Electronics-Lab.com Blog

Scanalogic-2 PRO is a 4 channel Logic Analyzer and Digital Signal Generator priced at 59€. At this cost it’s easy for a hobbyist to get one and make digital circuits debugging a breeze. It’s designed to capture, decode and analyze serial protocols like SPI, I2C, UART, 1-WIRE and CAN in a few clicks. Data is captured on PC using the free and efficient ScanaStudio software.

Features:

jbremnant writes:

I came across this neat bluetooth module called HC-06. It can be found as cheap as $6 on ebay, and gives you convenient UART access to bluetooth wireless capabilities.

My 3yr old has this home-made LED clock in his room. I thought it was time for an upgrade since the clock was very minimalistic. Its only function was to keep track of time and display it on the LED panel. And considering it was my first “completed” project with avr (atmega168), I thought I could make it better this time around.

LED Display Over Bluetooth With Android - [Link]

Here’s an article that presents a rather innovative look at how to spoof magnetic card readers. The spoofer uses an atmega168 connected up to an electromagnet. The article has the source code, hardware schematic and action shots, don’t miss it! [via]

Magnetic Card Spoofer - [Link]

ermicro.com writes:

Would be interesting if we could make our microcontroller to sing for us not just beeping or blinking; this project is all about using the powerful AVR ATmega168 16-bit PWM feature to produce accurate musical notes such as playing the child’s favorite Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star song or we could say beeping with style. The principal we learned here could be applied to other AVR microcontroller families that support 16-bit PWM.

AVR Twinkle Twinkle Using PWM Project – [Link]

Fabien wrote a great tutorial on using the Adafruit TFT display with a Netduino. He writes: [via]

AdaFruit recently released a sweet little TFT display that I was dying to hook up to a netduino: the display features a resolution of 128*160 pixels, is capable of showing 18-bit colors and has a microSD card reader on the back of the breakout board. As usual, Limor wrote a nicely detailed Arduino tutorial showing how to connect the display and how to write sketches to drive it.

The Arduino driver relies on the ability of the Atmega168/368 to toggle digital lines extremely fast, which does not work well on the netduino due to the latency introduced by the .Net Micro Framework: even when configured to use hardware SPI, the Arduino driver constantly toggles a data/command output line, rspin below, which would be unbearably slow on the netduino if the same method were applied.

The netduino has one advantage over the Arduino: it has plenty of RAM. So, instead of toggling I/O lines slowly all the time and using next to zero RAM, the netduino driver allocates a 40K buffer corresponding to the resolution of the display in 12-bit depth colors (16 bits per pixel) and leaves the ST7735 in ‘data’ mode upon initialization.

Drawing always happens on the internal buffer first. Then, whenever the actual display needs refreshing, the display I/O operations are performed using hardware SPI, blasting the entire 40K buffer. It may sound crazy but using this method on the netduino is faster than refreshing a single pixel while toggling an I/O line!

Driving an Adafruit TFT Display with a Netduino – [Link]

IgorPlugUDP is an ethernet-enabled infrared receiver. This is an old hack that kmmankad brought up in the forum.

What makes it really cool is that the ethernet is bitbanged using nothing but the bare pins of an ATMEGA168. It is transmit-only, it cannot receive network packets, but that’s enough for a lot of projects. [via]

Networked infrared remote control receiver – [Link]

dansworkshop.com writes:

Some time previous to getting my ham license, I was at a friends house who showed me an LC (inductance) meter built from a kit. It was based on a PIC16C22A, and I certainly do like the PIC mcu’s, but decided I would embark on the task of re-engineering my own that uses an Atmel AVR chip, the Atmega168. It’s been a journey. Also, I am giving away for free the schematics, firmware, and source code as open source under the GPL.

Inductance meter - [Link]

dangerousprototypes.com writes:

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 and three MOSFETs used to switch the resistive load on and off during testing.

Capacity tester for rechargeable batteries – [Link]

Many AVR microcontrollers are capable of doing Analogue to Digital Conversion. The ATmega168 has 6 ports (8 ports on the SMD packages) that can be used for analogue input. This tutorial shows you how.

Analogue to Digital Conversion on an ATmega168 - [Link]

The OpenServo Project is an open community project with the goal of creating a low-cost servo for robotics. Check out their step by step instructions, which include using the familiar Atmega168 in the servo controller board. [via]

OpenServo project - [Link]