adc

95 Articles

Adding A Battery Gauge To A Project With Zero Parts

November 8, 2014 by 41 Comments

The typical way of doing a low battery detector is throwing a comparator in the circuit, setting it to measure a certain threshold voltage, and sending that signal off to a microcontroller or other circuit to notify someone the battery is going dead. [Josh] has a simpler way using an 8-bit AVR and zero other parts.

The chip [Josh] is using is the ATtiny84. The ADC in this chip is usually used to measure an unknown voltage against a reference voltage. The trick [Josh] is using is to do this in reverse: The internal 1.1 Volt reference voltage is measured against an unknown scale, namely the input voltage.

The value provided by the ADC on the chip will always be Vin times 1024 over the reference voltage. Since Vin will be 1.1 V in this case, the ADC value is known, it’s only a matter of doing some 6th grade algebra to determine the value of the input voltage.

[Josh] put together a small demonstration where the chip blinks out the number of volts its receiving from a bench power supply. By blinking a LED, it can blink out the current value of VCC as integers, but by using this technique you should be able to get a fairly fine-grained reading of what VCC actually is. Video below.

Continue reading “Adding A Battery Gauge To A Project With Zero Parts” →

Very Large Touchpads For Very Old Computers

November 6, 2014 by 27 Comments

Way back when most of our demographic was in diapers, engineering workstations had huge touchscreens for plotting drawings in CAD programs, drawing, and just about everything a Wacom tablet does today. Finding one of these touch pads now is a fool’s errand, more so than finding the computer it was attached to, but [Daniel] figured out a way to relive those days of large touchpads and old computers with a resistive touchscreen and an MSX computer (portuguese, google translatrix).

[Daniel] is using a touchscreen normally used for a monitor, and with the right bit of code on a PIC16F micro, pressure on the touchscreen can be translated into X and Y coordinates. Using the PIC was a great choice in this instance: it’s possible to multiplex ports on an ADC pin with a PIC, making the entire system extremely efficient and easy to calibrate.

After that, it’s just a matter of plugging the output of the microcontroller into the touchpad connector of the MSX and writing a few lines of BASIC to draw a point on the screen. Video below.

Continue reading “Very Large Touchpads For Very Old Computers” →

A Hackable Hi-Fi Audio DSP

August 20, 2014 by 31 Comments

DSP 01 Hi-fi Signal Processor

 

Audiophiles tend to put analog systems on a pedestal. Analog systems can provide great audio performance, but they tend to be quite costly. They’re also hard to tinker with, since modifying parameters involves replacing components. To address this, [tshen2] designed the DSP 01.

The DSP 01 is based around the Analog Devices ADAU1701. This DSP chip includes two ADCs for audio input, and four DACs for audio output. These can be controlled by the built in DSP processor core, which has I/O for switches, buttons, and knobs.

[tshen2]’s main goal with the DSP 01 was to implement an audio crossover. This device takes an input audio signal and splits it up based on frequency so that subwoofers get the low frequency components and tweeters get the higher frequency components. This is critical for good audio performance since drivers can only perform well in a certain part of the audio spectrum.

Analog Devices provides SigmaStudio, a free tool that lets you program the DSP using a drag-and-drop interface. By dropping a few components in and programming to EEPROM, the DSP can be easily reconfigured for a variety of applications.

Using Surface Mount Devices On A Breadboard

July 25, 2014 by 17 Comments

[Czar] was working on a project with the Raspberry Pi using the MCP3008 analog to digital converter. The surface mount SOIC version of this chip was slightly cheaper, and there’s always a way to make that work (Portuguese, Google Translation). How [Czar] did it is fairly impressive, as it’s a bit more flexible for breadboard designs than a through-hole version, and done correctly, is an extremely sturdy hack.

A few new leads needed to be soldered onto the SOIC package, and for this [Czar] chose jumper wires. This makes each pin easy to plug into a solderless breadboard, and since [Czar] was extremely clever, all the wires for power, ground, analog, and SPI are color coded.

