation of data, as well looks good.

I’d like to invite as many people as possible to cast their vote on which annotation style rendering they prefer. Screenshots are added below to give you an idea on how the current styles look.

Via the forum.

Breakout board for 18pin PIC16F microcontrollers

Raj made a breakout board for 18pin PIC16F microcontrollers.

There are two tact switches on the board: one for reset and other for user input. Similarly, there are two LEDs: one for power-on indicator and the other for user output. The input tact switch and the output LED can be connected to RB0 and RB1 pins respectively through a 2-pin dip switch. The switch and the LED are useful for a quick test of the board. The microcontroller clock is derived using an external ceramic resonator having 3 pins with built-in load capacitors. PORTA (RA0-RA4) and PORTB (RB0-RB7) pins of the microcontroller are accessible for experimenting through header pins (male, female, or right-angled). A 5-pin header is also available for ICSP programming through a PICkit2 or PICkit3.

More information, as well as gerber files are provided on his site.

Via the forum.

Light programming using Manchester encoding

Mike has been working on a light programmer that uses Manchester encoding. A light programer uses a computer monitor to send data to microcontroller project. We blogged about similar systems earlier.

I wrote a JavaScript application that you can load into your web browser. It takes a message, converts it to Manchester Encoded binary and flashes the result in white and black as the webpage’s background.

This is sensed by a photoresistor and decoded by an ATmega168 using the analog comparator. So far I find it quite unreliable, with lost sync about 60-70% of the time. I guess I got lucky in this video because I got two messages transmitted successfully in a row!

Manchester coding is a type of transmission protocol where level transitions are used to specify the signal bits. Transition from low to high level is read as a logical “1” while the vice-versa is true for logical “0”. The Manchester code is self-clocking, which means that the sender and receiver must use the same timings and some sort synchronization must be employed.

Check out the video after the break. Continue reading “Light programming using Manchester encoding”

Christmas LED card built and shared

Drew picked up our old blinking Xmas card project. He got the PCBs just in time to complete the project before Xmas.

I finally assembled a couple and am off to give them to my parents and grandparents at Christmas Eve

We’re glad our project brought some joy during the festivities. This project is no longer available, but we’ve already got a new holiday project planned for next year.

Via comments.

Spy Video Trakr hacks


Krash writes to update us on his series of Spy Video Trakr hacks on Instructables. The short video above demonstrates his hack which adds motor control to raise and lower the camera.

We also note the laser and missile launcher mod which grafts a USB-powered foam missile launcher, with pan and tilt, and even a targeting laser onto the Trakr. The launcher is controlled over GPIO lines and powered over the Trakr’s internal USB port.

The Spy Video Trakr is a programmable, remote-controlled vehicle that digitally transmits color video, audio and data and enables users to create, download and share custom applications. It was released by Wild Planet in October, 2010. While no longer marketed by Wild Planet, it can still be found from numerous online retailers for about $80.

Via the contact form.

Connecting Arduino to Mathematica on Mac OS X


Mathematica is a comprehensive computational platform that purports to automate workflow involving computing results, “from building a hedge fund trading website or publishing interactive engineering textbooks to developing embedded image recognition algorithms or teaching calculus.” (It’s not open source, but a hobbyist license is available.)

William J. Turkel teaches a course on interactive exhibit design and wanted to use Mathematica in conjunction with physical computing with Mac OS X. He put together this short guide for anyone using Mathematica on the Mac and wants to integrate Arduino input. The result is similar to the integration of Arduino and Processing, and is accomplished through the addition of the SerialIO package to Mathematica.

Logic circuits and computer memory are printed together on a sheet of plastic

Thinfilm Electronics and PARC developed a technology for printing semiconductors onto a plastic film.

Last month, a small Norwegian company called Thinfilm Electronics and PARC, the storied Silicon Valley research lab, jointly showed off a technological first—a plastic film that combined both printed transistors and printed digital memory.

