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ChronosMega: Another LED wrist watch

Posted on May 3, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

Designed by Nick, a BSEE student at Oakland University, ChronosMega is an Atmega328-based wrist watch that is battery-powered (3.7V rechargeable Li-Ion) and displays time (hours and minutes) in binary format using 10 LEDs. The LEDs are arranged in a special circular pattern, where the four LEDs in upper half circle displays hours and the remaining six LEDs in the lower half circle display minute. The watch also contains an USB charger onboard, which uses Microchip’s MCP73831 charge management controller IC. There are four tact switches for user interface that controls the time setting, display, and sleep mode operation. Time keeping is performed using the 8-bit Timer2 module of Atmega328, which is programmed to count 10th of a second asynchronously from the system. For precise Timer2 operation, a 32.768 kHz crystal is used for the XTAL pins of Atmega328.

ChronosMega: A DIY LED wrist watch

chipKIT Project 5: Digital stopwatch on seven segment LED display

Posted on May 3, 2014 by R-B 6 comments

In this project, we will use the chipKIT Uno32 board to build a digital stopwatch capable of timing minutes, seconds, and 1/10th of seconds, and with a basic start and stop control feature. A MAX7219-driven 8-digit seven segment LED display is used to display the time elapsed. The Reset switch on the Uno32 board will be used to reset the current time back to 0 when the stopwatch is stopped.

Digital stopwatch displays time on seven segment LEDs

chipKIT digital stopwatch project illustration

ATtiny85 based Compact Data Acquisition Device

Posted on May 2, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

This project, named IViny, is about an easy-to-build USB based data acquisition device using ATtiny85 MCU that communicates to a PC using V-USB. It is capable of logging data to the computer at 150 samples/sec. It features:

2 channels 0 – 5V and 0 – 3V digital input/output
2 channels 0 – 5V 10 bit analog input
Channel maximum current 20 mA
ATTiny85 based
USB supply, no need external supply
V-USB based communication
PC user interface
150 Samples/sec
50 mm x 33 mm x 17 mm

IViny: A tiny datalogger device using ATtiny85

Distance meter using GPS and Arduino

Posted on April 28, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

A group of students at Indiana university has built an Arduino-based distance measuring tool as their class project. It is a handheld device that measures the distance between any two points using the latitude and longitude coordinates (received from GPS satellite) of the points. It provides distance output in Yards and is useful for sports applications, such as in golfing to compute the distance between where a ball is hit and where it ends up.

GPS distance measuring

Hackaday announces a hardware contest; the winner goes to space

Posted on April 28, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

Hackaday has announced an open hardware design contest today for the worldwide community of hackers and the grand prize winner will receive a free trip to space or $196,418 cash.

We want the next evolution of connected devices to happen now and we want it to be Open. Why shouldn’t Hackaday be the biggest cheerleader, encourager, and enabler for the cause of Open Hardware?

Build a piece of hardware that moves past the rut of “Internet-enabled refrigerators” and billion dollar thermostats (we couldn’t resist). Think big, come up with a piece of hardware that has the potential to change the lives of many. Or just build something silly and fun. But do it at a high level, and share your work. We’re not disqualifying entries that don’t share their secrets, but we are giving a strong judging preference on just how open each design will be.

This is about doing, not about about waiting for something to happen.
The Hackaday Prize will send one person into space for building the next evolution of hardware.

The Hackaday Prize

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