Utilizing only the cheap components required for regular sensor functionality, this ATtiny212-based design adds two-way wireless communication for tweaking and reporting of its own parameters. Here’s how it came to be.
Auto on/off, responsive, power-saving, and you get to select the threshold and to decide the exact nature of the feedback: Here’s how I built a convenient continuity tester from simple components and a cheap 8-pin PIC microcontroller.
How to autostart your app if it needs keyboard access, protect it against malicious Ctrl-wielding users, and shut the system down properly without locking yourself out forever!
The tale of a curious incident, in which I was trying to show how Arduino hinders makers, but was unable to do so because Arduino hindered me!
What is the lowest possible clock frequency at which a microcontroller can still do useful work? Here’s a little project that attempts to explore this weird question.
This Chinese “8-Channel USB Relay Board” requires a 12V power supply, and it’s also supposed to plug into the PC for convenient software control. But there was nothing convenient about the software, and I wanted it to work directly with Arduino and other MCUs anyway. Here’s how I replaced the USB interface with a basic UART.
Continue reading Adding a UART Interface to a USB Relay Board
Version 1.6.6 of the Arduino IDE is upon us, and with it – among other novelties – is the Serial Plotter, a basic graphing utility for visualizing data, debugging and show-off. What is it, and how to use it? Here’s a little guide…
What does the world look like through the eyes of a light dependent resistor (LDR)? My unimpressive PunyCam shows us the answer… ever so slowly!
This is a small note for people who, like me, got confused about the correct pinout of Atmel’s PDI connector.
Can the PC’s mouse input be used to send binary data from an embedded system to a desktop software? And, more importantly, can this be done without affecting the regular usage of the mouse? As it turns out, within a few limitations, the answer is yes. Here’s how.