Simply soldering a few jumper wires onto a chip won’t last for very long. To solve this problem, [Czar] potted the entire chip and its connections with hot glue. Probably not the best solution, and a heavy-duty epoxy would have been better, but the current build is more than enough to stand up to the relatively minor abuse it will receive on the workbench.

ADC For Raspi Without Using An ADC

July 13, 2014 by 22 Comments

Schematic of ACD for a raspi

With all the amazing and wonderful things a Raspberry Pi can do, it is sorely lacking a dedicated ADC chip. Sure, you can wire up an ADC via SPI or even I2C with a little work, but still. It would be nice to have access to an Analog to Digital converter without having to go through the trouble. Fortunately, [Hussam] has figured out a way to do just this.

Using a comparator, two resistors, a single capacitor and a few lines of code, [Hussam] managed to get an active ADC working on his Raspberry Pi. He’s using the PWM1 and a passive RC filter to make a DAC. He then uses the comparator along with a ‘ successive approximation algorithm’ to complete the ADC.

[Hussam] mentions that the hack is not new, and this technique has been used before for microcrotrollers that lack a built-in ADC. But we are still impressed with his attention to detail in describing how to do this on a Raspi. Be sure to check out the link for full details, code, and an awesome description on how his algorithm works.

The Analog Swiss Army Knife

June 19, 2014 by 33 Comments

11300

While FPGAs get all the credit for being the hip new thing, they are inherently digital devices. Without a proper ADC and DAC, you won’t be delving into the analog domain with your programmable logic. Maxim has just put out a chip that does just that: an analog swiss army knife with 20 pins that are configurable as analog to digital converter, digital to analog converters, GPIO, or any mix of the above.

The MAX11300 includes twenty IO ports, each capable of becoming an ADC, DAC, or GPIO, with pairs of ports capable of being configured as a logic level translator or an analog switch. The ADCs and DACs are 12-bit, with input and output ranges from -10V to +10V.

As a nice little bonus, the chip is controlled over SPI, making this an interesting device for a small “do anything analog” tool we’re sure will hit Tindie or Seeed Studio before the year is out. Luckily for whoever would create such a device, Maxim has a nice GUI for configuring each of the 20 pins on their chip, Of course Maxim already offers an evaluation kit for the MAX11300. It’s $100 USD and is Windows only.

The MAX11300 is available in either 40-pin TQFN or 48-pin TQFP packages (with the larger, easier to solder TQFP shipping later) for about $5.80 USD in quantity 1000, or $11.37 in quantity one.Video below showing off the MAX11300 reading and writing analog values to a few pins, and a good look at the configuration software.

Continue reading “The Analog Swiss Army Knife” →

The Difference Between Bitcrushers And Sample Rate Reducers

August 25, 2013 by 23 Comments

bit

If you look around a few electronic music forums, you’ll see a lot of confusion over the difference between a bitcrusher – a filter that reduces the bit depth of an audio signal – and a sample rate reducer – a filter that does exactly what its name implies. With the popularization of 8-bit and retro synth music, this difference is obviously of grave import of concern to saints and kings alike. [Michael] is more than happy to walk us through the difference with real-time sample and bit rate adjustment with his audio hacker board.

The audio hacker board is an Arduino shield with a 12-bit DAC and a 12-bit ADC. With two 1/8″ jacks and a pair of pots, [Michael] was easily able to whip up a sketch that is able to adjust the sample rate and bit depth of an audio signal in real-time.

Contrary to nearly everyone’s opinion of what ‘8-bit’ music is, it’s actually the sample rate that makes music sound like a cassette deck jury rigged into a Nintendo Entertainment System. Reducing the bitrate just makes any audio source sound louder and worse.

Check out the excellent demo video of the effect of bitcrushers and sample rate reducers below.

Continue reading “The Difference Between Bitcrushers And Sample Rate Reducers” →