Electronics-Lab.com Blog

The 12F series of PIC microcontrollers are handy little 8-pin devices designed for small embedded applications that do not require too many I/O resources, and where small size is advantageous. These applications include a wide range of everyday products such as hair dryers, electric toothbrushes, rice cookers, vacuum cleaners, coffee makers, and blenders. Despite their small size, the PIC12F series microcontrollers offer interesting features including wide operating voltage, internal programmable oscillator, 4 channels of 10-bit ADC, on-board EEPROM memory, on-chip voltage reference, multiple communication peripherals (UART, SPI, and I2C), PWM, and more. The following project board is designed for fast and easy development of standalone applications using PIC12F microcontrollers. It features an on-board regulated +5V power supply, header connectors to access I/O pins, an ICSP header for programming, a reset circuit, and a small prototyping area for placing additional components.

Mini project board for PIC12F series microcontrollers - [Link]

Mifare and DESfire RFID modules from company Stronglink enable to use advanced RFID technologies while maintaining a very affordable price.

MIFARE ultralight, MIFARE 1k, MIFARE 4k and MIFARE DESfire are known technologies of RFID enabling to use various application, store various data and other functions. From this reason, they´re largely used in admission systems, loyalty programs, goods tracking and many other segments. From the security point of view, mainly the DESfire system with the DES/AES encryption excels. New 13,56 MHz Stronglink modules in our portfolio – SL025M, SL030, SL031, SL032, SL040 and SL040A enable to use these technologies and they are relatively easily applicable because of more reasons. Firstly, they are available in more versions with UART, I2C, RS232 as well as USB interface, they are certified (CE and RoHS) and the producer provides an above-standard development support.

Usage of modules is also simplified by their low power consumption and a relatively very low-profile construction with the height of only few mm. An important factor – the price, also says in favor of Stronglink modules, because they´re available for relatively very competitive prices. For the development support, there are also available source code examples for various microcontroller families. Further information will provide you the SL025M, SL030, SL031, SL032, SL040 and SL040A user manuals and AN100721, AN101203 and AN110221 application notes.

Stronglink modules will provide you a highly secure RFID - [Link]

FTDI released the FT311D USB host IC for easy communication with Android devices. It features 7 GPIOs, one I2C peripheral, one UART, one SPI, and 4 PWM peripherals.

The device acts as a USB host to an Android device, while the Android’s app directly controls the peripherals on the IC. The device is configurable trough 3 CFG pins. [via]

FT311D USB host IC provides easy communication with Android devices - [Link]

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:

This project is about building a PC-based temperature and relative humidity logger using the chipKIT Uno32 board and the DHT11 sensor. The DHT11 sensor is directly plugged into four I/O pins of the Uno32 board and is powered through the I/O pins. This project is probably an easiest way to setup an ambient room monitoring system for a server room. The Uno32 reads the temperature and relative humidity from the DHT11 sensor at preset interval and sends the data to PC through the USB-UART interface. A PC application is developed using the open-source Processing programming platform to log data onto an ASCII file. The PC application also displays the real-time temperature and relative humidity on computer screen.

PC based data logger using chipKIT Uno32 – [Link]

Rajendra Bhatta writes:

The 12F series of PIC microcontrollers are handy little 8-pin devices designed for small embedded applications that do not require too many I/O resources, and where small size is advantageous. These applications include a wide range of everyday products such as hair dryers, electric toothbrushes, rice cookers, vacuum cleaners, coffee makers, and blenders. Despite their small size, the PIC12F series microcontrollers offer interesting features including wide operating voltage, internal programmable oscillator, 4 channels of 10-bit ADC, on-board EEPROM memory, on-chip voltage reference, multiple communication peripherals (UART, SPI, and I2C), PWM, and more. The following project board is designed for fast and easy development of standalone applications using PIC12F microcontrollers. It features on-board regulated +5V power supply, header connectors to access I/O pins, ICSP header for programming, a reset circuit, and small prototyping area for placing additional components.

PIC12F microcontroller project board - [Link]

Open source application for charting data sent via RS-232 port in real time.

SerialChart – Analyse and chart serial data from RS-232 COM ports - [Link]

Haris Andrianakis writes:

One of my latest projects i just finished is a hardware thermal printer driver. This project designed/developed for “Delmac Instruments” as a part of my internship. Thermal printers are used in cash and weighting machines for receipt printing.

What the specific hardware does is to receive ASCII characters, escape sequences in UART and convert them in a printable form to send to printer mechanism for printing. Escape sequences are used to send commands to the printer to change character size, line spacing etc.

Thermal Printers don’t use ink as usual printers but they have a head of tiny resistors in a row (about 384) which behave on the paper as dots. Also they use a suitable paper which is thermal sensitive.

By supplying voltage to a single resistor, you heat the resistor and you make the paper burn at the specific point drawing a tiny single dot on the paper. If you supply voltage to a single resistor and you move the paper at the same time by stepping the head motor you will have a tiny width vertical row. This is the basic. (Resistors are refered as elements).

Thermal Printer Driver - [Link]

The MicroFTX is a low-cost, reconfigurable, and compact Micro-USB breakout board based on the FTDI FT230X full-speed USB Serial UART IC.

• USB to serial interface for microcontroller development or debugging
• Reverse-engineering tool with flexible I/O voltages (1.8V, 2.5V, 3.3V, etc)
• Battery charger detection for high-power USB applications (app note)
• Bitbang GPIO mode for simple digital input and output

MicroFTX – USB to serial breakout - [Link]

Scanalogic-2 Logic Analyzer and Signal Generator on your pocket

Scanalogic-2 PRO is a 4 channel Logic Analyzer and Digital signal generator, specially designed to decode and analyze serial protocols like SPI, I2C, UART, 1-WIRE and CAN.

Scanalogic-2 is designed to be used with the brand new ScanaStudio software, giving your logic analyzer ever evolving capabilities.

The Scanalogic-2 counts more than 3000 users around the world, a lot of reviews written by our fans, a very active support forum and a growing portfolio of distributors.

Features 

• 20 Million Samples Per Seconds
• 4 Input/Output channels
• 256K Sample per channel
• 2V, 2.8V, 3.3V, 3.6V and 5V logic levels support
• Serial protocols decoders (SPI, I2C, 1-WIRE, UART, CAN, LIN,Manchester)

News: A new version of ScanaStudio is online (V1.104). you can download this update in ScanaStudio by going to “Help > check for updates” 

Scanalogic-2 Logic Analyzer and Signal Generator on your pocket - [Link]