Monthly Archives: December 2012


Introducing a new serial (SPI) 8-digit seven segment LED display module using MAX7219

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Seven segment LED displays are brighter, more attractive and provide a far viewing distance as well as a wider viewing angle as compared to LCD displays. The major drawback of using seven segment LEDs is they are resource-hungry. Time-division multiplexing is the most common technique of interfacing 7-segment LEDs to microcontrollers. With this technique, an 8-digit seven segment LED display with the decimal point requires at list 16 I/O pins of the microcontroller, which is quite a lot. Consequently, their use with low pin-count microcontrollers (such as PIC12F series) is not practically feasible. Here’s our latest version of the MAX7219 based serial seven

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Netduino Day 2: Interfacing a Character LCD

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Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD) are a great choice of output device for displaying alphanumeric characters in real time. They are also very useful if your project requires an interactive user interface for data input. Besides, they are inexpensive, consume less power than LED displays, and give a more professional look to your project. Today we will explore how to interface an HD44780 based character LCD to Netduino to display alphanumeric characters. For technical details of the HD44780 driver, please read its datasheet as well as its interfacing example with chipKit.

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Netduino Day 1: Basic Input and Output

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We will start our Netduino tutorial series with a very basic project of flashing an LED. The objective of this project is to explore basics of Netduino I/O pins as well as to make sure that everything is setup correctly, including software installation and hardware setup. In this project, we will use an Analog pin to read a potentiometer’s analog output, and a digital pin to flash an LED. The frequency of LED blinking is varied based on the potentiometer output. It will blink at an interval of 10 milliseconds to 1000 milliseconds based on the wiper position of the potentiometer.

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Getting Ready for Netduino / Netduino Plus Tutorials

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Netduino

There are a few things that need to be done besides simply connecting the Netduino to the computer. I will be using Netduino Plus for the tutorials however Netduino and Netduino Plus are more or less the same for our tutorials. Let’s first list all the necessary tidbits: Microsoft Visual Studio (C# or VB) Express 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/products/visual-studio-express-products Using this software we will be writing our codes in VB.NET or C#.NET.   .NET Micro Framework SDK v4.1 http://www.netduino.com/downloads/MicroFrameworkSDK.msi Without this, we will not be able to write code that Netduino (or any Micro Framework supported hardware) will understand.   Netduino SDK

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Support us by preordering TrH Meter kit on Tindie

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We are now accepting pre-orders for the TrH Meter kit through Tindie’s fundraising program, a new feature that they announced a couple days ago. Our target is to receive 20 orders by Dec 31st. So if you pre-order it now, you will get a complete TrH Meter kit for a discounted price of $25 and a thank you note from us for your support in making this funding campaign successful. You will receive a preprogrammed PIC16F688 microcontroller with the kit, which means the kit is ready to go right out of the box. “TrH Meter is a DIY microcontroller-based indoor thermometer

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