SEP14
Arduino LC Meter
After that very popular LC meter based on Microchip PIC16F84 or PIC16F628 we now have a version which uses Atmel AVR ATmega8 microcontroller.
Unlike that popular PIC version, this LC meter can also measure capacitance of electrolytic capacitors. Measuring range is 1pF-10uF for regular capacitors, 10uF-100mF for electrolytic and 1nH-1H for inductors. Display is from Nokia 3310 phone and complete schematics, manual and source code for Arduino is available on project page.
Source: iTeadStudio iStore
Warm Tube Clock v2 in Housing - User pictures
[E. Lelic] has sent us pictures of his Warm Tube Clock v2 which he placed into custom housing.
The housing is actually an aluminium profile that is used as a handrail from a fence! The good thing about it is that it comes with two black plastic caps for each side. On the back there are three holes; for buttons and power supply connector. [Edo] also modified the high voltage power supply circuit by using a coil with three taps and connecting it in autotransformer configuration. This way he achieves somewhat better efficiency but he had to limit the voltage with Zener diode. He also reported that without it he sees strange lighting-effect in tubes and LEDs, probably because of HV spikes that exit the booster circuit when at least one tube is off.
SEP13
Glass PCBs
If you ever fantasied about making your own PCBs from scratch, but really from scratch - this is the thing for you.
Here we are not talking only about etching a PCB but the actual manufacturing of PCB material. By using a thin copper sheet which is actually intended for PCB manufacturers, some UV glue and a glass (yes, a glass microscope slide) as a substrate it is pretty easy to make a fully transparent PCB. In this video that lasts 20min we can see how this thin 1-ounce copper sheet is glued to the glass to form a PCB material. After that the well-known etching process is started to make a fully transparent glass PCB.
Source: CNLohr
AUG26
Web server maintenance - again
Dear visitors of Elektronika.ba web portal, from 09.01.2011 to 09.02.2011 web site might be offline due to maintenance of web hosting server.
Thanks for understanding!
AUG24
All about crystals and oscillators
Author of blog "The Signal Path Blog" has made an excellent tutorial on clock generators using crystal and TTL oscillators.
In this 4-part tutorial he describes how crystals and crystal oscillators work and their pros and cons. He also made a simple TTL oscillator with invertors and shows us how it performs when heated/cooled down.
This is a very very good tutorial and is definitely worth watching!
Source: The Signal Path Blog
ArduRoller balance bot
A while ago we have seen a primitive version of balancing robot that used mechanical switches to detect motion/tilt.
Today we can see a more advanced and complicated version of the same robot. It uses gyroscope in combination with accelerometer as sensors and a microcontroller to drive motors according to value from those sensors. The ADXRS613 gyroscope is used together with ADXL203CE accelerometer to improve the accuracy of motion detection. PID controller is implemented in microcontroller (Arduino) and source code is available for download on project page.
Good tutorial about these sensors can be found here.
Source: fasaxc
AUG11
Warm Tube Clock v2 - User pictures
[Ruslan] sent us few pictures of his Warm Tube Clock v2 Nixie clocks and a Youtube video.
This version of clock uses DS3231 RTC IC and is fully compatible with DS3232. It is also pin-compatible with previous one, so it is possible to use shields of previous version on this one and vice-versa. IN-8 shield is replaced with IN-14 shield because these tubes are cheaper and easier to find.
Take look at some pictures he made for us.
JUN3
Warm Tube Clock v2 - Nixie Clock with 4 tubes
This is a new and improved version of "Warm Tube Clock" - the open source Nixie clock project.
Important hardware changes between this new version and the previous one are: timekeeping is more accurate and is done by DS3231 (or DS3232) RTC IC, there is no DS18S20 temperature sensor - the internal one of RTC IC is used instead, backup battery is not powering AVR anymore, but only the RTC IC and many more.
Here you can see images, videos and download entire project for DIY version.
