Category Archives: Microcontrollers

Electronics, Microcontrollers

EEVblog – The Electrical Engineering Video Blog Podcast

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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!

Kits, Microcontrollers

Minor updates to the AVR HV Rescue Shield

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AVR HV Rescue Shield with ATmega168 target

This week there have been a couple minor updates to the AVR HV Rescue Shield:

  • I just uploaded version 1.1 of the Arduino sketch, which fixes an issue with garbage being printed in the serial monitor between burn cycles.  I also made some minor changes to try to reduce the likelihood of getting serial gibberish upon opening the monitor window, although I’m not 100% sure what is causing this.  The sketch was compiled and tested with Arduino 0017.
  • I have verified that the shield works with the Atmel ATmega328P AVR microcontroller.
Electronics, Kits, Microcontrollers

Kit Building Party Photos & Video

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This weekend I hosted a post-Halloween kit building party at MightyOhm HQ.

Nine close friends built Conway’s Game of Life kits from Adafruit Industries.  This is my favorite kit for these kinds of workshops because it’s easy for beginners to complete in about 2 hours, and when everyone is done, you can wire all of the kits together to create one large cellular automata display.  The last time I helped people build this kit was at a Make:SF workshop at the TechShop in Menlo Park.

Here’s a timelapse video of the afternoon, shot with a Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro webcam on an Eee PC 4G running Booru Webcam 2.0.

The capture interval was 5 seconds.  I used Quicktime Pro to stitch the images together at 15fps and iMovie to add titles and music (Turbo Outrun by FRP from remix.kwed.org.)

I wore my Halloween costume for most of the afternoon.  What am I?  Most people on the streets of San Francisco had no idea…

Kit Building Party

Safety first!
Kit Building Party

Stuart was the first to finish his kit:
Kit Building Party

Soldering the kits together to form the matrix:
Kit Building Party

Nine happy kit-builders with the 3×3 matrix they created with their finished kits:
Kit Building Party

And lastly, a video of the 3×3 matrix in action:

Three people had little to no soldering experience at the beginning of the afternoon.  Everyone who came went home with a working kit.  Success!

Electronics, Kits, Microcontrollers

AVR HV Rescue Shield kits back in stock, new lower pricing!

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AVR HV Rescue Shield Kit Components

Good news!  The AVR HV Rescue Shield kits are back in stock, with new, lower pricing!

The full kit, which has been reduced to $19, includes a professionally made PCB with preassembled DC-DC converter and all the parts you need to build the AVR HV Rescue Shield.

The PCB-only option is still available, which includes one unassembled PCB (DC-DC converter is not included).  Pricing on the PCBs has been reduced to $6.

Head over to the AVR HV Rescue Shield page to place an order!

(Note that prices do not include shipping or taxes, if applicable.)