If you want to try your hand at surface mount soldering, this is a fun project that can be completed in a couple hours with a decent soldering iron and a pair of tweezers. The instructions aren’t perfect (I had to short across the PCB pads for D1 and D2 to get my programmer to talk to the AVR, and at the moment you have to install Eclipse to compile the hex file) but I am confident that these minor issues will be fixed shortly!
Gary Dion (N4TXI) created a Wifi Radio to match his entertainment center. His project is inspired by my original Wifi Radio project and shares several of the same parts (such as the Asus WL-520gU wireless router) and design philosophy.
Interesting features of Gary’s version of the radio:
Very cool 4 line VFD display allows more information to be shown at once (and it’s blue!)
AVR sends actual shell commands to the router, which allows the serial console to remain enabled for debugging/other purposes – brilliant!
Nice custom PCB for the ATmega8 microcontroller
Rotary encoder and significantly more advanced control menus
IR remote control support!
More details, photos, and source code are available on Gary’s site.
Thanks to the Make: blog for bringing this project to my attention!
Wow, 2010 came a lot quicker than I expected! With one day to spare, here’s a brief look back at some of the highlights of 2009 here at mightyohm.com.
DIY PID-Controlled Soldering Hotplate:
I needed a hotplate for surface mount soldering, so I built one from scratch using a milled block of aluminum, a 500W cartridge heater, and a surplus PID controller. Some of my favorite DIY projects have been building my own tools, and this one is a great example.
The AVR HV Rescue Shield:
This year saw the release of my first electronics kit, the AVR HV Rescue Shield. Designed in response to my own experience accidentally setting the RSTDISBL fuse on an AVR microcontroller, the AVR HV Rescue Shield has helped many microcontroller enthusiasts around the world rescue their otherwise crippled, stuck, or deaf AVR’s.
In April I flew out to Cleveland and gave a talk about Hacking the Asus WL-520gU Wireless Router at Notacon 6. The con was a huge amount of fun but reminded me just how much work it is to give a talk. I met lots of cool people there, including George Sanger and Jeri Ellsworth, aka The Fatman and Circuit Girl.
By the way, the submission deadline for talks at Notacon 7 closes on January 31st!
DIY TiVo IR Blaster:
My DIY TiVo IR Blaster was a simple hack constructed in an hour entirely out of parts I already had in the lab. The best part is that eight months later, it’s still working flawlessly. Like any good hack, this one is cheap, simple, and just works.
Harrison’s Box:
This project, codenamed “Harrison’s Box“, was a collaboration with my wife Kylie and my father-in-law Bill to build an “electronic box” to give to my nephew Harrison’s on his first birthday. We added as many switches, knobs, and lights as we could. Harrison loved it!
Those are some of the highlights of 2009. I hope to bring more cool projects, hacks, and kits to you in 2010!
Lastly, Happy New Year and a sincere thanks to everyone who has been reading the blog, leaving comments, buying kits, or supporting the site in some way over the past year!
David L. Jones, maker of, among many other things, the awesome uWatch, is producing a really cool Electrical Engineering-themed video blog/podcast called ‘EEVblog‘. I don’t why it took me this long to realize what an informative and hilarious video podcast this is, but a couple recent episodes really sucked me in. I am now a huge fan.
David’s blog actually sprang to life in April of this year, so if you want to watch all of the episodes you have some catching up to do. However, some of the most hilarious episodes are also the most recent. For example, here is David’s very honest review of the Microchip PICkit 3, a development tool for Microchip PIC microcontrollers:
And here is Microchip’s equally hilarious response:
