Handheld pocket health monitor

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This health monitor may become a dream of many people while it is capable to monitor most of human bio-signals including ECG, EMG, GSR, Pulse Oximetry, Temperature, Breathing sounds and even movement with 3 axis accelerometer.   This health monitor is based on Texas Instruments MSP430 MCU which is characterizes as low power microcontroller. Data is sent via blue-tooth to Pocket PC where data is analysed and displayed as graphs. Also data is recorded to dataflash for backup. Continue reading

DIY AVR tetris game

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This is simple tetris game clone developed by Johannes Treu.   The game consists of separate boards: one for LED display where 240 LEDs are aligned one for Atmega8 microcontroller board with other circuitry and pushbutton board. The idea looks nice-feels like I want to play the game couple times. If you want too, then go ahead. All files are available at avrfreaks site or you can download circuit and source here. Continue reading

AVR dot-matrix LED game

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This simple game console if we can say so is built under AVR Atmega168. Game display is made of 16×16 dot matrix LED.   Game platform has many variations and upgrades line interfacing to TV, AT keyboard, LCD. Author also provides nice collection of ready to play games for free including “Space Fight” , “Super car” and others. Continue reading

PIC based multifunction waveform generator

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Luhan Monat have various hobby circuits mostly based on PIC microcontrollers. One of then that catches the eye is function generator which is capable to generate sine, triangle, saw, burst, sweep and noise signals.   In his design he used PIC16F870 and R2R resistor ladder as DAC output. He stored signals in lookup tables 256x8bits. Running at 20MHz generator is capable to give clean 60kHz (1Hz accuracy) sine-wave adjustable in 1, 25 and 500Hz steps. Because of limited performance he only used three LEDs indicating which waveform is used and another three LEDs for step rate indication. Author includes circuit, source files. Continue reading

Animatronic hawk controlled by PIC MCU

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Chris Merck have sent us an animatronic hawk project which was used as a prop for the movie “Lady Hawk”. He have made 7 axis motion: wings, tail, beak, body and 3D head motion. In the video bird looks like real and alive.   For bird control he used Microchip PIC16F627 microcontroller which forms and sends RC signals to hawk servos. Author also provides ASM source code where you can study the hawk control logic. Im just wandering how did he put all 7 servos inside the hawk and kept it look like real. Nice job. Continue reading

Simple digital capacitance meter

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ChaN has this simple capacitance meter in its collection as nice experimental toy. Capacitance meter uses integration method.   Device measures capacitor charge time. As there is no ADC in AT90S2313 microcontroller there is and analog comparator functionality used with special technique. After some calibration he managed to get pretty good results. Firmware and circuit are included. Continue reading