FEB15
Robot vision with ATmega8 and color camera
AVRcam is an excellent embedded real-time image processing engine and it is well suited for robotics applications.
It is based on Omnivision OV6620 CMOS color image sensor and ATmega8 microcontroller and it is capable of tracking up to 8 colorful objects! The interesting thing is that the firmware occupies only 4 kb of 8 kb available and uses just 692 bytes of RAM for running. First version of AVRcam used 16 MHz crystal for ATmega8 and it was capable of processing 27 images per second. Current version takes 17.7 MHz clock directly from OV6620 module and it can process full 30 images per second. Communication with this module is achieved via standard UART and well designed data protocol.
Aside from robotics applications, this device can be used in security systems for movement detection and alarm triggering.
Source: John O. & Brent T.
FEB5
Vehicle GPS tracking software
There aren't many posts about software on this site but since this is not just "any" software it sure deserves it's introduction here. This is a web portal for displaying maps and tracking information of those tracking devices based on Telit GE863-GPS modules such as EZ863.
Telit modules can be purchased from good old SparkFun but I must say that they don't come cheap. Anyway, this PHP tracking system is written in PHP and it has many features: "Live" view showing one of more vehicles, "History" view allowing display of a specific vehicle's track on a specified date, export of track data via CSV or KML...
Maps used in this system are from Google and the whole project (in PHP) is available for download on the project page.
Source: Nicholas Skinner
FEB4
Digital entry lock with keypad and smart cards
This project is a very secure entry system for your house or some other protected area.
For entry it uses a PIN code in combination with Java Card™ smart card which performs a challenge-response scheme with triple DES encryption (192 bits long keys). It also has internal real-time clock and all entries through this system are dumped via RS232 port to a PC. It is built around a Keil MCB2130 development board but there is also a full schematics for LPC2138 ARM microcontroller so it can work as a stand-alone system.
It sure seems to provide better protection than those high security locks as we can see here.
Source: Carlos Cossio
FEB3
Wireless LCD display
Now this is a good project with a good code snippet. It allows you to send data over IR link to a remote LCD character display. So, it's a wireless LCD display!
Part count for this device is very minimal. On the transmitter side we have a PIC16F688 microcontroller with 5V power supply and HSDL-1100 IR transceiver module used only for TX. At the receiving side there is also a PIC16F688 with HSDL-1100 module and LCD display with KS0070B controller.
So if you need to send some text wirelessly - this is the way to go.
Source: Alexander Avtanski
JAN29
Digital light dimmer
Our forum user niho has just finished his light dimmer for DC current. He describes his project:
"The light level can be adjusted with two push-buttons "Up" and "Down". Controller in this application is PIC16F84 that drives BUZ11 mosfet. Dimmer is tested with a light bulb 12V/4W and mosftet didn't get even warm (which was expected since the datasheet says: 50V/30A). There is a small 5V voltage regulator on board LM78M05 (0,5 A) for the PIC microcontroller. Light level can be adjusted to 10 steps (0-9) and upon startup it is automatically adjusted to level 5. Current light level is displayed on 7-segment LED display with common anode. PCB was designed in Proteus and firmware is written in PBP."
Source: schematics: niho @ forum
JAN27
Moving site to another server
Notice to all of our visitors!
Elektronika.ba website is moving to another server so you might not be able to access the page for next 3-4 days!
Sorry for the inconvenience!
JAN25
FM receiver 60-800 MHz
This could be a pretty interesting project since it is a narrow-band FM receiver that operates in 60-800 MHz range.
The main component of this FM received, or should we say FM scanner is Philips UV1336 tuner taken out of and old TV set. This tuner has internal PLL that is controlled via I2C and it can do a step of just 6,25 kHz. Anyway, this receiver project is originally intended for monitoring polar orbiting weather satellites operated by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), but it can be used for many other interesting applications such as listening to your strong 464 MHz FM bug.
Source: Charles S. and Karen L. S.
JAN19
ATmega168 TV Tetris and Snake games
This AVR project is interesting because it uses special library for displaying text on TV in PAL format. That means that besides from the Tetris&Snake games it can be used for many cool applications that require displaying data on TVs.
It is based on ATmega168 microcontroller that runs on 20MHz and uses really small amount of external parts. We really can't say anything new about the implemented games but nonetheless it wouldn't be bad to build this project and get that "Tetris fever" once again, especially since it consists of just 6 parts. Anyway, the focus of this entire project should be on the tvText library which is also available for download on the project page.
Source: Ben
