If you’re just getting into hobby electronics chances are there are lots of tools you’d like to get you hands on but can’t yet justify the purchases. Why not build some of the simpler ones? Here’s a great example of a 4-channel logic analyzer that can be your next project and will add to your arsenal for future endeavors.

As you can see, [Vassilis'] creation uses a cellphone-sized LCD screen as the output. It is powered by four rechargeable batteries and driven by an ATmega8 microcontroller. He’s designed the tool without power regulation, relying on the ATmega’s rather wide range of operating voltages, and a few diodes to step down that voltage for the LCD screen.

As you can see in the clip after the break, alligator leads can be used to connect the test circuit to the inputs (don’t forget the ground reference!). Thee buttons at the bottom let you navigate the captured data by panning and zooming. Perhaps the best design feature is the single-sided circuit board which should be quite easy to reproduce at home.

[via Dangerous Prototypes]

[L] just finished building this intervalometer and his verbose documentation of the project has a little bit of everything. The fabrication uses common prototyping materials, and simple skills that are easy to master even for the beginner.

The hardware is based around an ATmega8 microcontroller. After snooping around the Internet [L] wanted to see if the voltage divider based focus and shutter commands that are present in some camera remote shutter controls would work for his model. Investigation with a commercial shutter release showed him how it was done, so he incorporated that into his design. When it comes to firmware for the device we really like his explanation of the menu system. There’s a lot of settings and he did a great job of planning the user interface to make them all work on the finished product.

The schematic and board layout were done with Eagle. During the layout process he made choices for easy assembly using strip board, and even walks us through the steps when cutting the traces and adding jumper wires. It’s nicely finished in this clear plastic case and demonstrated in the video after the break.

We love the extra touches that [Andrianakis Haris] added to his two-zone electronic thermometer. It includes features that you just wouldn’t find on a mass-market commercial product because of issues like added cost. For example, you can see that the PCB juts up above the LCD display, allowing the module to be mounted on a pair of screws thanks to the keyhole shape that was drilled in the substrate. I increases the board size greatly, but on a small hobby run this won’t usually affect the price of the board depending on the fab house pricing model.

The design uses an ATmega8 microcontroller to monitor sensors in two different places. There is an onboard LM35 temperature sensor for monitoring the space where the unit resides. A remote sensor module uses a DHT-11 chip to gather data about temperature and humidity. That sensor is wired, but there is one wireless option for the device. Data can be pulled down from it via an optional Bluetooth module which can be soldered to a footprint on the back of the board.

Check out the video after the break to see temperature readings pulled down wirelessly.

[Fezoj] likes to play around with microcontrollers and decided that he wanted to try a Bus Pirate as a new tool in his adventures. Since it’s open hardware he had his own board made and populated it himself. The trouble is, he works only with AVR chips and doesn’t have a PIC programmer. No problem, he figured out how to flash the PIC24FJ using an ATmega8.

To get started, he grabbed a copy of the flash programming specifications from Microchip. Once he had implemented the protocol in the AVR code, it was just a matter of getting the downloaded PIC firmware to the AVR. An RS232 chip gives him the serial connection he needs, with the help of his own programming software written with Visual Studio.

It’s not a robust solution for prototyping on the PIC platform, but maybe it could be developed for that purpose. For now, all he needed was a bootloader so that he could flash the Bus Pirate via a USB connection.

[via Dangerous Prototypes]

Here’s the latest project from [Niklas Roy's] workshop. Lumenoise is an audio synthesizer controlled by drawing with a light-sensitive pen on a CRT television.

The pen is a self-contained module which connects to the TV via audio and composite video RCA plugs. Inside the clear pen housing you’ll find a microcontroller which generates the audio and video. The business end of the pen contains a phototransistor which lets the ATmega8 take a reading from the video screen. Since the chip is generating that video signal, it’s possible to calculate the pen tip’s position on the screen and modulate the sound output based on that data. You can watch a recording of the results in the video after the break.

