µ[micro]electronics info

UBW32

2009-01-05T11:37:15-07:00

A 32bit version of USB bit whacker - more pins, more memory, more power, more fun...

The UBW32 is a small board that you plug into your computer (running Windows, MacOS or Linux) via USB. The USB connection powers the board and allows you to send it commands from the computer. These commands allow you to interface your computer to the real world - like controlling things and getting input from things. The UBW32 can plug into a standard breadboard in several different ways, or you can wire directly to it. You can power it through the USB connection or from an external voltage source. It has 3 push buttons (Reset, and 2 user-defined buttons) and 5 LEDs (Power, USB, and 3 user defined LEDs). It breaks out all of the PIC32's I/O pins to pins around the outside of the board.

Brian Schmalz's UBW32 homepage
Buy UBW32 from SparkFun

4bit MIDI synthesizer

2009-01-05T11:31:03-07:00

Simple AVR-based MIDI monophonic synthesizer.

4bitsynth is a MIDI-controlled digital synthesizer that uses the Atmel AVR ATMega48. Inspired by the NES, the sound is 4-bit. The digital output is put through an R-2R resistor ladder to get the analog waveform.

4bitsynth homepage
Sources

Audio spectrum monitor

2009-01-04T10:09:30-07:00

This analyzer displays an audio wave form in real-time like a digital oscilloscope and a FFT spectrum analysis.

The digitized data blocks are transformed in FFT and it is displayed as spectrum bars into left half (64 dots) of LCD. The wave forms are displayed into right half (58 dots) with edge aligning to still cyclic sygnals.

The FFT operations are done in 16-bit fixed-point. These 128 point FFT processes, applying window, butterfly operations and scalar output, could be executed in real-time (within 7.3 msec). This is pretty fast considering it is processed with only a cheap microcontroller. The spectrum bars are displayed in order of fundamental frequency x 0 (DC component), fundamental frequency x 1, x2, x3, ... from left to right. The sampling frequency is 9.6 kHz and the fundamental frequency (frequency resolution) becomes: 9.6k / 128 = 75Hz.

Audio spectrum monitor

vAVRdisasm

2009-01-04T10:05:56-07:00

vAVRdisasm is an AVR program disassembler. It supports all 136 AVR instructions as defined by the Atmel AVR Instruction Set

This single-pass disassembler can handle Atmel Generic, Intel HEX8, and Motorola S-Record formatted files containing valid AVR program binaries.

vAVRdisasm features a handful of formatting options, including:

* Printing the instruction addresses alongside disassembly, enabled by default
* Printing of the destination comments of relative branch/jump/call instructions, enabled by default
* Ghetto Address Labels (see “Ghetto Address Labels” section)
* Formatting data constants in different bases (hexadecimal, binary, decimal)
* .DW data word directive for data not recognized as an instruction during disassembly.

vAVRdisasm should work on most *nix platform, including a Cygwin environment. vAVRdisasm was written in C by Vanya A. Sergeev - vsergeev at gmail, and tested with the GNU C Compiler.

vAVRdisasm

PIC12F675 video game concept

2009-01-02T09:08:00-07:00

All PONG game is controlled and run by 8 pin PIC12F675 microcontroller that is clocked with 4MHz internal clock generator.

Using microcontrollers with internal 4MHz clock generator there is no need for the xtal. The 12f675 part also operates on wide voltage range, and the regulator can be removed.

At the moment the game software is still under design. Only a simple PAL 625 line test image video output program exists. It compiles with gpasm / gplink.

PIC12F675 Pong video game

Cheap color LCD with Arduino

2009-01-02T08:50:03-07:00

A Nokia 6100 (or 6610) LCD display driver for use with the Arduino micrcontroller platform.

This library is designed for LCD modules with the Epson S1D15G10 controller - the driver is not compatible with its Phillips controller pendant (slightly different command-set) which is in some of the Nokia 6610s.

Basically the driver is capable of doing the following thins:
* specifying the color of a single pixel on the screen
* drawing a line
* drawing a circle
* drawing a rectangel (and fill it if wanted)
* drawing a picture from an array of data converted from .xpm (converter not included in this distribution)
* drawing text (char/string)

Nokia 6610 LCD + Arduino

(See also my pages about these displays with ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers: 6100 LCD

AVR code for Nokia LCD

2009-01-02T08:43:04-07:00

Sample AVR library for controlling the Nokia 6100 LCD.

The sample code was written for an Atmel ATmega644 AVR microcontroller, but should run on the mega16, mega32, mega128, etc. Code is designed to control Spark Fun's Nokia-like graphic color LCD with an Atmel AVR microcontroller.

The code uses C++ classes. If you have ever forgotten to set the direction register for an output, or neglected to call a setup function to initialize a counter, you'll appreciate that the class constructors automatically take care of all the setup required for each object.

Sample Atmel AVR Code for the Spark Fun Nokia-like graphic color LCD

Simple AVR LCD terminal

2009-01-01T16:50:31-07:00

An AVR LCD terminal for the serial port with character LCD and pushbuttons

The terminal has a LCD display, four buttons, eight LEDs and IR remote receiver. It's connected to the computer by RS-232 interface. The LCD display has a HD44780 compatible LCD controller and the 4-bit interface is used to send data to the LCD controller.

AVR LCD terminal

Yakko project

2009-01-01T16:44:47-07:00

Yakko is an open source home automation project based on yakko protocol. Yakko Protocol is the standard protocol used to communicate over a yakko network.

Yakko Protocol is the standard protocol used to communicate over a yakko 485 serial network. It represents the logical structure used to connect electrical and electronic objects.
Yakko network is a peer to peer network with no master devices.

