The brain of the robot is made of Atmel Tiny2313 microcontroller. This MCU has a cool feature called In-System Programming which can be used to program memories of the MCU with almost-no-cost programmer. I used simple programmer which connects to parallel port. It is described in [ 2 ] and its schematic is below. The 74HC08 integrated circuit, whi
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ch is the only part of this programmer besides the connector, costs about 50 cents. Everything can be built directly into the 25-pin LPT connector without any PCB. On the microcontroller side of the cable, I use pinhead female connector with my own layout as shown in fig. 4. 2. Note that the cable should not be longer than about 50 cm. If parallel port is not available on your computer, you can use PonyProg software [ 4 ] with interface for serial port. The programming device is also very simple. Note that if you use laptop with USB to Serial converter PonyProg may run very slow (10 minutes for programming the memory) so this is not a good choice. I did not find any solution for this yet, but luckily my laptop has a parallel port and my old PC has both serial and parallel port. The simplest solution would be to buy some commercial Atmel programmer for USB, such us ISP MK II, which can cost about $40. The program for the MCU is built in AVR Studio, which is free IDE provided by Atmel [ 5 ]. AVR studio allows writing programs in assembly language only, but there is free set of tools including C compiler called WinAVR [ 6 ] available. WinAVR integrates into AVR studio seamlessly, so it is possible to write programs for the MCU in C. So to sum it all up, the program for microcontroller is written in C and built with WinAVR tools integrated into AVR studio. First, download and install AVR studio. Then install WinAVR and it will...
This project fits more for custom made battery casing that can have more space to hide things inside. This switch with few alterations can be used for any other project as well but is designed based on e-bike needs! This project use a clever functionality of....
The circuit described here uses ultrasonic oscillations and operates based on the propagation velocity of these oscillations in the air. Thus, we can easily determine the distance of two points if the time within which the wave travels this distance is....
Sometimes the precious metals are hidden too deep and are not detected except with complicated devices. In many cases, however, small pieces of precious metal buried near the surface can be detected by relatively simple means. Everyone is very attractive to....
Many times for various reasons we forget or can not water the plants that we have in our homes. And many humidity sensors units just notify us with a beeping sound or with a flashing light, that the pot needs watering. But what if we are away from home? This....
The principle behind a metal detector is really very simple. Proof of this is the circuit that follows, in which it proves that the construction of a metal detector can be done in the minute, with few components that we find very easily everywhere. With the....
The sub-harmonic bass generator is a sound producing unit for guitars. The sound it produces looks very much like that of the bass guitar. The octave generator is sometimes quite unusual since it does not produce any of the usual ways of coloring the sound,....
In the past the sounding (sea bottom measurement) was done with the "bullet", that is, with a heavy lead object that the seamen plucked into the sea hung from a calibrated rope. As soon as the "bullet" reached the bottom, the depth appeared directly from the....
This Amplifier was designed to have the following specifications: Distortion less than 0.1% at full power of 100W even at 20KHz. Power has to be attributed to an extended bandwidth. The output transistors must be protected against short circuits. The power....
A series of LEDs serve to alert the gardener when plants need water. Using two conventional digital integrated LEDs and a series of LEDs, we make a very useful device for gardening. The device detects the amount of water in the pot and alerts the grower.....
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