This is a very simple circuit to build, and [Niklas] makes the point that most of us have a CRT hanging around in a dark corner somewhere. We think this would be a fantastic soldering project to do with the kids, and that this would be right at home as a children’s museum piece because of the wow factor involved in playing around with it.

We can really tell from this and some of his past projects that [Niklas] just loves the 8-bit audio.

[Arko] was compelled to purchase an iclicker to use in some of his college courses. It’s similar in size to a television remote control except it only has six buttons and it communicates via radio frequency instead of infrared light. The idea is that classrooms have a base station that the instructor uses, and he or she can ask questions of the class and have instant feedback. Results are often projected on a screen for all to see but only the instructor can get at the breakdown of who answered in what way. In [Arko's] case, the class awards participation points that you can only get by using this device. He decided to actually learn something from the expenditure by reverse engineering the device.

Preliminary hardware inspection told him that it uses an ATmega8 microcontroller and there’s a standard 6-pin ISP footprint just waiting to be populated with a surface mount pin header. Once he soldered on that header, he tried to read out the firmware but the iClicker reset itself. He guessed that there was something going on with the power and ground lines so he soldered directly to them and was able to dump the data–the security fuses are not set. He goes on to snoop in the EEPROM to find where the device ID is stored, and then to watch some of the SPI communications to see what the microcontroller is sending to the radio chip. But there’s a lot left to discover and he’s planning at least two follow-up post to share what he finds.

Just looking to repair your dead device? Check out this tip on battery problems with the iclicker.

Hackaday contributor [Nick Schulze] popped out an impressive set of LED headgear for a hat-themed party.

[Nick] is no stranger to working with LEDs. Previously he built a blue 8x8x8 cube something like this other 512 node full color version. He had a bunch of LEDs left over from that project and decided to put them to good use.

The first part of the build is the frame itself, made from thick fencing wire. He just started bending it around his head and got an uncomfortable head-shaped hoop to which he could solder. From there, enameled copper wire wraps its way through the system, supplying logic levels to all of the LEDs. Everything is done without a circuit board of any kind. The LED drivers themselves are attached by first using a zip tie to affix a resistor to the frame, then by soldering the TLC5916 chip to that resistor. Even the ATmega8 is included dead-bug style by soldering it to the frame which we think servers as ground. Program it with the free-floating female pin header and you’ll get the fantastic animations seen in the video after the break.

What could be better than a low-res black and white photograph printed instantly on paper that will yellow and crumple over time? Wow, we really need to work on our sales pitch. But all kidding aside, we love the idea that [Niklas Roy] came up with in order to build this thermal printing camera.

His Picasa album has two snapshots of the hardware. He’s using an LM1881 for video sync separation just like he did with his PING project. From there an ATmega8 microcontroller grabs each column from the image and prints it using the thermal printer. It looks like everything runs on a 9V battery which is nice for portability (although we still never got our hands on that rechargeable 9V we’ve been meaning to pick up). Perhaps just as impressive is that [Niklas] got this up and running with about 400 lines of code. Nice!

Of course you’ll want to see this in action so we’ve placed a video clip after the break. Just like old-timey cameras it looks like you’re going to need to sit still until the image is done printing.

[Niklas Roy] sent in a project he just completed called PING! Augmented Pixel. At first glance the entire build is just a plain jane retro video game stuffed into an ATmega8 but looks can be deceiving. The video game is actually an augmented reality device that inserts a pixel into a video feed. The bouncing pixel can be manipulated with a camera – push the pixel and it goes off in another direction.

The project runs on an ATmega8 clocked at 16 MHz, and reads the video feed with the help of an LM1881 sync separator. There’s no schematics, but he thankfully included some code for his project. Everything is set up for PAL video, but this could be easily adapted for NTSC. Any Hack A Day readers want to take up the challenge of building this from just a description?

[Niklas] says there’s no reason this couldn’t have been done by Atari in the late seventies. There were economic reasons for not putting out a video camera controller, of course, and the R&D department may have been too busy playing Breakout with their eyebrows.

