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Test run of VFD display using Arduino

Wed, 03/21/2012 - 18:43 — admin

Among my electronics junk I found a VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display) display and wanted to make sure it still works and can be used in projects. It’s a 16T202DA1E display manufactured by Samsung.

16T202DA1E_hello_world

It can replace standard HD44780 based liquid crystal display out of the box. First of all it only requires 5V supply. Voltage step up circuit for lighting fluorescent display is already on board. Controller accepts same commands as any 2x16 LCD does. The pin-out of display is as follows:

Adapting graphical LCD with touch screen to ChipKIT UNO32

Sun, 11/06/2011 - 12:08 — admin

ChipKIT is a great substitution board to Arduino. It offers better performance as it is based on PIC32MX320F128 microcontroller based on 32-bit architecture. Microcontroller has 128K of Flash and 16K of SRAM on board. Having Arduino Uno shape factor ChipKIT offers more 42 programmable pins.

chipKIT-Uno32

ChipKIT like Arduino can be programmed with bootloader that communicates to PC through USB-to-USART converter chip FT232RQ. Digilent has developed an STK500v2 based bootloader that works on PIC so it is easy to program using AVRDUDE tool. Besides that they adapted an Arduino envoronemt to work with ChipKIT boards. It's called Mpide. It also support Arduino boards but it aim is to program ChipKIT boards. Progamming experience is pretty same as for Arduino and even most of examples written for Arduino works on ChipKIT. This is true since there is no specific hardware elements touched like program memory or EEPROM. As you know Arduino is rich in hardware support libraries as all shields are designed for arduino. Late comers like ChipKIT even if they are hardware compatible may have some difficulties with library integration due to different architecture.

Running LEDs on MSP-EXP430FR5739 FRAM board

Fri, 11/04/2011 - 20:04 — admin

In this part we are going to create a simple project for MSP-EXP430FR5739 FRAM board. As development tools we are going to use Code Composer Studio which is free to up to 16KB Flash code size. MSP430FR5739 microcontroller has exactly 16KB of FRAM memory so we can use it all with no hustle.

EXP430FR5739_running_LEDS

Download Code Compose Studio (CCS) and install it to your PC. Then start application and go to workbench. It is Eclipse based IDE so should be no problem if you have used Eclipse before.

Building STK500 AVR ISP programmer with USB

Wed, 09/29/2010 - 13:51 — admin

Programmer is one of the first things to think of when starting to deal with microcontrollers. Luckily it is not hard to build fully working programmer almost for any microcontroller as there are tons of open source projects around. So I decided to build stk500 compatible programmer which is actually taken from tuxgraphics.com. I decided not to search for same parts as in original schematics but use what’s on desk.

Automatic DS18B20 based thermostat controlled by AVR

Sun, 02/07/2010 - 21:23 — admin

This is an automatic DS18B20 temperature sensor based thermostat controlled by AVR Atmega8 microcontroller. It has a LCD for setting parameters and viewing program flow. 12 button keypad is used to navigate menu and enter parameters like threshold temperature values. Ideal solution for home heating system automation.



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