This clock counts seconds, minutes, hours and day of the week. Time is displayed on 4 seven segment LED displays, and is adjustable with three buttons at start time (up, down, enter). You can program the day of the week, hour, minute and duration of the alarms.
The number of alarms are limited by ROM space only. The alarm is on the RA4 open collector output of the PIC, and is repeated on a decimal point of the display. For once, the program is in BASIC (mikroBasic) and this should make a good start for beginners.
The EnvStick is cheap, homemade temperature sensor that plugs into a USB port. It provides a simple way to collect a room’s ambient temperature. Ned, the author made it purely for fun, so don’t expect too much from the project.
Measuring SWR at VHF/UHF frequency was never fun. Most radio amateurs just assume that their 50 ohms cable is matching a beam or GP. Analog SWR Meters are widely spread on the market, although, not very economical. LCD meters are a bit expensive, crossing the $100 limit.
So the purpose of this project is to encourage radio amateurs to build their own High Quality LCD SWR Meter at a low price, instead of buying expensive ready made units.
Lithium Ion batteries pack a lot of power by weight compared to other types. There are 2 things that need to be handled differently than nicad on NiMH:
1. They cannot be used as a direct substitute (even if they look like other AA’s) since they run at about 3.6 (or so) volts.
2. They cannot be charged in the same way as nicad or NiMH.
Sooner or later you are gonna need a Li Ion charger in one of your projects, so it’s better to be prepared.
This project uses the Simple LED Animation Kit (SLAK post or page) with the LEDs arranged in a circle around the PIC16F628A. Although the only difference from the basic SLAK is the board design, I find that this layout to be have the potential to be more useful. It could easily be a medallion on a necklace.
This board only needs 4.5V and in the video is running on only 3 AA batteries. You can see that the PIC is still in a socket. You can even design you’re custom animation with a bit of PIC knowledge.
