Controlling Homebrewed Devices With a PS DualShock 3
Column: The Design Cycle
May 2013, Page 54
What can you do with a wireless Play Station controller?

Walking the USB Bridge into Androidville
Column: The Design Cycle
April 2013, Page 60
FTDI gave us the power to easily embed USB functionality into our projects with the FT232RL. The FT311D USB Android host IC enables us to walk across the USB bridge that FTDI built into Androidville.

Herding Data Over Bridges.
Column: The Design Cycle
February 2013, Page 14
This month’s discussion centers on moving data back and forth between a small embedded network and the Internet.

LMX-ISM-242 State of Mind
Column: The Design Cycle
January 2013, Page 52
While you were gone, I managed to get my hands on the official Lemos hardware.

Using the MPLAB X Factor With Data Radios
Column: The Design Cycle
December 2012, Page 72
The PIC18F46J13 was chosen for this project because of its unique capabilities and absence of built-in USB.

Give Your Data Radio the AX8052F100.
Column: The Design Cycle
November 2012, Page 68
There are microcontrollers that specialize in motor control and those that excel in number crunching. In this installment of Design Cycle, we are going to closely examine a microcontroller that was designed to drive RF ICs.

Building an Intelligent Data Radio
Column: The Design Cycle
October 2012, Page
Before we’re done, I am going to show you how to scratch-build a data radio using an RF IC that is melded with a microcontroller.

Putting Basic4android in the Driver’s Seat
Column: The Design Cycle
August 2012, Page 68
I'm a programmer and the Android devices are programmable. If you're interested in plugging into that intelligent Android brick you call a phone, get in the truck.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
June 2012, Page 68
Some IEEE 802.15.4 Transceiver Magic.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
May 2012, Page 52
Control Gadgets With Your Smart Phone.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
March 2012, Page 58
It‘s All About the Uno32 Hardware.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
February 2012, Page 52
CLC Culture.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
January 2012, Page 68
MPLAB's X Factor.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
November 2011, Page 68
You CAN Do It With the chipKIT MAX32.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
October 2011, Page 56
Invasion of the chipKIT Max32.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
September 2011, Page 68
Slaving Away From USB Host.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
August 2011, Page 54
Give Your Bits Some AIR.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
July 2011, Page 52
FlashFly System Gets Stamp of Approval

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
June 2011, Page 60
Pedaling the STC12C5A6OS2 from STC Microcontroller.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
May 2011, Page 16
Riding an RF Energy Harvester.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
April 2011, Page 60
Drive your projects with the SPECTRUM ACE ECS.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
March 2011, Page 18
Fly High With the New SPECTRUM ACE Embedded Control System.

Time for Some RTCC Translating
Column: The Design Cycle
January 2011, Page 50
Our goals this month are to write drivers for the EA DOGM162L-A LCD and the PIC18F47J53’s hardware RTCC (Real Time Clock Calendar).

Still Rockin’ the microSD Card
Column: The Design Cycle
December 2010, Page 54
took a while, but paper punch cards finally bit the dust. Good old RS-232 is in the rocking chair, as well.These days, thanks to the microcontroller industries’ hardware refinements and ready-to-run library code, putting a USB portal online is just as easy as building an RS-232 interface.

A Universal Micro Design
Column: The Design Cycle
November 2010, Page 54
When I’m not writing, I’m soldering. With that, I figure most of you are not looking down the sights of a soldering iron as much as I am. So, instead of subjecting you to soldering up my SERVO-inspired experimental micro-SD card interface, I decided to design a simple and super-low-cost microSD interface card that you can build on your bench.

Thumbs Up for the Vinculum-II Toolchain.
Column: The Design Cycle
October 2010, Page 14
The Vinculum-II embedded dual USB host controller takes all of the hard work out of interfacing and controlling USB devices. In this case the Vinculum-II goes one step further to save us both money and time.

