Posted March 30, 2014 by Chris

"In this tutorial, I’m going to harness the awesomeness of Raspberry Pi to build a moisture sensor for a plant pot. You will be able to monitor the sensor locally on the LCD or remotely, via ControlMyPi.com, and receive daily emails if the moisture drops below a specified level."

Posted March 29, 2014 by Chris

"This project demonstrates the ability to navigate a user based on synthesized directional audio which allows the user to move to a known location without the use of a visual aid. The module uses a GPS, a digital compass, and an ATmega32 to generate sound based on the direction that the user must turn in order to face the correct direction."

Posted March 28, 2014 by Chris

"This is a circuit to automatically blink the turn signal lights of a car a number of times after a short tap of the turn signal handle. This feature is often found in newer cars these days, but not in my 2000 Volkswagen Passat. Instead of buying a new car, I decided to upgraded it with an Atmel ATtiny12."

Posted March 27, 2014 by Chris

Time for some good old fashioned microcontroller Input and Output! The third lesson in our new course: An Introduction To Microcontrollers is now live. Here’s an overview of the lesson:

"All microcontrollers have general purpose input and output pins, often called GPIO. Here we will take a look at how to build a program and hardware to accept push-button input in order to affect output LEDs."

Posted March 26, 2014 by Chris

"Bluetooth has become Ubiquitous these days Bluetooth Wireless technology is present is Most mobile phones today as well as in laptops and in desktop PCs. And If your PC or laptop doesn’t have it then you can get a Bluetooth USB dongle for cheap! Wouldn’t it be interesting if your mobile phones /PCs could talk to your Microcontroller Projects?"

Posted March 25, 2014 by Chris

"Mr. Hat contacted me asking for a help in building a phono preamp for his vinyl record player that he recovered from oblivion somewhere. As you probably know, there are some issues with vinyl records that require audio tracks to be mastered in certain way before they are put into a disc."

Posted March 24, 2014 by Chris

"Designed and built during October 2000, this was my first ever microcontroller based project. This one was inspired by an Edmund Scientific instruments catalog. I didn’t see anything like this in that catalog but there were a lot of nice, year 2000 modern multipole cable testers, that made me think and imagine what would be the simplest possible network cable tester that I could quickly build."

Posted March 23, 2014 by Chris

"Behold: a complete Nintendo Entertainment System cloned in an FPGA! Originally written in VHDL by Brent Allen and myself while at Washington State University, I’ve recently revisited this project and begun both: rewriting it in Verilog, and adding many new features."

Posted March 22, 2014 by Chris

"This is a simple JTAG interface, which can be connected to computer’s parallel port. It is originally designed by Xilinx to program FPGAs and CPLDs… It is a one-sided PCB, the bottom side is made from wires."

Posted March 21, 2014 by Chris

"One field of communication and DSP that has always intrigued me is signal intelligence, the attempt to receive and decode an unknown signal. It’s an interesting puzzle that requires a wide variety of hardware, software, and analytical skills…I decided I would try to receive and decode the signal my garage door remote transmits to the base unit to open and close the door."