YourITronics

For Arduino fans this is  great news, now its possible to extend the functionality of the Diecimila board with ethernet shield. The board is built using the w5100 chip from Wiznet, so no need to implement the IP stack.

To connect to your LAN, all you need is to configure the MAC address, the IP and plug the cross cable into the RJ45.

There is offcourse available some demo application, with server/client possibility for easy startup.

This board offers the possibility to explore the TCP/IP networking with a simple and affordable hardware and free software tools.

Ethernet via Arduino: [Link]

This is a very interesting DIY project, a little Segway, off course it won’t carry you but it will self balance. The brain of the robot is the Arduino board, the entire robot is powered from a battery,  although the author tried to keep the cost to minimum the final “price” was above 300$.

The sensor for the balancing algorithm was a 2 way accelerometer and one encoder in each motor, all the electronics was bought as a kit, since the author as he stated, a programmer. This can be encouraging for those who want to replicate the robot, since you don’t need to be a hardware guru to build it.

The control algorithm needs a lot of adjusting, trial and error tests and patience.

The balancing robot has one major inconvenient, how to get it up? It is a lot of fun doing it and certainly it is a noticible achievement, but in lack of control it will just stay in one place. I recommend this project to students who want to experiment with different control algorithms like PID, Fuzzy.

Balancing robot: [Link]

We’ve added a new feature to Youritronics, an online shop. We are just starting so for now we only have one item in shop, that is the ATmega88 Development board designed and build by Outsolder Solutions which is a Youritronics partner.

The board features:

• Board can be powered from AC/DC power, 7.5V-18V/500mA.
• Firmware can be loaded via preprogrammed bootloader or 6 pin ISP connector.
• All on board connections made from MCU pins to additional components are made with solder
• jumpers for easy removal in case of reconfiguration.
• All MCU pins connected to pin header pins trough 100Ω resistor for short-circuit protection.
• 5VDC/350mA available on the pin headers, with voltage suppressor protection.
• Reset circuit and reset button.
• DB9 connector for serial connection, RS232 to TTL level converter.
• Potentiometer for ADC input.
• DC buzzer connected to PWM output.
• 10 segment led bar controlled by SPI.
• 2 push buttons for generating external interrupts or general purpose inputs.
• External crystal oscillator 14,76MHz(not connected, the MCU is set to internal RC 8MHz oscillator).

You can read more about the board at the shop page. (the shop is currently under construction, sorry for any inconvenience.)

What is a voice pad you might ask, well the answer is simple, just think of notepad, yes this is a voice recorder. This way you don’t need to carry paper and pen around to get your ideas, to-do’s noted, just record it and play it back.

The gadget described was made by the author for the 2006 Stellaris contest, it uses the LM3S811 microcontroller by Stellaris, SD card for storing the messages, and earpiece for the audio output, OLED display, it even has a buzzer to play ring tones, all hardware used is part of the Stellaris development board.

The messages are played back via the earphone piece, which is powered by PWM, so the audio output stage is a D class amplifier, the volume is controlled by a potentiometer.

The author states that the device can store up to 100 10-30s messages, I say that is plenty of room for personal use, and with the OLED display and menu it is a handy device.

The microcontroller used in this project can be hard to find, but the available source code makes it possible to port the application to another device.

Voice pad with LM3S811: [via] - [PDF] - [Download]

The project described below demonstrates the usage of LCD graphical display with the help of available demo source codes.

The LCD in the first place is a tricky device, first of all you need separate power for the back light because of the higher voltage, so the author used a break-out board from www.sparkfun.com (Nokia 6100 LCD including breakout board), this board has built in a DC/DC converter for boosting the voltage, you only need one 3.3V power source.

The second issue is the control of the LCD, fortunately these mass produced displays are well documented and frequently used by hobbyist, you find a bunch of demo code for almost any type of microcontroller. The author used the demo code found on the sparkfun site, with small modifications.

Let’s see the microcontroller, some years ago the favorite AVR used by newbies was the Atmega8, which was superseded by the Atmega48/88/168, it has the same rich features, and some improvements, this was the choice of the authors too(ATmega48).

After hooking up the LCD with the microcontroller, we need some data to display, the author used his flickr account for accessing some photos on the web, you can find the free API to access the data for phyton or other high level programming languages, the pictures after downloaded, were resized, and transferred via serial port to the microcontroller which displays the image. The rendering is quite slow because the data is sent pixel by pixel to the display, but hey, at the end you have a color picture downloaded from the web and displayed on a Nokia display.

Although it sounds to be great fun to build it, if you are a beginner, try something simpler, or at least load a simple picture from your PC.

Flickr + Nokia LCD: [Link]