Gettin’ Jiggy with the Vinculum-II Hardware Design
Column: The Design Cycle
September 2010, Page 61
Heat up your soldering iron. It’s time to forge some solder, silicon, ceramics, plastic, metal, and fiberglass into an electronic instrument capable of transferring our ideas to a piece of silicon we know as the FTDI Vinculum-II. The first order of business is to pick up where we left off last month.

Taking USB Downstream
Column: The Design Cycle
August 2010, Page 54
Up to this point, we’ve been working our USB device magic on an upstream connection to a USB host. The time has come to take on USB host responsibilities and originate a downstream connection from the Type A USB connector of a USB host we will design and assemble.

Bringing a USB-to-UART Protocol Converter to Life
Column: The Design Cycle
July 2010, Page 58
Did you know that Microchip offers a USB 2.0 to UART protocol converter? It’s called the MCP2200.

ZeroG Goes USB
Column: The Design Cycle
June 2010, Page 58
The ZeroG - PIC24FJ128GA006 Trainer project sparked quite a bit of Nuts & Volts reader interest.

Shuffling The TCP/IP Stack
Column: The Design Cycle
May 2010, Page 54
This month, in addition to shuffling bits in the Microchip TCP/IP stack, we’re going to perform some soldering iron surgery.

Become a Wiz with Wireless Ethernet Devices
April 2010, Page 68
This month, we are going to design and construct the first device of the next generation of embedded wireless Ethernet devices. While we’re at it, we’ll also lay the groundwork for incorporating Microchip’s 16-bit line of microcontrollers into future Design Cycle projects.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
March 2010, Page 60
Making a mesh of things.

Go Nuts with the Kadtronix USB HID API Library
Column: The Design Cycle
February 2010, Page 67
The Kadtronix USB HID API Library was initially designed to support Visual Basic 6 and Visual C++ 6.

SuperPIC to the 32-bit Rescue!
Column: The Design Cycle
January 2010, Page 61
I also have the latest version of the MPLAB C32 Compiler for PIC32 microcontrollers which supports all of the new SuperPIC features. I don’t know about you, but having all of this development stuff in front of me says “Build something!”

Find the HIDden virtues of USB
Column: The Design Cycle
December 2009, Page 49
While we were extolling the virtues of USB as an RS-232 killer, we were totally ignoring one of USB’s greatest strengths: the HID class.

Take An IO-Warrior Into Your Next Embedded Battle
Column: The Design Cycle
November 2009, Page 49
We are all used to stuffing code into a microcontroller to enable our embedded applications.This month, the tables are turned.The microcontroller work has been done for us and we must perform some Bill Gates C++ coding to force bits back and forth across the USB pipe.

The Design Cycle | October 2009
Column: The Design Cycle
October 2009, Page 60
Unlocking a 16-bit USB front end for the new ENC624J600 stand-alone 10/100 Ehternet controller.

USB To Ethernet Using Microchip’s Free Stacks: Part 2
Column: The Design Cycle
September 2009, Page 76
Now that we’ve had a taste of the free Microchip TCP/IP and USB stacks, it’s time to put the chocolate in the peanut butter. As promised, this month we’ll put a Microchip PIC18F14K50 Low Pin Count USB microcontroller in front of a PIC18F67J60 Ethernet microcontroller and put another RS-232 converter IC out to pasture.

USB To Ethernet Using Microchip’s Free Stacks: Part 1
Column: The Design Cycle
August 2009, Page 74
This month, the mountain man is coming to town as the coders at Microchip have put together a brand new TCP/IP Stack to support the new Ethernet ICs and wireless Ethernet modules that are coming out of the pipe.

Kids CAN Love Engineering
Column: The Design Cycle
July 2009, Page 74
This year’s science station consisted of a Lenovo NetBook coupled to a USB-to-CAN bridge. The goal was to introduce the students to a working network they could actually see and touch.

Into the Guts of USB Drivers
Column: The Design Cycle
June 2009, Page 16
When it comes to replacing a Legacy RS-232 Interface with USB, try a Microchip PIC18F14K50 USB Flash microcontroller.

