The Arduino library has always had an “analogWrite()” function, even though the ATmega doesn’t have any way to generate a varying voltage. So why the name? Well, what most microcontrollers can do is generate a pulse-width modulated signal, also known as PWM. That’s just a fancy way of saying that the microcontroller periodically generates a […]
From PWM to voltage Read More »
NXP Semiconductors has announced a family of small-footprint wireless modules based on the ultra-low-power JN5168 microcontroller. Supporting multiple network stacks including ZigBee Home Automation, ZigBee Light Link, ZigBee Smart Energy, JenNet-IP and RF4CE, the JN5168 wireless modules feature footprints as small as 16 x 21 mm and very low power consumption in transmit and receive
Low-power Wireless Modules Support Multiple Protocols Read More »
Displays from 4D Systems can be used even if you don´t have experience with programming of graphic displays. Let´s look at how … No doubt, that a graphic display significantly improves a user interface of practically every product. Maybe a little less obvious is the fact, that already a relatively small display with a touch
Displays suitable even for applications, where you´d not count with a display Read More »
American Semiconductor, a leader in flexible integrated circuits and flexible hybrid systems, has announced the FleX-MCU product family. The FleX-MCU is the world’s first physically flexible microcontroller fabricated using the FleX Silicon-on-Polymer process. The FleX-MCU is an 8-bit RISC microcontroller with 8KB embedded RAM operating at up to 20MHz with a 1.2V core and 2.5V
A Really Flexible Microcontroller Read More »
I’m a programmer/systems architect by education and by the way of winning bread, but somehow I got infected with the electronics bug 3 years ago – had a sidejob to upgrade the firmware of a LED display, got into microcontrollers, then made myself comfortable in analog. Dave Jones has been saying in his videos –
Chirp! – the plant watering alarm Read More »
In my last projects, I always use the same CPU. DSETA board, I say in the posts. Well, here it is, a CPU based on the AT89C51RE2 microcontroller from Atmel. I develop this board for some reasons. The first and main one is because I want to have a small board with a great (an
DSETA board, a CPU based on the Atmel AT89C51RE2 Read More »
As simple as it gets and still works This LED flasher occurred to me while reading about negative resistance in transistors. It was reported that Leona Esaki, who was at Sony at the time, had been surprised to see a negative resistance region while investigating production defects in transistors which lead to his thesis work
Simplest LED Flasher Circuit Read More »
A circuit that drives a red LED from a 1.5 volt battery and simulates an incandescent light. Duty cycle can be changed by selecting resistor values. Photo 1. This printed circuit board is 3 cm long. The first prototype was made with through hole parts. This is a single sided surface mount board with one
Finally, white LED’s are bright enough to use in a practical stroboscope. This circuit can operate as a bench-top stroboscope that, in conjunction with an oscilloscope or frequency meter and bench top power supply can accurately measure rotational speeds, or it can be operated hand-held from a single 9V battery, using a marked scale to
White LED Stroboscope Read More »
Overview Where I live most of the time, the AC power drops out upon occasion. This used to leave me groping around in the dark for a flashlight. I could have bought a battery-backed up “emergency light” for about US$35, but being basically metal boxes with floodlights attached, they would make my living room look
White LED Battery Powered Power Failure Light Read More »
