November | 2010 | Embedded Lab

Monthly Archives: November 2010

Choosing a PIC Programmer

Posted on November 5, 2010 by R-B 25 comments

If you are a beginner in the world of PIC microcontrollers then you will probably have this question in your mind: Which programmer should I buy? This is an obvious question because there are tons of PIC programmers available from various vendors and if you search on the various online technical discussion forums for their reviews, everybody has his own opinion. This will confuse you more, and you will be ended up with nothing. I would suggest, just buy one that you can afford and that fulfills your need. Having said that, I won’t recommend to buy one that requires

Digital oscilloscope using Atmega32 and GLCD

Posted on November 4, 2010 by R-B One comment

This project describes how to make a digital oscilloscope using an Atmega32 microcontroller and a graphics LCD. The GLCD used has 64*128 pixel dots (GDM12864A with KS0108 processor) and the AVR runs at 16 MHz using an external crystal oscillator. To enhance the speed further, it uses an external A/D converter chip, ADC0820. The sampling rate is 650K samples per second. The maximum range of frequency display is 60 KHz. The input impedance of the oscilloscope is about 1 M? and the voltage range of input signal is ± 0.01 – 250V. Read More

PIC16F688 breadboard module for quick prototyping

Posted on November 3, 2010 by R-B 2 comments

This module is based upon the basic setup circuit for PIC16F688 that I have described in one of my PIC lessons, Getting ready for the first lab. I thought of soldering this circuit on a general purpose ptototyping board and use male headers to access the power supply pins and I/O ports of the PIC16F688 microcontroller. This will free up a lot of space on the breadboard as the ICSP header and the reset switch are transferred from the breadboard to the module. This will make prototyping on the breadboard easier and quicker. The general layout of the module is shown

AM radio transmission using AVR

Posted on November 2, 2010 by R-B Leave a comment

When you think about building a radio transmitter circuit, the first thing that comes in mind is it requires too many analog components. But wait a minute, this guy demonstrates an AM transmission using a microcontroller. The interesting part is it uses a plant as an antenna for transmission. This project is based on Atmega324 microcontroller, internally clocked at 8 MHz, and it generates a modulated AM signal using internal timers and counters. It uses TC1 timer/counter to generate a PWM signal of approximately 540 KHz. This is the carrier frequency. You know that before AM transmission, the high frequency

USB business card with a computer chip

Posted on November 1, 2010 by R-B 2 comments

Have you ever seen a business card with a computer chip embedded on it? This one does. It has an ATtiny85 microcontroller chip that stores all your personal details. You plug it into an USB port of your computer, and find the details about the person opened into a text editor. The firmware uses V-USB (which is a software only implementation of USB) that allows the ATtiny85 microcontroller to act as an USB keyboard device, and type the stored info into the open text editor window.