Everything for Electronics

Microcontrollers

Exercising the Teensy 4.0

The Teensy 4.0 and 4.1 microcontrollers are a game changer. They’re a quantum leap in CPU speed and processing power. My first thought was what kind of program could use this level of performance and Mandelbrot images came to mind -- a favorite programming pastime of mine. Here’s how it went.

Build a Simple Isolator for Externally Powered Arduinos

Arduino Unos and Megas are normally powered by five volts through their USB connectors or by connecting 7-12 volts to the power jacks or Vin header pins. However, there is another way. This is a very simple project, but it sure makes programming easier.

Build a PICBall Machine

For our “Designing With Microcontrollers” class at Cornell University, we built a pinball machine with electronic components controlled by software on a PIC32 microcontroller. This article details the design process, challenges we experienced, and solutions we came up with while completing the project from start to finish.

Build a Digital Clock Family Using Nextion Displays

I’m a digital clock nut. I began experimenting with the newer Nextion displays, which I really like. I’ve produced digital clock versions for the 3.5, 5, and 7 inch size Nextion display. They all run from the same printed circuit board and have several different functions.

Take the Z80 Challenge

This project started out as a challenge to myself: Could I cram a full-featured Z80 microcomputer using DIP packages onto an ExpressPCB MiniBoard (3.8” by 2.5”)? Here’s what happened.

Updating a General-purpose Programming System

Twenty years ago, I published an article in Nuts & Volts about designing a general-purpose programming system: the LP120. I’ve used the LP120 heavily for the last 20 years to support my eight-bit design hobby. It now has uploadable drivers and programming modules for many eight-bit micros, EPROMs, and GALs. However, things have changed since 2000. Back then, few microcontrollers had more than 4K bytes of program memory. Now, eight-bit PICs have up to 64K words of memory. Clearly an update to the LP120 was called for.

Adding FM Capability to an All American Five AM Radio

After retirement a few years back, I started collecting AA5 radios, restoring and selling them. People would ask whether they picked up FM and, of course, they did not. I started thinking about how to add FM capability without destroying the AA5’s AM operation. Here is my solution.

Build a DIY Electric Scooter

With the influx of electric skateboards and scooters that have taken over seemingly every city, I started thinking it might be something to purchase for myself. Instead, I decided that I would try to build my own from scratch. Not really to save money, but to gain the experience of building something of my own. The primary purpose of this article is to show my design and manufacturing process, so that you can learn from what I built.

Build a DotStar Light Painter

Long exposure photography captures the path of light over time, smearing moving elements to produce a single photo which creates a new realm of artistic photography. However, popular subjects of light exposure photographs are uncontrollable (stars, car headlights, etc.), so we made a light painter using microcontrollers and a DotStar LED strip to develop custom photography from images uploaded by a user.

Microcontrollers, Software, and You — Part 4

We ended our Part 3 article by giving you an assignment that emulates the card game, often called In Between (but better as known Acey Deucey). Recall that the objective of the game was to have the “dealer” turn two cards face up and then have the player bet that the next card would fall “in between” the two face-up cards. Let’s see how close your code came to mine.