Sep 03 2014
There are a number of ways to program AVR microcontroller chips. For my DIY projects, I like to save money by buying components and putting them together to create what I need. I bought some blank ATMEGA 328P micro controllers so that I could make Arduino circuit boards for my projects. Building the Arduino circuit …
Sep 02 2014
A few days ago my son bought me a birthday present. It was a BusPirate from SparkFun. This is what it looks like plugged into a breadboard. The BusPirate is quite a handy circuit. I have used it to flash a BIOS chip using FLASHROM and also program an AVR ATMEGA 328P with AVRDude. It …
Aug 07 2014
[warning]Careful! Don’t let the smoke out![/warning] Hopefully you’ve never ruined any electronics device due to applying too much power. Some people have (cough, cough .. the voice of experience) and when this happens the device or component goes up in smoke. In popular jargon it is said to have “lost its smoke“. When working with …
Aug 04 2014
Many years ago (I am old ;-)) I was asked which microcontrollers are best, ones from PIC (microchip.com) or ones from Atmel (atmel.com). At the time I was asked, there was a lot of discussion about chip architecture, instruction sets and which chip was best. I thought at the time and still feel this way, …
Aug 04 2014
If you need a way to design a circuit or show a nice graphic of it for someone else to follow, you might consider Fritzing from fritzing.org. A quote from their website: Fritzing is an open-source hardware initiative that makes electronics accessible as a creative material for anyone. Fritzing.org offers a software tool, a community …
Aug 03 2014
We live in an exciting age! Just think about how computer technology has progressed in just one ‘people’ generation! Electronic devices with smaller and smaller components are infiltrating our lives more and more making things easier. The ‘Internet of Things‘ is taking over! My main interest (and I hope yours too) is in electronics and …
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