Category Archives: AVR

M’Day: Low Power Motion Sensor Arduino Night Light…

Posted on May 13, 2012 by krazatchu

A few years back I made a motion sensitive night light as a Mother’s day gift and while it worked pretty well it really chewed out the batteries.  And as with all devices that eat batteries it eventually fell out … Continue reading →

Posted in Arduino, AVR, Battery, DIY, Electronics, Embedded, LEDs, Low power, Sensors | 1 Comment

SuperDuplex: An InfraRed Bootloader for Arduino…

Posted on May 7, 2012 by krazatchu

We’ve implemented an optical infrared Arduino bootloader based on the common 38kHz infrared remote modualtion.  Using the Asuro as inspiration, our bootloader goes a step further in that it works seamlessly from within the Arduino IDE, utilizing the STK500V2 protocol … Continue reading →

Posted in Arduino, AVR, Communication, DIY, Embedded, Infra Red, LEDs, Networking | 11 Comments

How to: Bread Board Arduino…

Posted on April 30, 2012 by krazatchu

Having a couple of Bread Board Arduinos handy can really make prototyping quick and painless.  And while the Bread Board Arduino has pretty much been flogged to death in every way, shape and horse, we’re posting our rendition as reference … Continue reading →

Posted in Arduino, AVR, DIY, Electronics, Embedded, How to | Leave a comment

How to: Compiling the Arduino Bootloader…

Posted on April 1, 2012 by krazatchu

A project we’ve been recently working on requires a custom Arduino boot loader.  Working in an incremental fashion, the first step is getting the stock Arduino boot loader to compile with the latest WinAVR libraries and current Arduino 1.0 IDE.  … Continue reading →

Posted in Arduino, AVR, Embedded, How to | 3 Comments

Hackaday: WindPOV project…

Posted on March 2, 2012 by krazatchu

My WindPOV project was featured on Hackaday: http://hackaday.com/2012/03/02/wind-powered-pov-weather-station/ It displays the temperature and humidity on the wing tip by way of persistence of vision. The idea of using our Contiki enabled 802.15.4 board has been tossed around a bit, this … Continue reading →

Posted in Arduino, AVR, Contiki, DIY, Electronics, LEDs, Mechanical, Sensors | Leave a comment

Shake, Rattle & Roll: The MMA8453Q & Arduino

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Socialhardware

So we finally finished putting the polish on our latest Arduino library designed for use with the MMA8453Q Accelerometer and its siblings the MMA8451 and MMA8452.  This library gets you going with the basics on this accelerometer and it also … Continue reading →

Posted in Arduino, AVR, Electronics, How to, Sensors | 43 Comments

How to: LED as a Light Sensor

Posted on January 29, 2012 by krazatchu

LEDs LEDs LEDs, is there anything they can’t do?  Besides adding that special crunchiness to smooth peanut butter, they also make awesome light level sensors.  Here’s one way to do it that doesn’t require an analog input, just connect the … Continue reading →

Posted in Arduino, AVR, Electronics, Embedded, How to, LEDs, Sensors | 1 Comment

ADC Battery Voltage: Divide, Match and Measure…

Posted on January 28, 2012 by krazatchu

While the stock Arduino isn’t particularly well geared to running from a battery source, there are times it will be useful to know the status of our battery voltage. Using the circuit on the left as well as a bit … Continue reading →

Posted in Arduino, AVR, Battery, Electronics, Embedded, Low power, Sensors | 6 Comments

DC Servo: In a State of Motion…

Posted on December 31, 2011 by krazatchu

Amongst tryptophan’s slumbering depression and returning unwanted gifts of another dreary chrism past, with step and direction the DC Servo Project marches valiantly into the new year… Software and hardware development have converged into a practical test platform. The encoder … Continue reading →

Posted in AVR, CNC, Electronics, Embedded, Encoder, Mechanical, Motion Control | 6 Comments

Inline Assembly: A Fast Quadrature Decoder…

Posted on December 21, 2011 by krazatchu

Inline assembly is a great tool to have in your programming arsenal. It gets things done as fast as a kitten chasing a hummingbird, yet retains the usability and portability of C code. This bit will decode a quadrature input … Continue reading →

Posted in ASM, AVR, Embedded, Encoder, Motion Control, Sensors | 4 Comments