Turn-key PCB assembly services in prototype quantities or low-volume to mid-volume production runs

Movement tracker with accelerometer

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This device so called Station Master is small key ring sized device which tracks movement in the train. As train goes, device vibrates, but when train stops, it generates alarm after predefined number of stops. So you don’t miss your station. Device is based on Atiny13 microcontroller and MMA7260 3 axis accelerometer from Freescale. Alarm is generated by cell phone vibro motor.   Project files include schematic and assembly program which is very compact due to smart program optimisation – especially filter part, where movement signal is detected from noise pattern. Continue reading

8×8 LED animation with PIC

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This is simple fun PIC project which may fir Christmas decoration. Circuit is simple – 8×8 LEDs are connected to PIC19F84 via 74HC374 buffer sharing same microcontroller port.   All you have to do is to burn firmware to se demos, or you can program your own patterns by modifying assembler program. And of course be sure to align LEDs perfectly or use 8×8 LED matrix.   Continue reading

Nice bunch of fresh AT89 projects

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If you are looking for ready AT89 microcontroller projects this is a place to start. Ajay have gathered more than 10 of them. Programs of the projects are written in pure assembly language. Each project have circuit diagram included. Projects include: Auto Control of three phase Induction motor, Automatic College Bell, Automatic plant Irrigation, Automatic Room light Controller with Visitor Counter, Biomedical Monitoring System, Device Controlling through PC, Digital Visitor Counter, DS1820 Based Temperature Controller, Electronic Voting Machine, Fire Fighting Robot and even more older ones. Binu have more cool related information that may be interesting to read.   Continue reading

110V ac from 12V DC generator based on 89S2051

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Didik Rostyono developed nice converter from battery povered 12V DC power supply to 110V and 50Hz wave.   To acchieve this he used microcontroller 89S2051, MOSFET switching circuit and transformer. Output signal then is filtered where higher harmonics of signal are filtered and signal appears to be sinusoidal. It is hard to say what loads this circuit is cappable to drive, but this design [perfectly suits for learning purposes. Continue reading

Power AVR microcontroller with AA battery compactly

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Tired of using huge batteries in embedded design? Well Guy from Spritesmod managed to power AVR microcontroller from single AA battery with simple circuitry which is driven by AVR microcontroller itself. As industrial devices uses DC-DC converters to rise voltages like from 1.5V to 5V and so on, there is same principal used as well, just DC-DC converter control is done bu AVR MCU itself.   He didn’t use dedicated PWM control chip, but managed to drive converter with PWM generated with Attiny13 this way occupying one timer for this. Here is this fancy circuit. Of course to before MCU can generate control signal it has to start, for this there is starter button used, which rises voltage for short time to suitable when pushed. Then microcontroller starts and continues powering itself. With MOSFET switch efficiency of circuit reaches up to 73 percent. Main advantages of such powering method are low part count, soft poer off. But in other hand efficiency is still quite low and there is timer and one MCU pin occupied. Continue reading

Cornell University AVR student projects

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At the end of academic year ECE476 Cornell University students produced about 40 new projects mostly based on Atmega32. As every year students have their responsibility to choose their own final project. So there you can find various interesting ideas and designs including video games, robots, MIDI synthesizers, clocks, speech recognitions and so on.   Projects here are accumulated since 1999 Spring(over 200 older projects). So you can surf inside pretty big knowledge base and find ideas, solutions and inspiration for your own designs.   Continue reading