Author Archives: R-B

A DIY I/O board for experimenters

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I remember when I first stepped into the world of embedded electronics, I started with doing some basic microcontroller circuits on a breadboard. Breadboard is a wonderful tool for prototyping and testing circuits. When the test of a circuit is successful, you can dissemble it and the board is ready for a new circuit. While working on breadboard was a great learning experience, it was little bit frustrating sometimes when you realized after dissembling a circuit that you have to put it together again or just a part of it for your new project. It happens very often because most embedded projects require some common stuff, basically I/O devices such as switches, LEDs, LCD display, buzzer, etc. Connecting these things on the breadboard for every new project is time consuming and boring. If you are a newbie and having the similar experience, here I suggest a general purpose I/O board that will not only reduce your prototyping time but also free up plenty of space on the breadboard for your project.

DIY I/O board for experimenters

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MikroElektronika’s “Ready for PIC” board talks to “Processing”

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“Ready for PIC“ is one of MikroElektronika‘s compact prototyping boards for 28 and 40 pin PIC microcontrollers. The board comes with PIC16F887 microcontroller which is preprogrammed with an UART bootloader firmware and thus eliminates the need of an external programmer. The on-board USB-UART module allows the serial data transfer between the PIC and a PC using an USB cable. It has also got a reasonable size prototyping area to add more functionalities to the board as required. These features make this board an ideal candidate for doing embedded projects that require PC interfacing. This article first reviews the basic features of the Ready for PIC board and then demonstrates how to write a PC application in Processing (an open source programming language) to communicate with the board through the on-board USB-UART module.

Ready for PIC board and PC interfacing using Processing

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TI’s TTL logic data book for $0.10, shipping included!

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Yes, that’s true. Texas Instruments is offering their 1988 TTL Logic Data Book for only $0.10 that includes shipping in the United States. TI says the book covers everything from standard TTL and Schottky TTL circuits to CMOS logic and VSLI processors. It also explains function tables, parameter measurement information and typical characteristics related to TTL products.

TI's TTL data book

Hurry up! I just ordered two for $.10 each. Here is the link.

Via: Dangerous Prototypes

Received my two copies of TTL Data Book yesterday through Fedex for only $0.20

Wireless data transmission between two PIC microcontrollers using low-cost RF modules

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A lot of times we need to keep track of data from a device or a sensor located in a remote location from the point where it is processed. In other situations we desire wireless solutions for ease.  Using long cables, infrared (IR) or other means are often tedious and not loss-less. Imagine collecting pH level data from a chemically lethal or toxic treatment plant where human presence is highly health hazardous. Running long cables from the pH sensor to the control or monitor station will surely introduce noisy signals and signal-to-noise ratio will thus drastically decrease. The result is erroneous data acquisition and thereby false decisions may be generated. If infrared signals or other optical means including lasers are used, they will need good obstacle-free line of sight or expensive and delicate optical fibers. Thus the solution stays in the radio frequency (RF) domain. This article talks about interfacing low cost RF modules (KST-TX01 and KST-RX806) for transmitting data between two remotely located PIC microcontrollers.

Data broadcast using RF modules

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