Posted June 28, 2011 by Chris

“There are many DIY versions of WWVB clock designs available on the web. Commercial “atomic” clocks are inexpensive and widely available, but I wanted to try my hand at designing one to gain insight into WWVB reception and to learn a little about programming a PIC microcontroller.” See the article for source code and schematics for making your own Atomic Clock!

Posted June 17, 2011 by Chris

Time for another new Pyro Tutorial about Xbee communication! Xbee are small modules that use the Zigbee standard for wireless communication and offer a lot of flexibility as well as reliability with wifi communication. This tutorial shows you how to make a simple wireless Input/Output system with two PICs.

Posted May 25, 2011 by Chris

This short but sweet article details out the circuit and parts needed to build a basic IR transmitter and receiver circuit all on a breadboard. The circuit is built to transmit at the standard 38 KHz carrier frequency used in most IR systems. The design does only a simple thing, that is it blinks an led when a button is pressed. A simple yet good project for entry into the wireless world.

Posted May 22, 2011 by Chris

Using the widely available micro LPC2132, this project and abstract explain how to build a very hi-tech baby monitor. Built as an entry for a philips design contest, the design features integrated encryption, two way communication, night light control and music playback. The article has the software source code and hardware design schematics for download.

Posted May 8, 2011 by Chris

Today’s article explains the ins and outs of reading and writing to proximity (RFID) ID cards. His example Reader/Cloner design cost only $30 and all the hardware schematics and software are freely available. The website also has many other RFID designs and theory explanations to peruse and use as examples.

Posted May 7, 2011 by Chris

Xbee wireless modules have quickly come into the spotlight in the wireless communication world. They offer a cheap, quick and easy way to add wireless to any microcontroller based project. The error correction routines they implement make the modules very versatile, this article explains how to get started with them using a PIC.

Posted April 27, 2011 by Chris

The IR link design built in this article is described from start to finish, the goal being to communicate with the lego mindstorms NXT IR interface. An AVR is used with an I2C bus to communicate across the IR link. If AVR is your micro, then take a look at this well written article.

Posted April 9, 2011 by Chris

RFID technology has been slowly becoming more popular in the commercial industry as it offers a great way for tracking products. Today’s project uses a PIC to make an RFID tag reader. Not many hardware parts are necessary to implement the reader, just a lot of software.

Posted March 21, 2011 by Chris

Let’s be honest, GPS saves lives everyday! So understanding how it works and how we can use it in our own projects is a must. This project shows you how to use a GPS module to create your very own navigation system using GPS data.

Posted February 27, 2011 by Chris

Today’s project shows you how to go about building your very own wireless Wii Sensor Bar. The project write-up is a little light on details, but the included video explains things quite well. All you avid Wii fans out there, don’t miss this one!