Every objects (lamps, switchers, probes, etc) are physically connected to a YAKKO DEVICE (YD) which represents a gate to the network.Eight objects could be connected to one YD

Yakko Project

Crypto AVR library

2008-12-30T11:08:11-07:00

Crypto-avr-lib is a set of implementations of different cryptographic primitives.

Due to the special limitations of microcontrollers (very raw space, RAM and flash are ranging from a few bytes to a few KiB) reference or "normal" optimised implementations are not useable. Therefore authors tries to provide special implementations which respect the extrem limited resources of microcontroller applications.

The library features:

Blockciphers XTEA, CAST5, Camellia, Skipjack, Noekeon, RC5, RC6, SEED, DES, TDES (aka EDE-DES, 3DES), SHABEA, Serpent, Present

Streamciphers ARCFOUR (RC4 compatible), Trivium, Grain

Hashes SHA-256, SHA-1, MD5, HMAC-SHA256 (following RFC 2104), PRNG

Crypto-avr-lib

ZX Spectrum hardware

2008-12-29T09:10:49-07:00

A book about the ULA chip and other hardware information.

There is a lot of detail information about Speccy HW on the ZX Spectrum Technical FAQ pages. If you're planning to write your own emulator or build own ZX clone, these pages are essential for you. You find info about undocumented Z80 instructions, the R register, about the ULA timing and other non-usual and not well-known advices.

"The Sinclair ZX Spectrum ULA" is pitched to be readable by the novice, but quickly moves into more complicated territory, and would be readable by anyone with a general interest who can follow boolean logic, the electronics hobbyist, the electronic engineering student, retro-hardware fan or just a piece of shelf-candy for the Sinclair freak. It gives a thorough discussion of Ferranti, their ULA and a detailed examination of every functional unit of the Sinclair design. It introduces each idea from the ground up and tries not to make the assumption that the reader has read the particular subject matter before. However it does not dwell on the basics, as there are plenty of texts available that can develop those areas further.

Chris Smith's Inside the Ferranti ULA - (Orders)

ZX Badaloc

2008-12-28T07:28:50-07:00

A powerful 48K/128K ZX-Spectrum clone

Original Badaloc is based on 3 Xilinx CPLDs (one XCR3384XL 144 pin (ula3) and two XC9572XL 44 pin (I/O and Keyboard/mouse/joystick)), a PIC16F877 (PS/2 keyboard, PS/2 mouse, programmable 10-inputs joystick), a 20MHz Z80, an 85MHz main oscillator, a few memory chips, an AY sound chip, an sd/mmc slot and a real time clock/calendar with cmos ram and lithium battery backup. The Keyboard cpld is also connected to a spectrum-style 40 keys local matrix-keyboard so the PS/2 keybd is not strictly necessary.

Video output: VGA monitor, @100Hz vertical retrace with on-board scan converter, built in the ULA3 cpld. Two video modes: the ZX-Spectrum standard 256x192 pixel (with 32 pixel border) and the hi-res 320x256 pixel full screen mode, with 4 bit per pixel (R, G, B, Bright).

ZX Badaloc

ZX Badaloc Reloaded has been developed by the same author and runs on the Xilinx Spartan 3E evaluation board HW-SPAR3E-SK-UNI-G featuring an XC3S500E fpga. A small modification is required to improve the 8-color VGA output, but the board can run the clone AS IT IS, just missing the brightness control on ZX-Spectrum screen. Once uploaded to the FPGA via Jtag or the usb cable provided in the kit, Z80 firmware (the system bootrom and Sinclair ROMs or whatever) can be flashed on the onboard nonvolatile memory using the Z80 itself, in conjunction with the ZX-Com program (see the quickstart instructions).

Badaloc FPGA reloaded

If you have an cheap AVNet Spartan kit, you may be interested in the Badaloc Nano

Sanguino

2008-12-27T08:33:38-07:00

A bit more powerful than Arduino, but compatible with Arduino: Sanguino.

Sanguino specification:

# atmega644P core
# 32 total general purpose I/O pins (some are multipurpose)
# 8 analog pins
# 6 PWM pins
# 64K flash memory
# 4K RAM
# 2K EEPROM
# completely through-hole construction
# breadboard compatible
# 100% open source
# compatible with Arduino 0012 with minimal hacking

Link: Sanguino

NerdKits

2008-12-26T22:29:11-07:00

These kits are based around an Atmel ATtiny26L or ATmega168 microcontroller (MCU). Each has a CPU, permanent storage (flash memory), temporary storage (static RAM), and inputs and outputs.

The most significant feature which sets us apart from other kits is that we include a LCD screen with your kit, capable of displaying 24x2 characters. For any projects that require a person to interact with the circuit, an LCD screen is an essential device. Typical development kits (targeted at full-time electrical engineers, not beginners who need more guidance) often charge significantly more to include LCDs.

NerdKits

HappyJTAG2

2008-12-26T22:23:51-07:00

JTAG and SPI AVR8 interface.

This construction is based on HappyJTAG Idea, to implement JTAG interface into target avr system and debug it remotly via USB, without specific JTAGICE hardware. This version uses specialized FT2232 chip, which has integrated JTAG interface on chip. It radically reduces USB interface communication and speed up overall process. There are two channels in FT2232, Channel A is used for JTAG and channel B is still free for standart serial communication between target and host PC.

Unfortunatly, the FT2232 chip requires more components than FT232 to work. For example, external crystal oscillator, few more resistors and so on. But the result is balanced, because of overall performance is 100 times better if you compere with original HappyJTAG version.

HappyJTAG2