This article was submited by morgoth and is part of the PCB giveaway program, so for submitting he’s work morgoth will receive a free PCB. Also in the future we’ll see more of he’s projects.
Of-course there are other projects based on this idea around the web, but what makes this one special, it’s he’s features. There are 3 stepper motors controlled by a single ATmega8 that runs at 8 MHz, and a motor driver for each motor. The motors and their drivers were recovered from an old printer.
Although the motors are controlled by the same microcontroller each one can move independent. The board can receive commands to drive the motors trough serial interface from a computer. There is also a PC software that enables you to send commands from a nice graphical interface.
As you can see this is a very practical application, for example it can be easily developed into a CNC machine. I personally like morgoth’s coding skils and i think he has some more great projects to show.
And in the ending here is a movie with the motors in action.
NOTE: youritronics reader Radu pointed out that the schematic is wrong. According to the datasheet the Atmega8 has GND on pin 3 and 5 and VCC on pin 4 and 6. The schematic has the VCC and GND the other way around, you need to correct that for the system to work.
And here are the downloads for unipolar stepper motors:
NOTE:youritronics reader Radu pointed out that the schematic is wrong. According to the datasheet the Atmega8 has GND on pin 3 and 5 and VCC on pin 4 and 6. The schematic has the VCC and GND the other way around, you need to correct that for the system to work.
I think this is the easiest development board that one ca build, but it servers it’s purpose so there is no need to make it more complicated. I needed such a design to test some code that I’ll be using to create a small unit to fit in my car. A unit that will be able to show me the Clock, outside and inside temeprature, Fuel status, RPM’s , and also control some other functions like making an anoying beep when i leave my headlights on.
I made the board using my photo etching technique, and as you can see the results are great. The dev board has 17 I/O lines that are connected to a 17 pin header. On the board there is a 2 color LED tied to PortC pin 1 and 2. On PortC pin 0 there is a PNP transistor that controls the output for a buzzer. So i always use pin 0 to connect the buzzer.
There is also an ISP connector on the board to be used for ISP programming, and an extra VCC pin so you can get power from it. I power my board with 2 AA batteries which provide enough current for testing purposes, but to ensure you’ve got enough power you should probably power it from 3 x AA batteries to get 4,5 V.
Here are a couple of source codes that i developed on this board:
This one makes a beep for 5 seconds than stops.
And this one blinks the two color LED.
I’ll be integrating these codes in a larger project. All codes are written in C and the board was designed in Eagle, here are the download links:
The title is pretty straightforward, it’s time to give something back to my readers. Inspired by the Giveaway project from uChobby i created my own giveaway project the main difference is that instead of parts for projects i offer PCB’s for projects, professionally designed PCB’s. Our sponsor for this program is BKRtech, a professionally board manufacturer.
I hope you’ll find this interesting and participate. The program page is here.
The project is dedicated to helping people build a high performance sealed lead acid battery charger. The project is also available as a partial kit with a custom made PCB. However, there is also enough information for you to build your own PCB (or use Vero board) or change the design to suit your own purpose.
The schematic shows that wiring the LCD to the HEF4094 is a simple operation. It has been drawn in a way that makes possible to develop this as part of a single sided PCB including a variable resistor to control the LCDs contrast. Note that the pinout of the LCD module may differ slightly from the pinout depicted; some LCD modules have pins 15 and 16 on the left side, before pin 1.
