For my project I need two Arduino boards, but I have only one Arduino Mega 2560 board (refer Fig. 1). I can either buy an Arduino Uno board (that costs approx. Rs. 1400 in India) or I can make an Arduino board using a fresh ATmega328/ATmega328P chip. Suppose you have an Arduino board that is built on ATmega328P or ATMega8A-PU chip and, due to some reasons, the chip has gone bad (like in my case). You can bu ...

Readers of Hackaday are no strangers to using a microcontroller to push data to WiFi. Even before the ESP8266 there were a variety of ways to do that. Now Microchip is joining the fray with a $29 board called the AVR-IOT WGthat contains an 8-bit ATmega4808, a WiFi controller, and hardware-based crypto chip for authenticating with Google Cloud. The board has a section with a USB port for charging a battery a ...

More VideoBlasting So why didn't the TVout library reach any higher resolution than 160x100? The answer is simple. They did not use any hardware onchip to push the pixels out. If you use the SPI to push the pixel you will gain an immediate 1:1 in pixelspeed The SPI push out data at the CPU clock / 2. That is the maximum speed that the chip is capable of. On a 16MHz chip, that is an impressive 8mbps. That is ...

People familiar with AVR boards such as Arduinos likely know most AVR MCUs can be clocked from an external crystal connected to 2 of the pins.  When the AVR does not need to run at a precise clock frequency, it is also common to clock them from the internal 8Mhz oscillator.  Before CPUs were made with internal oscillators or inverting amplifiers for external crystals, they were clocked by an external circui ...

Update 01/02/09: A PCB version of this circuit is in the design stages – some preliminary information is here. Update 03/11/09: Kits based on this design are now for sale! Update 12/14/10: The original AVR HV Rescue Shield kit has been replaced by the new and improved HV Rescue Shield 2.  Visit the HV Rescue Shield 2 product page for information about the new kit!As I mentioned earlier this week, I recently ...

Arduino Leonardo AVR Development Board is a microcontroller board based on the Atmel ATmega32u4. It offers 20 digital IOs (of which 7 can be used as PWM outputs and 12 as analog inputs), a 16MHz crystal oscillator, a micro USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button. The Arduino Leonardo differs from all preceding boards in that the ATmega32u4 has built-in USB communication, eliminating ...

I needed a way to transfer data to AVR This blog post is about my adventures in implementing a stupidly simple way of transferring data over audio to AVR (and why not other embedded chips too), reaching speeds up to 12kbps with really tiny code and memory footprint, using the internal oscillator of Tiny AVR, with hardware parts that cost next to nothing. How it started Once I got an idea of a wearable messa ...

This application note describes how to record, store and play back sound using any AVR microcontroller with A/D converter, the AT45DB161B DataFlash memory and a few extra components. This application note shows in detail the usage of the A/D Converter for sound recording, the Serial Peripheral Interface – SPI – for accessing the external DataFlash memory and the Pulse Width Modulation – PWM – for playback. ...

It can be nice to know how much battery power you have. It becomes critically important with LiPo batteries since you can permanently damage them by running the voltage down too low. Typically battery voltage detection requires adding a circuit with extra parts and their associated power requirements. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to do this using nothing but software? Read on for a no parts, no pins, no ...

A microcontroller is a self-contained, but very limited computer — halfway between a computer and a component. The top reasons to integrate a microcontroller into your projects are connectivity and interactivity, and one easy way to get your microcontroller talking with the outside world is standard asynchronous serial I/O. Many devices can communicate this way, from wi-fi routers to GPS units to your deskt ...

I finally finished the next version of my TinyLoadr AVR programming Shield – and it’s not a shield. It’s a standalone USB programmer, so you no longer have to have an extra Arduino laying around. The best part? It’s the same price as the shield was! Read more to find out more about it, or visit my Tindie store to grab one for yourself! Features at a glance Open source. Supports a wide range of AVRs (see lis ...

12kbps simple audio data transfer for AVR Posted in electronics, embedded I needed a way to transfer data to AVR This blog post is about my adventures in implementing a stupidly simple way of transferring data over audio to AVR (and why not other embedded chips too), reaching speeds up to 12kbps with really tiny code and memory footprint, using the internal oscillator of Tiny AVR, with hardware parts that c ...