320×240 LCD with resistive touch screen, USB, SD card, 3d engine, USB, movie playback, UI interface, sprite engine , would you believe all of this is handled by an AVR 8 bit device with 4K RAM running at just 12 MHz ? You’d better believe it because it’s real. Well the ATmega644 runs at only 12 MHz because it’s powered at 3.3 V so as you can imagine it’s stretched to it’s limit. The LCD with the integrated controller helps allot taking the job from the microcontroller.

The Pacman demo just fits in 8K flash and 512 bytes of RAM. It uses the sprite engine and runs at > 60fps. The images and animations don’t even touch the RAM they go straight from the SD card to the display. It turns out reading a 512 byte block from the SD takes ~1ms.

Source code, demo files, Eagle PCB and schematics are provided at the projects SF page.

DIY iPhone like device: [via Hackaday] – [Link]

I was really interested about it when Seeed Studio first announced the DSO nano on their blog, unfortunately I was not able to get one of the beta’s which they offered in a limited number at a lower price. The specs they released don’t advertise for too much power from this portable but it’s style and the fact that is portable together with the low price tag should compensate for the lack of power. And don’t get me wrong on the power issue, the 1 MHz bandwidth is still enough to cover your hobby needs. For me the only big disadvantage is the fact that it has only one channel, but it compensates with the ability of recording readings that you can later compare with the actual reading.

I would love to give you more details about this portable oscilloscope, but I have to wait until I can get my hands on the DSO nano. I’m currently waiting for Seeed to list it on their product page so i can place an order.

For all tweeter users that possess some hardware hacking skills, this is the Tweeter Wireless Display. It is basically a modified wireless router, stripped of its original case and mounted on a custom made wooden chassis. The text is displayed on a small screen which is mounted on the top side of the chassis.

The router used in this project is the WL-520-GU from Asus, which features a 4-port switch and supports both IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.11g. The device uses OpenWRT to run a Python script that fetches the 20 most recent tweets. The script is taken from a USB flash memory and the information is displayed on a serial alphanumeric LCD from Sparkfun.

The project is entitled Tweetser, a combination from ‘tweet’ and ‘serial’ and is surely an appealing piece of equipment for any tweeter lover out there, especially for the ones that are also hardware enthusiasts. I personally still think that a PC would be more suitable for this kind of things as it also features… you know, a keyboard and a slightly bigger screen. Nevertheless, it’s still a nifty little project that can be useful if you’re a tweeter maniac.

Tweeter Wireless Display: [Link] – [via]

Also entitled Arduino LCD Backpack ‘Sandwich’ by its illustrious creator, this is a simple do-it-yourself project using an Arduino microcontroller and a small LCD display. The MCU runs at 16Mhz thanks to the ceramic resonator (the light-brown one, located near the microcontroller). The LCD is an alphanumeric one with two lines of 16 characters (the color used is amber/orange, which gives it a nice, old-school feeling). The contrast of the LCD can be adjusted using a potentiometer.

The Backpack has an IR input receiver module connected (the small silver box on the left side) and a 6 pin FTDI style serial header soldered directly to the wires, which is used for software download and also for the 5V DC power supply. The project is free, for non-commercial use only. More details, pictures and source code available in the link below.

Arduino LCD Backpack: [Link] – [via]

There’s nothing like an ice-cold drink on a hot summer day, is there? Especially if you’re a beer-loving dude with some free time and some hardware skills.

A fairly simple and fun project, the “Digital Thermostatic Beer Refreshment Regulator” (as entitled by its author) is based on an Arduino and a temperature sensor that control the temperature of the liquid inside the refrigerator (i.e. beer). The Arduino is actually a Freeduino SB and the temperature sensor is a LM35DZ. The beer regulator also possesses a NTE RS1-1D4-21 solid state relay to trigger 5v voltage to manage the amperage of the refrigerator.

The temperature is displayed on a SLCD162 MeLabs serial LCD Display which only uses 1 pin of the Arduino microcontroller. Other parts include some 10k and 100k resistores, pins, connectors, wires and plex-glass for the LCD stand (you can find a detailed parts list in the link). The code is written in C and it can be easily modified to adjust turning of the whole device ON or OFF to match your desired temperature of the beer. Plans for rewriting some of the code to get a more precise temperature are on the way. Also, a more complex display could be added to the project quite easily, since the current LCD is connected using an ethernet jack with Cat5 cable.

Now, I’m pretty sure you can do all these things with a common refrigerator that has a LCD display on the outside and a front panel to set the temperature, so it’s hardly a world changing project. Further more, you don’t risk getting your fingers burnt with the soldering iron or having your kitchen fill with cold beer (maybe that wouldn’t be such an issue to some, but still). However, if you’re a do-it-yourself kind of guy and want to make your own cold beer apparatus, then you can try this one. Salute!

Beverage Temperature Regulator: [Link] – [via]

Central heating systems has been a good solution for many homes and even offices for quite some time now. If you own such a system I’m sure you would like to be able to control it remotely from your bed or even from a computer. This project presents such a controller. It has a 5/2 days programmer, that is 5 week days, 2 weekend days or for entire week.

