NotesI finally dug out that LCD from the mess in my room and got it to work :) . Turns out , its really simple. You dont even need a microcontroller to do it.Unfurl
Notes Whenever you come across a LCD that looks like it has 16 connectors it is most likely using a HD44780 controller. These devices provide the same pinouts making them relatively easy to work with. The LCD uses a parallel interface meaning that we will need many pins from our raspberry pi to control it. In this tutorial we will use 4 data pins (4-bit mode) and two control pins.FeedUnfurl
NotesA couple months ago I saw an article or video of the world’s largest game controller and thought to myself “I bet I could make the smallest” and so I did.FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesThis post is based on the work made previously by tomek in wiring LCD displays using 4 bits. The basic idea is to group the 7 pins that are needed to drive the LCD in only 3 using a shift register. This is a cheap alternative to serial LCDs. Unfurl
NotesHD44780 based character LCDs require at least 6 I/O lines from microcontroller to display data. Therefore, they are not suitable for low-pin microcontrollers like PIC12F series microchips. In this project, I am going to show how to drive an HD44780 based LCD display with only 3 pins of a microcontroller. I am going to demonstrate it with PIC12F683 microchip. The character data and command from the microcontroller is transferred serially to a shift register (74HC595), and the parallel output from the shift register is fed to LCD pins.FeedUnfurl
Notes Adding a LCD to any project immediately kicks it up a notch. This tutorial explains how to connect a inexpensive HDD44780 compatible LCD to the raspberry pi using 6 GPIOs. While there are other ways to connect using I2C or the UART this is the most direct method that get right down to the bare metal. FeedUnfurl
NotesRecently, I paid $12 at Mingtong Digital Mall for a complete phone, featuring quad-band GSM, Bluetooth, MP3 playback, and an OLED display plus keypad for the UI. Simple, but functional; nothing compared to a smartphone, but useful if you’re going out and worried about getting your primary phone wet or stolen. FeedEmbedUnfurl
Notes While the Raspberry Pi packs and awful lot of punch for the price, and it's fairly flexible where HW expandability is concerned, there are situations where you might want a bit more basic digital IO. Thankfully, it's an easy problem to solve with an I2C-enabled device like the MCP23008 (for an extra 8 GPIO pins) or the MCP23017 (for an extra 16 GPIO pins). This tutorial will show you how you can get up and running quickly with either of these chips.FeedUnfurl
NotesI've found that most of the technical books published before about 1964 never had their copyrights renewed, so now are in the public domain. So I am endeavoring to digitize and post some selected books relating to the "vacuum tube age" of electronics here.Unfurl
NotesFrom the moment these LED displays made an appearance on our weekly Ask an Engineer show, comparisons were being made to the DeLorean time circuit from the Back to the Future films. It was a moral imperative then to make a demo! If you’re handy with Arduino and some shop tools, you should be able to pull off something similar (better, even), or adapt the ideas to other projects. This was quickly built in fun, so please don’t expect the same level of polish as a finished product tutorial.FeedUnfurl
Notes Tweet-a-Watt is a DIY wireless power monitoring system. The project uses an 'off the shelf' power monitor called the Kill-a-Watt and adds wireless reporting. Each plug transmits the power usage at that outlet to a central computer receiver. The receiver can then log, graph and report the data. This pack contains nearly everything* necessary to build a single outlet monitor and receiver. To monitor additional outlets, you will need an add-on transmitter pack. One outlet can monitor up to 1500 Watts.FeedUnfurl
Notes A LOT of people are having the problem that the xbox turns on automatically when you plug in the power and then they must unplug it to turn it off. This is going to help most of those people I hope. Unfurl
NotesIt has been pointed out by chunkhead from the afterdawn.com and llama.com Forums that some X-Box motherboards have a corrosion problem on some traces.
This corrosion is due to some sort of contamination from the factory.
Due to this corrosion, it was found that some X-Boxes affected can produce the following symptoms:
(1) The X-Box fails to power down using the power on/off button on the front panel. The power cord has to be pulled out to shut it down.
(2) As soon as the power cord is plugged in, the X-Box powers up without pressing either the on/off or eject buttons.
(3) While the X-Box is on for a certain amount of time, it shuts down by itself for no reason. The time factor before shut down can vary wildly. Unfurl
NotesAmendment 1092 to the Defense Authorization Act of 2012 is a well-intentioned but misguided provision outlining measures designed to reduce the prevalance of counterfeit chips in the US military supply chain. FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesThis is revision 2.0 of USB Host Shield. Thanks to new interface layout it is now compatible with more Arduinos – not only UNO and Duemilanove, but also big Mega and Mega 2560 work with Standard variant of this shield out of the box. No more SPI re-wiring and code modifications – just solder included stackable connectors (2×3 ICSP connector’s female side should be facing down), plug and play!Unfurl
NotesThe hardest part was converting HSB into RGB - the equations that I worked on from wikipedia are an absolute nightmare to translate into code (at least for me at this stage). I was about to give up when I saw this link, full of ready-made colour conversion functions: http://www.easyrgb.com/math.php?MATH=M21#text21.Unfurl
NotesSo here is a gigantic list of everything I would buy right now to replace my entire workshop if mine were to disappear. I'm going to try and separate it into some sort of reasonable order as far as importance, but the point is that you see all of this, and use it as inspiration to put together your own collection.
