1284p

3 Articles

Prototyping With The ATMega1284P

January 2, 2015 by 28 Comments

While most people are moving onto ARMs and other high-spec microcontrollers, [Dave Cheney] is bucking the trend. Don’t worry, it’s for a good reason – he’s continuing work on one of those vintage CPU/microcontroller mashups that implement an entire vintage system in two chips.

While toying around with the project, he found the microcontroller he was using, the ATMega1284p, was actually pretty cool. It has eight times the RAM as the ever-popular 328p, and twice as much RAM as the ATMega2560p found in the Arduino Mega. With 128k of Flash, 4k of EEPROM, 32 IOs, and eight analog inputs, it really starts to look like the chip the Arduino should have been built around. Of course historical choices don’t matter, because [Dave] can just make his own 1284p prototyping board.

The board is laid out in Fritzing with just a few parts including a crystal, a few caps, an ISP connector, and pins for a serial connector. Not much, but that’s all you need for a prototyping board.

The bootloader is handled by [Maniacbug]’s Mighty 1284 Arduino Support Package. This only supports Arduino 1.0, not the newer 1.5 versions, but now [Dave] has a great little prototyping board that can be put together from perfboard and bare components in a few hours. It’s also a great tool to continue the development of [Dave]’s Apple I replica.

Boxing Trainer

Boxing Trainer Uses DIY Force Sensors

December 21, 2014 by 18 Comments

A team of Cornell students have designed and built their own electronic boxing trainer system. The product of their work is a game similar to Whack-A-Mole. There are five square pads organized roughly into the shape of a human torso and head. Each pad will light up based on a pre-programmed pattern. When the pad lights up, it’s the player’s job to punch it! The game keeps track of the player’s accuracy as well as their reaction time.

The team was trying to keep their budget under $100, which meant that off the shelf components would be too costly. To remedy this, they designed their own force sensors. The sensors are basically a sandwich of a few different materials. In the center is a 10″ by 10″ square of ESD foam. Pressed against it is a 1/2″ thick sheet of insulating foam rubber. This foam rubber sheet has 1/4″ slits cut into it, resulting in something that looks like jail bars. Sandwiching these two pieces of foam is fine aluminum window screen. Copper wire is fixed the screen using conductive glue. Finally, the whole thing is sandwiched between flattened pieces of corrugated cardboard to protect the screen.

The sensors are mounted flat against a wall. When a user punches a sensor, it compresses. This compression causes the resistance between the two pieces of aluminum screen to change. The resistance can be measured to detect a hit. The students found that if the sensor is hit harder, more surface area becomes compressed. This results in a greater change in resistance and can then be measured as a more powerful hit. Unfortunately it would need to be calibrated depending on what is hitting the sensor, since the size of the hitter can throw off calibration.

Each sensor pad is surrounded by a strip of LEDs. The LEDs light up to indicate which pad the user is supposed to hit. Everything is controlled by an ATMEGA 1284p microcontroller. This is the latest in a string of student projects to come out of Cornell. Make sure to watch the demonstration video below. Continue reading “Boxing Trainer Uses DIY Force Sensors” →

ASL Glove

Electronic Glove Detects Sign Language

December 20, 2014 by 11 Comments

A team of Cornell students recently built a prototype electronic glove that can detect sign language and speak the characters out loud. The glove is designed to work with a variety of hand sizes, but currently only fits on the right hand.

The glove uses several different sensors to detect hand motion and position. Perhaps the most obvious are the flex sensors that cover each finger. These sensors can detect how each finger is bent by changing the resistance according to the degree of the bend. The glove also contains an MPU-6050 3-axis accelerometer and gyroscope. This sensor can detect the hand’s orientation as well as rotational movement.

While the more high-tech sensors are used to detect most characters, there are a few letters that are similar enough to trick the system. Specifically, they had trouble with the letters R, U, and V. To get around this, the students strategically placed copper tape in several locations on the fingers. When two pieces of tape come together, it closes a circuit and acts as a momentary switch.

The sensor data is collected by an ATmega1284p microcontroller and is then compiled into a packet. This packet gets sent to a PC which then does the heavy processing. The system uses a machine learning algorithm. The user can train the it by gesturing for each letter of the alphabet multiple times. The system will collect all of this data and store it into a data set that can then be used for detection.

This is a great project to take on. If you need more inspiration there’s a lot to be found, including another Cornell project that speaks the letters you sign, as well as this one which straps all needed parts to your forearm.
Continue reading “Electronic Glove Detects Sign Language” →