Microcontrollers

2381 Articles

Quick And Easy DIY PIC Development Board

October 5, 2011 by 27 Comments

diy_pic_dev_board

A few months back, [Phil] was looking to get into PIC development, but he couldn’t seem to find a simple development board for the PIC16F883 microcontroller he wanted to use. Since no retail offering had exactly what he was looking for, he decided to put together a dev board of his own.

He spent a couple hours in Eagle, putting together a simple board layout. [Phil] then busted out the iron and copper clad, making his dev board a reality using the tried and true toner transfer method.

He says that the board itself is quite simple, consisting of little more than the PIC, an LM1117 linear voltage regulator, and all the pin headers you could possibly need. While very basic and not necessarily a hack, we do like seeing people make their own tools when the market doesn’t provide what they want.

If you have been looking around for a simple PIC development solution, be sure to swing by [Phil’s] site – all of the schematics and layout files are free for the taking.

Gaming Scoreboard And Storage Box In One

October 4, 2011 by 2 Comments

This game storage box will also keep score for you. [Marcus] built it for playing the card game Munkin, but some clever programming could adapt it for most needs. The hardware is built around an ATtiny2313 to do the thinking, and a MAX7219 to drive the 7-segment displays. Each player has their own two-digit score readout, which is perfect for this game which only tracks scores from -9 up to 10.

In the video after the break you can see [Marcus’] explanation of the user interface. One player acts as scorekeeper for the game. That person uses three buttons to adjust the score as necessary, and to move the current player marker, expressed as a decimal point on one of the displays. Pressing all three keys will put the unit into programming mode. This lets you select the number of players and at which position they are sitting, as well as make adjustments to the score if necessary.

Continue reading “Gaming Scoreboard And Storage Box In One” →

Bread Head Makes AVR Programming A Snap

October 2, 2011 by 18 Comments

bread_head_quick_avr_programming_header

[Quinn] over at Blondihacks has been working with AVR microcontrollers a lot recently, and wanted a quick way to program the ATtiny13a (her current AVR of choice) while the chip is still seated in a breadboard.

To speed up code revision and testing, she built a small programming header that she calls the Bread Head. The device is wonderfully simplistic, consisting of little more than snappable header pins and a bit of upside-down protoboard.

She soldered six headers to the top (formerly the bottom) side of the board, while a set of eight oversized headers were soldered to the opposite side of the programmer. Small bits of wire were soldered in to connect all of the appropriate pins together before [Quinn] slipped the header snugly over the top of the ATtiny and gave it a quick test. Everything worked perfectly, so she slathered in in epoxy for sturdiness and called it a day.

She says that the programmer works so well that she’s likely to make a similar header for other common AVRs too.

Getting The Lead Out Of The Arduino Runtime

October 1, 2011 by 25 Comments

mhvlib_arduino_efficiency_runtime

Ah, the Arduino.

Love it or hate it, there’s no denying that part of its accessibility comes at the expense of speed and efficiency. We honestly like the platform as well as all of the others out there, because we believe that everything has its proper place and purpose. The crew over at Make, Hack, Void think that the Arduino dev boards are well and good, but that the core of the Arduino runtime could use some improvement.

They have taken it upon themselves to dig deep into the code and make some of the improvements that many advanced Arduino users have been clamoring for. Their MHVLib is an efficiency oriented runtime library which works on all AVR microcontrollers, whether they be standalone uCs or Arduino-branded hardware.

They have changed the way that the Arduino handles pin and port information, as well as how object and buffers are allocated in memory. Their code still relies on an Arduino-style bootloader, though they recommend Optiboot since it’s about a quarter of the size of the Arduino version.

There’s a complete list of what has been implemented available on their site, and you can grab the code via their GIT repository if you want to give it a try yourself.

Hacking SPOT Personal Satellite Tracker To Pass More Information

October 1, 2011 by 38 Comments

For less than $100 you can buy a little tracking module that will upload your location to a satellite. But you’ll only get latitude and longitude information. [Natrium42] spent some time reverse engineering the hardware, and the communications protocol, to allow custom data to be transferred using a SPOT module.

The flat fee for the hardware includes a one-year service plan allowing you to tack your device on the SPOT website. [Natrium42] started poking around in the transmitted data packages, and figured he could push custom messages like altitude data if he had some way to encode it as a valid latitude/longitude package. He found that location data is transmitted as two sets of three bytes each. The four least significant bits of each set get rounded by the server, leaving a total of 40 usable bits between the two data sets. He wrote encoding and decoding functions that will allow you to transfer whatever information you want.

So what is this good for? To get the process working he removed the MSP430 microcontroller from the board and is using his own replacement. So you can transmit GPS data from the onboard module, your own module, or sensor data for anything you’re able to hook up the to the replacement uC.

Passive RFID Tag Cloning

September 30, 2011 by 34 Comments

Here’s an open source RFID cloner design that is about the same size as a standard RFID key card. It doesn’t need a battery to capture key codes, just the magnetic field generated by an RFID reader. You can see the functionality demonstrated in the video after the break. By holding the bottom button as the cloner is moved in range of the RFID reader, the microcontroller goes into learning mode. Now just hold up the card you wish to clone and the LED just above the buttons will light up when it has captured the code. Now the device will act just as the original RFID tag did.

This was developed by [Ramiro], the same person who built the barebones RFID emulator we saw a few days ago. When researching that story we complete skipped over this gem. He’s posted a ton of information on the tag itself. It doesn’t look like he has any PCBs or kits left, but the schematic and code are available for download. You should check in on the design considerations section because it discusses the read/write function that isn’t built into the current version. That’s why you see some add-on components on the hardware used in the demo video.

It seems like this is a lot more user-friendly than the last RFID spoofer we looked at.

Continue reading “Passive RFID Tag Cloning” →

Basic Micro ATOM Nano Giveaway

September 30, 2011 by 43 Comments

basic_micro_atom_nano_giveaway

UPDATE:
As several readers have already noted, these things sold out very quickly – in less than 15 minutes!  Big thanks to Basic Micro!

If you have been considering the purchase of a Basic ATOM Nano product, but you weren’t quite ready to lay down the cash for a dev board and Nano microcontroller, boy to we have a deal for you. The kind folks at Basic Micro informed us that they have 55 Basic ATOM Nano Development boards, complete with Nano 28 microcontrollers that they would like to give away to the Hack a Day community for the low, low cost of $0.

That’s right. Zero. Zip. Zilch.

The dev boards come complete with an LCD header, a small solderless breadboard, USB connectivity, a pair of servo connectors, and more! The Nano 28 is based on the PIC16F886 microcontroller, and features an 8MHz clock,  24 I/O pins, 14K of flash memory, 368 bytes of memory, and 256 bytes of EEPROM storage.

The total value of the package is just around $50, so this is an incredible deal! Basic Micro will even ship your kit to you for free via USPS.

Just add this item to your shopping cart on the Basic Micro site, and use the coupon code “freehack” at checkout – they’ll take care of the rest.

There are a few caveats to this giveaway, and they are as follows:

1) To participate, you must reside within the contiguous United States – i.e. anywhere in the lower 48 (Sorry readers from Alaska or Hawaii!)

2) The offer is limited to one kit per individual. Let’s not be greedy here, give your fellow hackers a chance at this deal as well.

3) Once these dev boards are sold out, they are gone for good. There are no rain checks or back orders available.

4) You must build something cool with your kit and share it with us in our forums or via the tip line*

*Not really, but it would be pretty cool if you did.

[Thanks to Dale at Basic Micro for putting this together for us!]