The equipment you need to get started in building electronics. If you look back through the last two years of posts on this blog, you'll s...Unfurl
Notes So here is a gigantic list of everything I would buy right now to replace my entire workshop if mine were to disappear. I'm going to try and separate it into some sort of reasonable order as far as importance, but the point is that you see all of this, and use it as inspiration to put together your own collection.Unfurl
Notes IR detectors are little microchips with a photocell that are tuned to listen to infrared light. They are almost always used for remote control detection - every TV and DVD player has one of these in the front to listen for the IR signal from the clicker. Inside the remote control is a matching IR LED, which emits IR pulses to tell the TV to turn on, off or change channels. IR light is not visible to the human eye, which means it takes a little more work to test a setup. FeedUnfurl
NotesAdding quality audio to an electronic project is surprisingly difficult. People tend to end up either using low-quality ISD chips (you might get 8Khz sampling rate for 30seconds out of these, if you're lucky!) or mucking around with trying to control a CD or MP3 player. Although it's possible to generate audio direct from a microcontroller using a PWM output, the quality is often low and its hard to fit a lot of music in an EEPROM chip. You can buy an embedded MP3 player board, but they're either expensive or difficult to use!FeedUnfurl
Notes"A fully functional GPS receiver with the ability to display the current location, heading, speed, average speed and maximum speed, the distance traveled, the bearing, distance and ETA for a way-point, and the date and time."Unfurl
Notes"So you want to build USB enabled devices. Bumble-B is here to help!
It is a breakout board for Atmel's at90usb162 microcontroller, along with supporting hardware and USB connector. It is DIP-24/600mil shape, and works very well on a breadboard."Unfurl
Notes"Several arcade game manufacturers decided it would be a good idea to put a battery on their game boards that, when they die (and they will die), disable the game. Why they did this isn't exactly clear. Usually the way suicide batteries work is, the batteries supply power to a bit of RAM that holds a decryption table. This table is the key to decrypting the encrypted program stored in the board's ROMs. When the battery dies, this table goes away and the program code can no longer be decrypted. The CPU no longer has valid code to execute. The board stops working."Unfurl
Notes"I finished wiring the audio circuitry for BMOW yesterday, which marks the end of wiring for BMOW… for version 1 at least! I took the opportunity to reflect on my wire-wrapping odyssey, and took a bazillion photos of the namesake Big Mess o’ Wires before it disappears forever into an opaque case. It’s really quite a sight. There are 1253 wires with 2506 individually-wrapped connections, and I’ve got every one logged in a spreadsheet."Unfurl
Notes"If you're like me, you may or may not have secret files plotting world domination and other devious deeds. These files obviously need to be hidden from the prying eyes of sisters, FBI agents, grandparents, etc. We are going to convert a phone jack in the wall into a secret USB memory device."Unfurl
Notes"The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk is a progressive lending library of electronic components. An internet meme in physical form halfway between P2P zip-archive sharing and a flea market. It arrives full of wonderful (and possibly uselesFeedUnfurl
Notes"IEC connector is the common name for the set of thirteen line sockets (called the connector in the specification) and thirteen panel plugs (called the inlet) defined by International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) specification IEC 60320 (formerly IECUnfurl
Notes"It sounds like the plot of a farfetched science fiction movie. Unfortunately for the residents of Texas, it is very much a reality: billions of tiny reddish-brown ants have arrived onshore from a cargo ship and are hell-bent on eating anything electronicUnfurl
Notes"For over 30 years DAK Industries 1 was the most exciting, informative place to find electronic breakthroughs to enhance our productivity and our leisure time activities. So, what could possibly have gone wrong? Read on."Unfurl
Notes"Are you a programmer or computer enthusiast? Do you feel comfortable with methods, functions, and variables? Do you wish you knew more about how the computer made it all work?"Unfurl
Notes'"What are the things that users want and Apple refuses to provide?" Microsoft's colossal blunder was to knock the user out of that question and put the music industry in its place.'Unfurl
Notes"A new system called Arduino provides the benefits of the Basic Stamp at a greatly reduced cost, increased speed, and is entirely open-source."FeedEmbedUnfurl
Wiring the Cobbler to the LCD | Drive a 16x2 LCD with the Raspberry Pi | Adafruit Learning System
Ben's Blog » μJoypad [+ ..]
Introduction to 74HC595 shift register – Controlling 16 LEDs - Tutorials
3-Wire Serial LCD using a Shift Register
The $12 Gongkai Phone « bunnie's blog
Overview | MCP230xx GPIO Expander on the Raspberry Pi | Adafruit Learning System
Technical books online
Great Scott! DeLorean-Inspired Time Circuit Clock with Adafruit gear! « adafruit industries blog
Tweet-a-Watt starter pack ID: 143 - $90.00 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
Iron on Patches : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
LCD tutorial - making a 'shield'
Sensor tutorials - IR remote receiver/decoder tutorial
Audio Shield for Arduino
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories - The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk
Main Page - Tgimboej
todbot blog ‽ Blog Archive ‽ Arduino, the Basic Stamp killer