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Just In Time Project Pages

These pages contain descriptions of our electronics projects, mainly involving AVR microcontrollers.

Featured

	WS2811 LED strips & 8Mhz AVR Want to know how to drive a WS2811 led string from an 8 Mhz AVR? This page has the code and explains it. Works for Arduino too...
	USB 433Mhz transceiver for $3 Cheap 433Mhz receivers and transmitters are ideal to communicate with your microcontroller, but can also be used to control inexpensive RF-controlled switches. If you've got $3, an ebay account and a soldering iron, you can now control your light switches through a USB port.
	Digital FD-8 repair Roland FD-8 hi-hat pedals have a tendency to become unresponsive over time. Instead of trying to repair the internal film resistor, why not completely replace its guts with a small microcontroller for accurate control without wear and tear? If you think a microcontroller is overkill, we also have an analog electronics version.
	Breadboard AVR Programming Headers To celebrate the release of Vinnies student-proof, straddling programming header, we've finally gotten around to documenting the programming headers we use for AVR breadboard programming!

Projects

Here are some finished, or work in progress activities:

Project	Page status	Project status
Fast, arduino compatible digital pin functions, digitalWrite() in 2 clock ticks	started	ongoing
Sending location information from an Android phone to a Nikon camera	started	ongoing
WS2811 "Water torture"	started	finished
Driving the WS2811 at 800 kHz with an 8 MHz AVR	finished	ongoing
4x4x4 Led Cube - AVR doing Bit Angle Modulation / Single PCB base	started	finished
Cheapest ever 433 Mhz transceiver for PCs	complete	finished
Roland FD-8 Issues: Hall Sensor Modification	complete	finished
Antique Clock Start Stop Automation	complete	finished
Knight Rider walking led experiments demonstrating pwm, either through SX Virtual Peripherals or inline and How to drive many leds with a few io-pins.	basic	finished
Wireless LCD display	rudimentary	finished
Driving a shift register led display driver.	rudimentary	finished
Driving 4 seven segment led displays	not started	finished
'Very Limited Space' Midi Sustain Pedal.	not started	finished
Fake Cricket.	complete	finished
Reading Rotary Encoders	complete	finished (component)
Oven temperature controller	in progress	in progress (2012)
RGB Light Show (Wired/Wireless)	started	finished
Digital Analogue Clock with Traffic Light alarm	not started	finished
Diffusing Leds the Fast Way	complete	finished

Some older software projects:

• An eclipse plugin for SX assembly language.
• Sxgo, a fast, portable SX28 emulator.

Programming AVRs

You might want to know how to run avrdude from eclipse under linux.

Atmel has released a 4K version of the well-known Attiny2313, called the Attiny4313. It is fully (pin) compatible, with the only difference that it has double memory. The Attiny4313 is not yet recognized by Avrdude, so we have modified the Avrdude config file to be able to program it. This link contains the Attiny4313 section that should be added to your config.

Our set up

Nowadays, we prefer to do our stuff in SMT because it avoids the bore of drilling holes (yes, pun intended). And you can make use of cheap SMT resistor and capacitor assortments so you'll always have the right values available. Working in SMT requires making PCBs. We use the toner transfer method. One tip: the ironing sticks much better if the paper is wet. And one other tip: etching in cupric chloride works very well and you never run out of etchant!

ToDo List

Here are some projects on our to do list:

• CC2500 Wireless System, on hold while we're working on the
• Nordic NRF24 wireless system
• AVR DAC Audio playback
• Midi Chord generator
• Solarpower Chicken Lighting System
• PIC-based MidiFilePlayer
• Drumcomputer
• DCC Train control system
• simple GPS logger based on rs232 receiver
• sunrise alarm clock

Items that were on this list, but are finished now (without write-up)

• 100Mhz SX based Frequency Counter (done)
• AVR Bootloader System (done)