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RGB audio visualizer using FPGA

Posted on September 23, 2016 by R-B Leave a comment

Sam Miller, Sahil Gupta, and Mashrur Mohiuddin built a 64×64 RGB LED matrix audio visualizer as their final project for the ECE5760 Microcontroller Design course at Cornell. The visualizer responds to a musical input in real time with a graphic animation on the RGB panel using vertical bars, balls, and particle to enhance the user’s listening experience. The RGB visualizer runs off of an Altera DE2-115 FPGA, which handles all the controls and processing of data for the 64×64 LED Matrix as well as the beat detection and audio output. Our system starts with a musical input from the 3.5mm line-in input from the FPGA.

Wifi enabled 8×64 pixel LED matrix display

Posted on September 20, 2016 by R-B 26 comments

This project is a modification of my previous Bluetooth-enabled LED matrix display project, which used 8×64 monochromatic LED matrix (total 512 LEDs) for displaying scrolling text message. The original project used Bluetooth for display data transfer from a smartphone, but this one now uses Wifi. The display message is sent through web browser to a ESP8266 module that is configured as a web-server. No Arduino or any other microcontroller is used. ESP8266 alone works as a WiFi server and drives the MAX7219-based LED matrices.

A very simple DIY solar-powered USB charger

Posted on September 19, 2016 by R-B 4 comments

Yesterday, I built a very simple DIY solar-powered USB charger for my TP-link 10400mAh USB Power Bank. All I needed was a 6V/3.5W solar panel and the TD1410-based 5V buck converter module. I bought both of them on Aliexpress for less than $8. It was one of the easiest projects I built. All I needed to do was to connect the input of the 5V step-down buck converter to the output of the solar panel using two wires. From TD1410 datasheet, The TD1410 is a 380 KHz fixed frequency monolithic step down switch mode regulator with a built in internal Power MOSFET. It achieves 2A continuous output current

Using Easy Pulse mikro with MPLAB Xpress board

Posted on September 7, 2016 by R-B 2 comments

Easy Pulse mikro is our new educational pulse sensor in a mikroBus form factor. Like our previous Easy Pulse sensors (Easy Pulse and Easy Pulse Plugin), it is also based on the principle of transmittance photoplethysmography (PPG) applied to a fingertip. The sensor consists of a pair of IR LED and photodiode to detect the cardiovascular pulse signal from the fingertip. The output of the sensor is passed through a necessary instrumentation amplifier to derive a nice and clean analog PPG waveform. The analog output is routed to the AN pin of the mikroBus connector. In this article, I will describe how

Portable weather data logger

Posted on August 31, 2016 by R-B Leave a comment

Jesus Echavarria‘s new project is a portable weather data logger that is battery-powered and is capable of recording ambient temperature, humidity, and light level into a SD card along with a time stamp. It’s based on the PIC18F2620 microcontroller, the HDC1050 temperature and humidity sensor, and the TEMT6000X01 ambient light sensor. The board uses M41T00SM6 RTC for time keeping, a Li-Ion battery charger, push buttons and leds for user interface, and a MCP2221 USB bridge to configure the board through PC. Hi all! I’m continuing here with the last board I design and now I’m continuing testing. It’s a battery-powered small datalogger based on a

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