And Now, A Riff From Jeff Beck
Column: The Design Cycle
May 2009, Page 74
Designing a wireless guitar.

The Design Cycle
Column: The Design Cycle
April 2009, Page 15
Older language, newer interface.

Demystifying USB To Serial
Column: The Design Cycle
March 2009, Page 60
It's time to stop talking and start soldering. This month, you have your choice of USB projects.

A Reasonable Replacement For RS-232
Column: The Design Cycle
February 2009, Page 68
I'm going to include USB interfaces on subsequent Design Cycle projects that require serial communications with a personal computer.

Managing The Real World
Column: The Design Cycle
January 2008, Page 82
No matter how powerful a microcontroller may claim to be, a microcontroller by itself cannot do everything in a real-world, I/O-oriented embedded system. For instance, I don’t know of any microcontroller that can directly drive a one ampere resistive or inductive load directly from one of its I/O pins. That means if you’re working on putting together a microcontroller-based system that will interface to motors and relays, a great deal of your design time will be expended on the I/O interface...

Introducing the 32-bit PIC!
Column: The Design Cycle
February 2008, Page 82
I can still remember fiddling with my very first PIC project, which was based on (at that moment in time) the brand new and unbelievable PIC16C54. I don’t recall ever complaining about the size of the PIC16C54 SRAM or its 1 µs instruction cycle time. And, I don’t recall ever filling up a PIC16C54’s program memory as we all programmed in assembler back then. As time passed, I quickly “outgrew” the PIC16C54’s limited I/O system (12 I/O lines) and moved up to using the “bigger” PIC16C55 device...

PIC32MX Internal Addressing
Column: The Design Cycle
March 2008, Page 76
I recently saw a sign that read, “Everything is hard until you figure out how to do it.” As an adversary of all things complex, I grinned to myself as I passed the sign by on the highway. The PIC32MX is a prime candidate to fall into the spin of the highway sign writer’s sage observation. However,someone on the Microchip PIC32MX team saw that same sign somewhere along the way as the road that leads to the understanding and application of the PIC32MX is paved with easy to use C language macros...

Welcome To the land of CPLD
Column: The Design Cycle
April 2008, Page 77
If you’ve been following Design Cycle, you know that we do lots of neat stuff with Microchip’s family of PIC microcontrollers. When a new variant of the PIC goes public — such as the PIC32 — we most always need to ride the learning curve to figure out what we can do with the new part. That’s what Design Cycle is all about. And, yep. I’m setting you up for something new. And, nope. This time it’s not a PIC...

Building A CPLD Development Kit
Column: The Design Cycle
May 2008, Page 88
Pour some distilled water on that dried up soldering tip cleaning sponge and fire up your soldering station. In this edition of Design Cycle, we are going to tie down that Xilinx XC2C64A CPLD you see in Photo 1 onto the ExpressPCB printed circuit board we’re beginning to put together in Screenshot 1...

Firmware You Can Touch
Column: The Design Cycle
June 2008, Page 16
I can remember as a kid I used to build simple little transistor circuits that would activate a relay when someone touched the doorknob to my room. My “DO NOT ENTER” adventures were far more exciting than the circuitry involved. As I recall, the base of the transistor was hung out to dry and connected to the doorknob with a loop of wire. When someone (my pesky little sister, for instance) injected noise into the transistor base via the doorknob, the transistor would turn on and pass current...

PCB Basics: From Your Brain To A Finished Board
June 2008, Page 74
You’ve seen me do it most every month in Nuts & Volts and SERVO. I make them in two-layer form and I make them in four-layer form. I make them as prototypes. I make them as production quality. I identify them with silkscreen legends. I ruggedize them with soldermask. I make them large and I make them small. What is this thing I do that you see in Design Cycle and SERVO every month? The answer is easy. I create printed circuit boards...