The control panel allows you to turn on and off heat and hot water independently. It has 10 program entries that you can save and you have the possibility to manually override the program. Basically it is composed of two modules: the relay module that is placed at the boiler, which also has the 9 pin D connector for serial connection and the programmer panel which is connected to the relay module by a UTP cable.

The programmer panel has a 2×16 LCD display and five switches to select the desired program or manually control the central heating. PIC16F628A microcontroller was used in this project as the system’s brain. Dallas DS1307 was used for time management and for saving time settings in its memory. It is powered by a backup battery so it will not lose the memory data when mains power is taken. Max202 IC takes care of the serial communication.

Because of the UTP wire lenght the rellay output of the PIC can not drive the rellays directly, so a driver is used from Quasar Electronics. It is also a good idea to use protection diodes on those outputs to take care of spikes.

LCD will show the current operation mode for central heating and hot water, the on/ off state and the time. Switch 1 and 2 turns the system on/off , switches 3 and 4 are used for manual control and switch 5 is used for programmer setup. A detailed explanation of the programmer’s operation is presented in the link with all schematics and construction procedures as well as the software for the microcontroller.

PIC-based Central Heating Controller: [Link]

As the modern day motor vehicles grow in complexity, the need for measuring various locomotion parameters is something that all manufacturers approach, regardless of the purpose, size or price of the vehicle. Motorcycles make no exception, especially with the need for speed of most bike enthusiasts.

A project for all motorcycle-loving geeks out there, the Arduino Control Panel for Motorcycles is still in the prototype phase, but it seems to be working flawlessly. It currently has a speedometer and a tachometer which are very accurate and also a gear indicator . It uses a standard Arduino, a small LCD and Bluetooth and it is powered by the motorcycle battery.

The device is connected to the electrical system of the bike, receiving pulses from the tachometer circuit and using a reed switch for wheel rotation. It calculates the wheel speed in RPM and divides it into most recent engine RPM, obtaining a unique ratio for each gear. This is done by counting how many times the engine turns while the wheel turns once and the answer is somewhere between 4 and 12 for 5th gear and 1st gear, respectively. An interesting aspect of the coding is the interrupt handling, which is done by logging every 10th one.

As with all prototypes, this is not the final version of the project. The designer plans to make the device smaller and to incorporate it into the tank console and also to enhance it with more functions, like wind resistance. Not sure about the usefulness of the whole thing, as all bike producers install similar equipment, especially on newer models. Still, an interesting project that could be further developed.

Arduino Control Panel for Motorcycles: [Link] – [Via]

Here is a very good looking thermometer project showing the reading as a discrete value and as a bar-graph on a LCD. The idea is simple, we have a sensor, the LM35, who outputs a voltage depending on the ambient temperature, LM35′s rating is 10mV/ degree Celsius. Since the sensor’s output is analog we need to convert it to digital in order to display the value on LCD. The ATmega8 microcontroller will handle the A/D conversion, with a 4.8mV resolution it is within the accuracy range of the sensor.

Once the LM35′s output has been converted to digital, the microcontroller will make the calculations necessary to determine the temperature and display that value. The LCD is a 20×4 type so the bar-graph will show 20 levels. ATmega8′s port C0  reads the analog data from the sensor and port D controls the LCD. The code was written in BASCOM AVR which has some built-in functions to handle the A/D converter of the microcontroller. For Fahrenheit measurement use LM34 sensor.

All in all it is easy to build, as a school project perhaps,  with possibility for upgrade, for example to be able to change the bar-graph’s scale.

Digital Thermometer: [Link]

Are you tired of carrying around one remote for the TV, one for the DVD player, one for the sound system and the list can go on. There is the possibility to buy one “good for all” remote control but it will cost you a few hundred dollars, off course there is an alternative for less money, make your own DIY universal remote control.

Any valid RC5/RC6 will be displayed on the LCD, and any code can be sent with the on board IR led’s, the LCD is the common 2×16 HD44780 compatible type.

The hardware is very simple, the software is written in basic and made available by the author. The Dell TV deals page sometimes has universal remotes like the Logitech Harmony One for heavily discounted prices.

I recommend this project for those interested about the RC5/RC6 codes, it can be a great alternative for radio based remote control for robotics, as you can see in one of my previous articles: IR remote robot

Universal remote control: [Link]

Ever wondered what’s inside a head mounted spy gadget? Well, now you have the answer, there was somebody curios enough to take apart a robot toy which had a camera and eye piece, considering the size, isn’t a James Bond type of gadget so don’t expect to find any nanotechnology inside, but you can see how the LCD displays work. Even your LCD monitor uses the same solutions, only in bigger.

This post is for people curios enough to dismount  similar electronics, my advice : don’t, you won’t find any components inside which you can use, or there are hard to remove from the pcb and if you damage the flexible pcb or any other part, you probably can’t repair it

Head mount display hack: [Link]