SquareWear 2.0 A Wearable Opensource Arduino

January 12, 2014 by James Hobson 37 Comments

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Are you guys tired of redesigned Arduinos yet? Usually we are, but [Ray] just released the SquareWear 2.0, and we have to admit, it’s a pretty slick design.

It’s an update to SquareWear 1.1 which we covered a year ago. That version made use of a 18F14K50 microcontroller, measured a tiny 1.6″ x 1.6″ and could easily be sewn into wearable circuits. But after receiving lots of requests to design a new Arduino based board, [Ray] obliged and made v2.0.

The new SquareWear is slightly bigger, measuring in at 1.7″ x 1.7″, but it packs a much bigger and more functional punch — just check out the image schematic above! The only catch is it doesn’t actually have a USB-to-serial chip on-board, which is why [Ray] was able to get the board so small and inexpensive. Instead it simulates USB in the software using the V-USB library. That method is much slower but still functional. To perform serial communication through the USB port it uses the onboard USBasp bootloader.

The board also features large through-holes to accommodate sew-able pin pads, making it super easy to integrate this into fabric!

For a complete explanation of the SquareWear 2.0, check out the video after the break.

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Cloning The Trinket For A USB Volume Knob

November 14, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

A while back, [Rupert] wrote a blog post on using V-USB with the very small, 8-pin ATtiny85. Since then, the space of dev boards for 8-pin micros with USB has exploded, the most recent being Adafruit’s Trinket. [Rupert] liked what he saw with the Trinket bootloader and decided to clone the circuit into a useful package. Thus was born an awesome looking USB volume knob complete with a heavy aluminum knob, rotary encoder, and RGB LED strip.

[Rupert] got his V-USB/ATtiny85/rotary encoder circuit working, and at the expense of a ‘mute’ control, also added an awesome looking RGB LED ring powered by Adafruit’s Neopixels. The PCB [Rupert] fabbed is pretty well suited for being manufactured one-sided. If you’ve ever wanted an awesome volume knob for your computer, all the files are available form [Rupert]’s blog.

Just as an aside, [Rupert] has been working on getting the Trinket bootloader working on the ATtiny84, a very similar microcontroller to the ’85, but with eight analog pins. It’s a neat device that I’ve made a small V-USB breakout board for, but like [Rupert], I’m stuck on porting the bootloader. If anyone has the Trinket/Gemma firmware running on an ATtiny84, send that in. We’ll put it up.

Serial USB For Any AVR Microcontroller

October 23, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 30 Comments

If you’re using an AVR microcontroller and you’d like to add USB to a project, there are a lot of options out there for you. Both LUFA and V-USB add some USB functionality to just about every AVR micro, but if you’d like a native serial port, your only options are to look towards the USB-compatible Atmel micros.

[Ray] looked at the options for adding a USB serial port and didn’t like what he saw; seemingly, this was an impossible task without a second, more capable microcontroller. Then he had an idea: if the goal is only to transfer data back and forth between a computer and a microcontroller, why not write an HID-class USB serial port?

[Ray] based his project on The V-USB library and created a new HID descriptor to transfer data between a micro and a computer. While it won’t work with a proper terminal such as Putty, [Ray] managed to whip up a serial monitor program in Processing that’s compatible with Windows, Linux and OS X.

In the video below, you can see [Ray] using an ATmega328p with a standard V-USB setup. He’s transferring analog values from a photoresistor as a proof of concept, but just about everything that would work with a normal serial port will work with [Ray]’s library.

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Business Card Draws [ch00f]’s Logo

March 27, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 23 Comments

[ch00f] is at it again, expanding the horizons of the art of PCB business cards. This one draws his logo on any computer over a USB port.

The physical design of the card is heavily inspired by [Frank Zhao]’s card; both use an ATtiny85 and the V-USB package to handle the USB protocol and communications. Instead of typing words into a text editor like [Frank]’s, [ch00f]’s card draws the ch00ftech logo in MS Paint or other image editor.

There was a problem with simply emulating the mouse to draw a logo on the screen, though; because different computers have different mouse settings for acceleration, the ch00ftech logo was nearly always distorted. [ch00f] fixed that by emulating an absolute input device, basically turning his business card into a single-function pen tablet.

The logo was traced by hand and put into a few arrays in the firmware. Surprisingly, the logo didn’t take up much space – only 4k of the tiny85’s flash is used. There’s a lot more space for a more complicated drawing, but for now the simple ch00ftech logo (video after the break) will do.

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MSP430 Bit Banged USB 1.1

December 3, 2012 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

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Here’s a rather exciting development for those who work with MSP430 microcontrollers. [M-atthias] worked out a way to implement USB 1.1 on a MSP430G2452. He’s bit banging the communications as this hardware normally doesn’t support the Universal Serial Bus. This is much like using the V-USB stack for AVR micros.

The test hardware seen above uses an 18Mhz crystal to get the timings just right. As this squeezes the most out of the chip it should come as no surprise that the firmware is written in assembly. This is still quite early on in development but the core features are mostly there, having been implemented and debugged over several versions already. Currently the base functionality can be loaded using under 2k of flash memory. You can download the Mecrisp package from [M-atthias’] sourceforge page. If you want to lend a hand testing or developing it would be greatly appreciated.

[via 43oh blog]

Bootloader Brings USB, Firmware Updating To The ATtiny85

October 9, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 14 Comments

[Jenna] sent in a very cool bootloader she thought people might like. It’s called Micronucleus and it turns the lowly ATtiny 85 into a chip with a USB interface capable of being upgraded via a ‘viral’ uploader program. Micronucleus weighs in at just over 2 kB, making it one of the smallest USB-compatible bootloaders currently available.

The USB support comes from V-USB, a project that puts a virtual USB port on a suite of AVR microcontrollers. With V-USB, it’s easy to turn a Tiny85 into a keyboard, custom joystick, data logger, or computer-attached LED display.

One very interesting feature of Micronucleus is the ‘viral updater’ feature. This feature takes a new piece of firmware, and writes it to a Tiny85, disabling the current bootloader. If you’re designing a project that should have a means of updating the firmware via USB instead of the usual AVR programmer, this might be the bootloader for you.

Not bad for a bootloader that emphasizes small code size. At just over 2 kB, it’s possible to use this bootloader on the similar, smaller, and somewhat cheaper ATtiny45.

USB Dongle For Unmodified NES Controllers

July 19, 2012 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

This USB dongle will let you use your unmodified NES controllers on a computer. That’s because it includes the same socket you’d find on the classic console.

The image above shows the prototype. Instead of etching the copper clad board, each trace was milled by hand (presumably with a rotary tool). To the left the black square is made of several layers of electrical tape that builds the substrate up enough to fit snugly in a USB port.

An ATtiny45 running the V-USB stack has no problem reading the controller data and formatting it for use as a USB device. This is actually the second iteration of the project. The first attempt used an ATtiny44 and a free-formed circuit housed inside the controller. It worked quite well, but required alterations to the circuit board, and you needed to replace the stock connector with a USB plug. This dongle allows the controller to go unaltered so it can be used with an NES console again in the future.