OLED Displays And Small Microcontrollers

January 9, 2011 by Mike Szczys 22 Comments

If you’ve ever thought of utilizing a small and inexpensive OLED display in your project [Rossum] has the details you need to get started. In the past we’ve seen him take a tour of available LCD screens and this is much the same, detailing his look at three different models. In the video after the break each is connected to a driver board that he made. The boards have two important components, the first is a boost driver for the 12-16V input the screens need, the second is an octal buffer necessary if you are using a 5V microcontroller. These take care of the hardware considerations, making it simple to drive them with a chip of your choosing.

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200 Mile RF Transmitter (and High Altitude Balloon)

July 27, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 48 Comments

If there is one thing we like, it’s a fellow hacker so enthusiastic about his or her work that they write the article practically for us by including as much detail and information as possible.

In this two part hack, [Scott] wrote in to let us know not only about a high school built high altitude balloon, but also his $5 long range RF transmitter. The former is simply GPS and video data logged over the flight, but [Scott’s] specialty comes in the latter. A 74HC240 octal buffer is using to amplify the signal (Morse code) from an ATTiny44a with a 29MHz oscillator, producing a usable signal as far away as 200 miles.

It is low bandwidth, but if you’re looking for a simple transmitter in your project and need something with more power (and a smaller package), this might be the ticket.