OCT12
Small binary clock
You simply must love a clock that most people can't tell time from.
A small binary clock is built on 2.5x2.5cm board with PIC16F84 microcontroller and 4 LEDs. When "show" button is pressed, current time is displayed in BCD fashion showing tenths of an hour, than ones of an hour followed by minutes. This is a cool project for beginners although only HEX file for PIC is available. If someone wants to make their own firmware for the clock, there is a Single tube nixie clock with timekeeping functions and almost all job already done.
Source: Maco
OCT10
Timed air conditioner infrared remote
If your air conditioner doesn't have a remote controller with built-in timer, don't worry - you can build one yourself.
The idea is to have an air conditioner turned on an hour before going to work. That way the office would be cool at summer and warm at winter. This device is based on ATtiny13 microcontroller and it's job is to reproduce the original IR signal after a certain time when triggered. So, after leaving work at let's say 17:00 the device should count 14.5 hours and than send the IR signal to turn on the air conditioner at 7:30. It is powered by 1.5V (or 1.2V) battery which is boosted by using MAX756 step-up converter. The IR code of remote controller must be sniffed for other air conditioner units since this one is for "Midea".
Source: Tom
Changes on website
After total redesign of this website, leaving comments on news and schematics articles was allowed only to registered forum users. From now on, leaving comments is welcome to everyone without need to register to forum.
Besides these changes, there is also a "share" button on every article which allows you to send content from this website to e-mail and other portals such as digg, facebook and others. Finally there is some sort of option to "track" users of this website and see where they surf by clicking on the "Check them out" link in "online visitors" section :)
OCT7
SPI interfaced large 7-seg led display
This is the general purpose extra large (but doesn't have to be) DIY 7-segment LED display that can be interfaced to any microcontroller.
This project is really easy to build and at the end has only three wires to receive data from uC. It doesn't contain microcontroller itself, but is built around serial-in-parallel out shift register 74HC595 for each digit. Segments are switched by ULN2003 transistor array and LEDs in each segment are connected in series to consume less current. Number of possible digits in display is not limited!
Source: Wichit Sirichote
OCT6
Color-changing LED glowies
This is pretty sweet project for beginners in PIC microcontrollers. It is a device that glows red when heated and blue when cooled.
Microcontroller used in this project is PIC12F675 with built-in A/D converters. Two identical silicon diodes are connected to two analog inputs, that will change it's forward voltage drop when ambient temperature changes. One of diodes is used as a reference and the other to detect a change in temperature. Device is powered from a 3.6V Ni-Cd battery which is constantly re-charged from a solar panel. Source code is written in PIC Basic and is available for download on project page.
Source: I Make Projects
OCT5
Great PIC micro DIY development board
If we want to work with microcontrollers it is a great advantage if we own a development board. If someone can't afford to buy one, he or she can build one themselves.
Here you can see a development board for PIC microcontrollers PIC16F877 / 874. There is no programmer on board but the programmer can be built by using just a few resistors. On project page there is also a development board for PIC16F84 micro. Both of these boards are very well built!
Source: F. Iacopetti
OCT2
Video overlay circuit with ATmega8 - OSD
Video overlay is a technique of displaying a video information on a screen that's already displaying some image or a video. This technique is usually used in OSDs (on-screen display).
To display anything over an existing video signal you would need an IC that is built just for that purpose, such as teletext chips that display teletext info on a TV or even MAX7456 OSD chip. In this project, only ATmega8 is used to generate data and mix it with the existing video signal. Along with microcontroller there is also an LM1881 circuit that is used to extract timing information (sync) from the original video signal. This additional IC simplified the firmware in microcontroller.
Source: Gary N. Dion
OCT1
Nokia 1100 LCD with PIC microcontroller
Sometimes it is necessary to add an LCD display to our microcontroller project. We usually decide between character display such as 2x16 with HD4470 IC or other graphic displays.
Here we can see a driver for a graphic LCD display from Nokia 1100 phone which is good or even better solution than previously mentioned ones, especially because these displays are very very cheap. Driver IC on this LCD panel is PCF8814 which even though has I2C protocol support - doesn't use it. Instead it uses simple bit-banging mechanism for communication. Microcontroller that was used in this project is PIC18F1320 and source code is written in C and it can be ported to any other PIC microcontroller.
Source: SpiralBrain's World