A Discerning Touch
Column: The Design Cycle
July 2008, Page 76
I had the pleasure of taking last month’s Xilinx/Microchip capacitive touch sensing prototype hardware on the road to Abel Elementary School in Sarasota, FL. The occasion was Space Day, which is an annual space-science event sponsored by the Lockheed Martin Corporation. Over 150 fourth and fifth grade fingers touched the tin touch sensor, which was insulated by and tied down to a desk with a piece of cellophane tape I scarfed from a teacher’s desk. Thanks to a CleverScope and my Lenovo laptop...

Up The Logic Food Chain
Column: The Design Cycle
August 2008, Page 79
I was a totally analog teenager. My interests then were centered on tube-based stereo equipment and tube-based guitar amplifiers. I was fat, dumb, and happily analog until I ran across a copy of the GE Transistor manual in the literature section of a local electronics parts store. I had to have it. Everything “electronic” I was reading about at the time was telling me that vacuum tubes were on their way out and transistors were the thing of the future...

Roll Your Own FPGA Design
Column: The Design Cycle
September 2008, Page 67
To really get to know a microcontroller, CPLD, or FPGA, one may take the programming and hardware design knowledge gleaned from a factory-generated development kit and apply it to a unique personal application. We’ve paid our dues with a factory Xilinx FPGA development board. So, our goal this month is to get down and dirty with our own Xilinx XC3S50A FPGA design...

Roll Your Own WiFi Spot
Column: The Design Cycle
October 2008, Page 76
This month, we will build a very useful data communications device that is right at home with just about any of today’s laptops, PDAs, and personal computers. Depending on your intended application, our easy-to-build PIC-based data communications device can transfer data using its serial port or its WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) capabilities. If you prefer to exclude Windows and Linux from your data communications network, the device we’re about to discuss also has the ability...

Moving Past The 2X16 LCD Display
Column: The Design Cycle
November 2008, Page 70
Does your microcontroller project need to convey a bit more information than a standard 16 x 2 LCD can handle? If so, one of the best ways to establish a data communications session between a microcontroller-based deviceand human eyes is to pipe the human-to-device and device-to-human chatter through an RS-232 connection that you establish between the microcontroller’s USART and a personal computer’s serial port...

Avoiding Tuition At USB University
Column: The Design Cycle
December 2008, Page 16
I have a love/hate relationship with USB. I love it because it is convenient and user friendly. I hate it because understanding the underlying processes of USB can be difficult. Think about this. You don’t have to know the down and dirty details of how a PIC ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) works to employ a PIC in a microcontroller-based application. So, why should we have to know so much about USB to put it to work for us?

How To: Breadboarding
December 2008, Page 62
I’m old enough to have experienced black and white television, the introduction of color television, the very first post-WWII gasoline “shortage” and rotary “Princess” telephones. I also remember when AM radio was king and only uppity college kids listened to FM...

Chatting Up A Thumbdrive
Column: The Design Cycle
January 2009, Page 72
Using the CDIP2 API coupled with the VDIP2 hardware interface we've designed and built, you should have no problems including USB Flash drives in your Design Cycle.

Peter Best Circles The Drain
Column: The Design Cycle
October 2007, Page 14
Peter and I worked together on the EDTP Ethernet MINI C-to-PBP (PICBASIC PRO) conversion project that you have been reading about in this series of Design Cycle episodes...

16 Bits Equals Twice The Fun
Column: The Design Cycle
November 2007, Page 82
Over the years,I’ve designed most of my really serious embedded projects around eight-bit PIC microcontrollers.As for the physical sizes of the eight-bit PICs I’ve used, I’ve done eight-bit microcontroller projects with the tiny six-pin 10F PIC devices...

Ordering Drinks Over The ‘Net
Column: The Design Cycle
December 2007, Page 76
If you’ve been keeping up with Design Cycle, we’ve been implementing Internet protocol code with PICBASIC PRO and in the rush you have been exposed to a variety of the Internet protocols and the PICs they run under.