Such flexible electronics could be an important component of future products, such as food packaging that senses and record temperatures, shock-sensing helmets, as well as smart toys. But the story of how PARC’s technology—the printed transistors—wound up paired with memory technology from an obscure Norwegian company also provides a window onto a 10-year struggle by Xerox to transform the way it commercializes R&D ideas.

Via Adafruit

USB Infrared Toy firmware v22 final released

USB Infrared Toy firmware v22 final is now available for download. This includes bug fixes for both IR Toy hardware versions. This is the most stable IR Toy firmware yet.

The open source USB stack is performing well. After a little more testing on the IR Toy and Bus Pirate v4, we’ll release other USB firmwares to the new stack too. JTR has already ported the LCD backpack and Logic Sniffer.

Changelog, complete history here:

  • Fixed 48byte transmit bug, thanks JTR!
  • Fixed bug when infrared sample mode settings were used (eg custom PWM frequency)

You can get IR Toy v2 for $22.05, including world wide shipping.

openHiFi open source music player update

Brian made a video of the latest updates to his openHiFi project. openHifi is an open source music player based on the Procyon Cortex M3 development board.

The most recent update reads Vorbis comments from the file metadata. Now it loads and assembles a list of all the song files on a connected storage device.

Via the forum.

Alphanumeric “bubble-type” DL1414 LED I2C display driver

Paul made built an I2C driver for a 16-digit alphanumeric “bubble-type” display. He used four 4-digit DL1414 displays connected to a PCF8575 16bit I2C port expander and a 74138 logic IC. He was nice enough to provide the source files for his project.

Via the forum.

Arhi’s transitor tester built into a case

Arhi built a transistor tester, a tool that recognizes and measures most common semiconductors. We’ve been following this project closely for the past week or so.

After building a perf-board version, he made this version to put in a case. Check out the video of it in operation above.

Via the forum.

Instek GW GFG-8016G signal generator review

Sqkybeaver bought an Instek GW GFG-8016G signal generator for his birthday.  It’s capable of creating sine, square, and triangle signals from 0.2 Hz -2 MHz. There’s also a 6 digit counter available with a bandwidth of up to 10 MHz.

As soon as it was in his possession Sqkybeaver opened it up an posted some pictures of the insides. Check them out below.

Continue reading “Instek GW GFG-8016G signal generator review”

Save to a microSD cards with simple serial protocol

This is a UART driven microSD module that supports cards with up to 2 GB of storage. It stores data using the FAT16 file system, so any computer can read and write files to the cards too. It’s controlled with simple serial commands from a microcontroller.

Most micro-controllers have small and limited on-chip memory. For those applications that require large volumes of data, the uSD-G1 with the GOLDELOX-DOS chip is a simple solution in a form of a tiny ‘drop-in- module’. A simple serial interface is all that is required to take away the burden of low level design that would otherwise be required for the host controller. The micro-DRIVE module utilises common microSD memory cards of up to 2GB of capacity as its medium. A handful of straightforward commands provide direct access to the onboard memory card or storing and retrieving any size or type of data. Access to the card can be at (FAT based)

One thing we like about this module is that it can function with a 5 volt interface.

Via Electronics-Lab.

ALSE free IP cores for non-commercial CPLD/FPGA dev


Advanced Logic Synthesis for Electronics (ALSE) is a Paris based company providing product development, IP consulting and training courses involving HDL, ASIC and FGPA devices. They are making available a series of IP cores free for personal, non-commercial use. They state:

For non-commercial projects only, we have taken the decision to offer some functions for free, provided that you respect the disclaimers and restrictions appearing in the IPs. In particular, you cannot remove the headers or use these IPs in commercial or research projects without the prior written authorization from ALSE.

You can access these cores and more info from the ALSE Free Intellectual Properties page. The cores offered include a 2-line LCD controller, quadrature encoder, keyboard encoder, the obligatory LED blinker and more.

We noticed an interesting download titled RS232 basics for FPGA coders, which explains the protocol basics in regard to coding up a UART. After reading this document, move onto ALSE’s UART IP doc, explaining the process of coding a simple UART in greater detail. These are excellent resources for beginning VHDL coders to examine.