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Revised version of the PIC12F microcontrollers breakout board

Posted on February 3, 2013 by R-B One comment

The 12F series of PIC microcontrollers are handy little 8-pin devices designed for small embedded applications that do not require too many I/O resources, and where small size is advantageous. These applications include a wide range of everyday products such as hair dryers, electric toothbrushes, rice cookers, vacuum cleaners, coffee makers, and blenders. Despite their small size, the PIC12F series microcontrollers offer interesting features including wide operating voltage, internal programmable oscillator, 4 channels of 10-bit ADC, on-board EEPROM memory, on-chip voltage reference, multiple communication peripherals (UART, SPI, and I2C), PWM, and more. This is a revised version of the previous

Soldering instructions for the TrH Meter kit

Posted on January 3, 2013 by R-B 7 comments

First of all I would like to thank all of those who preordered the TrH Meter kits during the fundraising campaign that we ran on Tindie. It’s because of your support that we successfully launched this project. Please follow the soldering instructions provided below while building the TrH Meter.

Soldering the SPI7SEGDISP8.56 serial 8-digit seven segment LED display kit

Posted on January 1, 2013 by R-B One comment

SPI7SEGDISP8.56 is a MAX7219 based serial 8-digit seven segment LED display module. With this display module, you can easily add 8 digits of seven segment LED displays to your project using only 3 I/O pins, and provides full control of all the digit segments including decimal points. You can even cascade two or more of these modules together without sacrificing any extra I/O pin. You can buy SPI7SEGDISP8.56 display kit on Tindie for only $12.00. SPI7SEGDISP8.56 PCB is double layer. The top layer consists of two 4-digit CC LED display modules (Disp1 and Disp2) arranged in a row and header connectors (JP1 and JP2), whereas the bottom

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

Posted on December 29, 2012 by R-B 26 comments

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

TrH Meter: A DIY indoor thermometer plus hygrometer with adaptive brightness control implemented to 7-segment LED displays

Posted on December 15, 2012 by R-B 11 comments

This project is about building a microcontroller-based digital room thermometer plus hygrometer that displays temperature and relative humidity on 4 large (1 inch) seven segment LED displays which adjust their brightness level according to the surrounding illumination. It consists of a closed loop system that continuously assesses ambient light condition using an inexpensive light-dependent resistor (LDR) and uses that information to adjust the brightness of the display. An inexpensive DHT11 sensor is used to measure temperature and relative humidity. The microcontroller used in this project is PIC16F688, and it runs at 4 MHz clock generated from its internal source. A

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