Spiff's Electronics Notebook

Introducing the StickDuino (August 25, 2008)

Whoa, how did we miss announcing this? The StickDuino is a fully featured Arduino clone (freeduino) that allows you to carry an Arduino compatible tool around in your pocket.

Head over to it's instructions or buy one below.

Fully Assembled	Board Only

arduino Atmel freeduino kit store USB
Posted by spiffed at 2:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

ATmega328P support in the Arduino IDE (July 21, 2008)

For some time, there's been discussion on the Arduino forum over the upcoming ATmega328P. Basically an ATmega168 with twice as much flash, RAM, and EEPROM.

Some time ago, I was lucky enough to secure samples for another project, now after hours of tinkering, I'm pleased to show off the first working beta of a hacked IDE and bootloader.

arduino Atmel freeduino
Posted by spiffed at 3:10 AM

Arduino and Freescale MPX Pressure sensors (April 29, 2008)

Freescale makes a range of integrated pressure sensors with 0-5V analog outputs, in a vast array of configurations. Today, I've picked the MPXV5010DP, but you should be able to adapt this to a range of sensors.

Continue reading "Arduino and Freescale MPX Pressure sensors"

Arduino Atmel Code Freeduino Howto Pressure Sensor
Posted by spiffed at 12:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Build a MaxSerial Freeduino (April 9, 2008)

About

The MaxSerial is a MAX232 based serial board compatible with the Arduino environment.

Buy

I'm pleased to offer these as a kit, bare PCB, and fully assembled. Use the below options to purchase with-out the optional 3.3 volt supply or explore your other options.

Full Kit	Board Only	Fully Assembled

Continue reading "Build a MaxSerial Freeduino"

Arduino Build Eagle3D Freeduino Howto Kit MAX232 MaxSerial Serial
Posted by spiffed at 2:40 AM

A High-Volume Atmega Arduino Programmer and Tester (April 1, 2008)

I need to program several dozen Atmega168s and I only own ICSP Atmel programmers; what to do? Bodge one up of course. Best of all, the bodged programmer functions as an Arduino test bed.

Continue reading "A High-Volume Atmega Arduino Programmer and Tester"

Arduino Bodge Freeduino Howto Programmer
Posted by spiffed at 11:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A max232 Based 'duino (March 8, 2008)

I, and some others it seems, have spotty results talking to the "official" Arduino serial boards and their Freeduino counterparts. To that end, I present a max232 based design, complete with Diecimila layout and DTR reset.

Continue reading "A max232 Based 'duino"

Arduino Eagle3D Freeduino Kit MAX232 MaxSerial Serial
Posted by spiffed at 1:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

EEPROM read/write code for CC5X (January 30, 2008)

CC5X may already include internal-EEPROM handling code, but I couldn't find any. With this in mind, here are two short methods for writing and reading from the EEPROM in many PIC microcontrollers. (Based on Microchips datasheets and a forum post.)

Continue reading "EEPROM read/write code for CC5X"

CC5X Code EEPROM Howto PIC
Posted by spiffed at 12:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Getting up to speed with the PIC16F737 (January 29, 2008)

Porting code between PIC micros from the same product range is normally a smooth process: redefine a few pins, change some clock-speed constants, and add support code for that new integrated peripheral widget.

Sometimes though, there's a large hurdle before you can even begin. The 16F737 posed such a hurdle, there are a few clever lines of code required to put the device into all digital I/O running under the internal oscillator (intosc).

Continue reading "Getting up to speed with the PIC16F737"

Code PIC
Posted by spiffed at 10:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In the beginning, I fell in love with the Kitsrus Kit 150 PIC programmer for it's socketed automatic programming mode. The kit was priced right, supported most of the chips I encounter, and available locally. Over the years, I've ended up with five of them.

Recently, I discovered none of them function for ICSP or 40-pin parts. (Normally I use a JDM2 clone for ICSP, this was the first test of the K150.)

Obviously, some investigation was in order.

Continue reading "Repairing a KITSRUS Kit 150 for ICSP"

Howto Kit KitsRUs PIC Programmer Repair Solder
Posted by spiffed at 8:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Microchip non-RoHS sale (December 21, 2007)

For hobbyists, kit builders, and lovers of lead, MicrochipDirect is selling off non-RoHS compliant inventory for steep discounts.
I was able to pickup some chips for less than 40% of their normal price. The best deals are on SMD parts, but most PICs are available in 1-off for less than their normal 25-off cost.

PIC RHOS Sale SMD
Posted by spiffed at 1:42 AM

Serial LCD Controller (June 26, 2005)

Matrix Orbital makes a number of rather nice serial (and USB based) LCD and VFDs. What they do not make, are inexpensive LCDs. Thankfully, hacking serial onto a cheap parallel LCD is sometimes almost as good.

Continue reading "Serial LCD Controller"

Code Kit LCD PIC Serial SerialLCD
Posted by spiffed at 1:11 PM

Digital Input to the PIC16F628 in C (March 26, 2005)

I recently mentioned that I could not convince C to read from PORTA of a PIC. I have seen the error of my ways. The only thing missing from my code was a single line to disable analog functions on PORTA. inserting CMCON = 0x07; into the top of main() nicely fixed the mysterious I/O failures.

Continue reading "Digital Input to the PIC16F628 in C"

Code Howto PIC
Posted by spiffed at 12:46 PM

Blinkin' PIC (March 24, 2005)

Continue reading "Blinkin' PIC"

Code Howto PIC
Posted by spiffed at 9:23 PM

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