Check out the demo of the augmented pixel after the break.

[Q] is an Electrical Engineer who works in an industrial setting. He frequently uses Programmable Logic Controllers at work but had never built one himself. He decided to undertake the project at home and managed to build a PLC that outputs 120V AC or 12 V DC and has optoisolated inputs.

On the circuit board you’ll find an ATmega8 and an EEPROM for extra data storage. Six outputs are controlled by relays since they are able to output either alternating or direct current. There are eight inputs which use optical isolators as buffers to protect the microcontroller.

So what did he end up using this for? It was part of his Christmas light setup last year. The image above shows the PLC in a water-tight electrical box with extension cords running to each of the devices he wishes to control. The example code is what he used on the X-mas setup, but it should be enough of a guide to program this to work with just about any application.

[dunk] constructed an easy to use AVR-based USB controller with the ability to drive up to six R/C hobby servos at once.  While the USB-powered Atmega8 he used supplies the necessary PWM signaling for all of the servos, an external power supply rated up to 30v at 3A is necessary to provide the 5v of power each servo requires.  His project is an extension of the USB servo controller built by [Ronald Schaten] and includes several significant upgrades.  The addition of 5 more servos aside, [dunk] switched to AVRlib routines for multi-servo control and PWM management, as well as added the aforementioned power supply to prevent an excessive current draw on the USB port.  His tutorial includes a complete parts list, Eagle PCB schematic, the required USB servo source code, as well as a sampling of commands that can be issued to the servo controller.

[Chr] picked up a pack of remote control outlets in order to reverse engineer them and build control into his own projects. These can be plugged into outlets around your house and a relay inside each module will switch whatever device is plugged into it after receiving a command from the remote. Once he cracked open the control housing it was easy to find the data line for the RF module which was on its own board. He used a logic analyzer to capture data from various button presses and then spent some time deciphering the communication protocol. He used what he learned to roll the module and code into an interface box where an ATmega8 connects via USB and passes commands from a computer to the RF board. Now he’s added home automation via a computer quite inexpensively. After the break you can watch a clip of the outlets switched using a smartphone.

So why not just patch into the buttons on the remote? Well, this same project was attempted at our local hackerspace earlier this month and the buttons don’t just pull a pin to ground. They use tri-state logic and are arranged into a matrix that is a lot harder to mimic (if not impossible) with a microcontroller. Analyzing the communications going into the RF module is definitely the less labor-intensive of the two approaches.

Yes! A radio control helicopter with a fairly high-resolution persistence-of-vision display is a beautiful thing. [Mziwisky's] handiwork is the result of several steps along the prototyping path. He built up a POV test rig on a breadboard, designed his first PCB for the project, and then went to work building it. After initially being inspired by a POV ceiling fan [Mziwisky] looked around to see if anyone else had already added a display to a helicopter. Indeed, this has been done before but there were very few details on the build.

The helicopter has two blades and each have the same hardware on them and gobbled up about ten hours of assembly time each. He basically built a printed circuit board using the blades as a substrate by attaching adhesive copper foil. This makes up the matrix for the LEDs and connects to a small circuit board with an ATmega8 and some shift registers mounted on the inside end of the blade. There’s also a 180 mAh LiPo battery pack, and a hall effect sensor to synchronize the display on each. The results are spectacular, as you can see in the video after the break, but there’s a few bugs left to work out in order to fully tame the 32 LEDs on each rotor.

Kind of looks like the future is happening right now.

[Thomas Pfeifer] has taken the PPM signal produced by model aircraft wireless controllers, and with an ATMega8, converted the signal to act as a USB joystick. Which means you can now use a standard R/C remote control to fly model aircrafts on your computer. Of course now with PPM decoded you could also use the signal to control any electronic device. Like your mower, iPod, and we’ve even seen remote controlled pellet guns. Catch a video of [Thomas] flying a simulated quadrotor helicopter after the jump.

[Thanks Max]