Here’s my instructable for a DIY TiX clock. It is powered by an AVR microcontroller. The display is made up using a piece of reflector grid you find covering office lights, some smoked perspex, a diffuser and a bunch of LED’s. The Idea came from the Tix clocks you can buy at various places on […]
DIY TiX Clock using ATMEGA16 AVR microcontroller Read More »
When my little girl was born I wanted to make her a special night light for in her room. I made her a ceiling light with twinkling stars. It is made up of a piece of custom wood with 100 LEDs mounted in it. An AVR AT90S8538 micro controller runs a bascom program that produces
Starry Ceiling for Kids Bedroom Using AT90S8538 microcontroller Read More »
The instruction manual for each of the MANY munchkin series of card games always includes a phrase like “you will need a 10 sided die for each player or some other device to keep score.” 10 sided dice are not hard to find in my house, but I took this as a challenge to make
Using max7219 microcontroller Build an electronic score keeper/storage box Read More »
Dice are fun. Polyhedral dice used in D & D are even more fun, particularly in big handfuls of different sizes. But a handful isn’t always practical. Ever since I saw the dragon bone electronic die wand advertised in the back pages of Dragon magazine when I was a kid, I wanted an electronic device
Using AtTiny2313 microcontroller Build an electronic polyhedral die Read More »
Intro: My Nikon DSLR has an infrared remote function (remote sold separately) that is really handy, but fairly limited in range. A while ago, I bought a TV-B-Gone Kit from it’s inventor Mitch Altman, and it can turn TV’s off from a great distance. I thought, “Hey, this thing is open source! I can hack
Turn a TV-B-Gone into a super camera remote Read More »
Using the fact that many microcontroller pins have three states (+V, GND, or “high impedence”). You can drive N*(N-1) LEDs from N pins. So the little 8 pin microcontroller like a PIC12Fxxx or an ATtiny11 can drive 20 LEDs on its five available output pins, and still have one pin left for some kind of
How to drive a lot of LEDs from a few microcontroller pins. Read More »
As I get more serious into my electronics hobby, I need to work with more SMD components. Some component packages are very difficult or impossible to solder with a traditional soldering iron. To solve this problem, I decided to hack a toaster oven to become a reflow soldering oven. Basically, to perform reflow soldering, solder
Hack a Toaster Oven for Reflow Soldering using ATmega32 microcontroller Read More »
Instructables author extraordinaire Randofo created a great programming shield to use your Arduino to program 8 pin ATTINY processors. He was even generous enough to give 50 copies of it out to people who authored instructables using AVR processors. It works great on brand new ATTINYs and any chip that is programmed to use it’s Internal clock.
Using the 8Pin ATTINY programming shield with an external clock Read More »
Update May 4 2012: I am still working very hard on version 3 of Picopter. The new version’s hardware is already done. There are new 3D printed motor holders. I’ve done some measurements with regards to mass and radio spectrum. I’ve posted stuff to http://www.frank-zhao.com/picopter_forum/index.php including the new design files, so take a look. Update Feb
Picopter using Microcontroller ATmega128RFA1 Read More »
There are a lot of locks out there. There are locks open with a key, with a combination of digits, with various bodily parts, or with a correct geolocation. I decided to make a lock that I have not seen yet. Since I am learning to play piano an idea for this project came quite
Box with a Music Lock using ATMega328P Microcontroller Read More »
