Archive for the ‘Microcontrollers’ Category

Quick look at the Blinken Button

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Here’s a quick look at the new Blinken Button kit from Interactive Matter.

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’s Wifi Radio Project

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

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!

2009 in Review

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

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:

PID Controlled 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:

AVR HV Rescue Shield Layout

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.

My Wifi Radio Project:

Wifi Radio project on Engadget!

After planning out the project and completing a good chunk of the software in 2008, most of the construction of my Wifi Radio project occurred in the early part of 2009.  I put the finishing touches on the radio for the 2009 Bay Area Maker Faire.  Around the same time the project also made it onto Engadget (and a bunch of other blogs as well).  This project continues to be one of the most popular projects on the site and has inspired several other projects based on the Asus WL-520gU wireless router, including an extension to the Adafruit Industries Tweet-a-Watt.

This brings me to:

Notacon 6:

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:

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:

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!

Retro Wireless Handset / Make Magazine:

Charging

I originally posted about my Bluetooth Handset Hack back in November of 2008, but it took exactly one year for the article I wrote about it to finally be published in Make: magazine volume 20.  I just learned that my Retro Wireless Handset will be featured in an upcoming episode of the Make: Weekend Projects podcast.  Cool!

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!

Help is available on the Discussion Forums!

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Flathead

Do you have a question about the Wifi Radio project or want help making your own Bluetooth Handset?

Try asking over at the discussion forums!

If you haven’t seen them before, be sure to check them out!

EEVblog – The Electrical Engineering Video Blog Podcast

Monday, November 9th, 2009

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:

David’s blog has covered a lot of other cool topics, such as exploding capacitors, equipment teardowns, and microcontroller datasheets.  Check EEVblog out!


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