The other day I suggested cooperative multitasking as a very simple technique to use on small microcontrollers, by beginners and also not-so-beginners. Today I’m going to explain a problem with the simple technique and provide a solution - also simple. Got curious? Just keep on reading!…
Nope, it’s not an article on time management ! Sometimes I see people around pushing hard on their brains about “how to do several things at the same time” in an Arduino or any other microcontroller board. Sometimes they even start thinking about threads and operating systems, but in such small machines and with newbie programmers, the best thing to do really is to stay away from the complexity of preemptive multitask / time sharing systems and synchronization theory. But then, is there any programming method adequate to resource-scarce machines and easy to use? There is indeed. Just keep on reading
Our vision of serial Arduino
We release here our serial Arduino compatible board: EDuino!! This project consists of a few versions of serial Arduino boards. A full featured Arduino is nice to use while developing projects, but when you make lots of projects it is a bit expensive to buy an Arduino board to be permanently installed in each one of them. Some other times, you would like to have a smaller Arduino. The aim of this project was to provide cheap, compact and easy to build boards that can be built at home and permanently integrated into projects. The PCBs are all single sided and the need to drill holes kept to a minimum (not to say none at all). The boards use a few SMD components but they are not hard to solder, consisting only of a few resistors and capacitors; soldering “big” (1206 size) SMD components is something that “barks” but doesn’t “bite” :).
All of this work is licensed under Creative Commons BY NC SA. And all images are clickable for a bigger view.
How’s the temperature today? Cold, good or hot? Ambient temperature can be easily measured without any special temperature sensor. You just need… a common diode! Well, actually, a diode and a resistor. Diodes change their forward voltage drop at a rate of approximately -2.3 mV per degree Celsius (ºC), so we just need to measure that voltage.
You may want to start by reading Setting up a LED bargraph. Check also our other Free Articles.
I’ll be writing a few articles on easy and fun things you can do with a linear LED bargraph such as our Linear bargraph LED scale module, and this 1st one is meant to show you how to make the basic adjustments. Keep on reading and stay tunned!
Spanish version of our article Fun and easy to build buzzer circuit!
Me encontré con este circuito cuando tenía alrededor de 14 años y he jugado con él durante años. Este fue probablemente el circuito que más me fascinó en mis primeros años y que despertó en mí la pasión por la electrónica. Lo vi por primera vez en las revistas de electrónica brasileña, algunos de ellos ainda hoy en la prensa, pero un seguimiento de su origen a un circuito de un libro escrito en 1960 por Lou Garner - Transistor Circuit.
Este circuito es un oscilador, y es capaz de generar una onda de sonido, un tono. La frecuencia del tono (si es un sonido mas agudo o grave) es controlado por la resistencia variable. La potencia del sonido de este circuito es considerable, no ponga su oído demasiado cerca del altavoz de la primera vez !
(Beginning with a Low Effort Demonstration: a Blinking LED)
Recently, the main theme of conversation between me and some of my friends whenever we get together for a few drinks is always the same: “let’s make something together; a project, and perhaps a product”.
Me and this circuit met when I was around 14 years old and I played with it for years. This was probably the circuit that most fascinated me in my early years and that awoke in me the passion for electronics. I saw it for the first time in Brazilian electronics magazines, some of them still in print today, but I tracked its origins to a circuit from a book written in 1960 by Lou Garner - Transistor Circuits.
This circuit is an oscillator, and is able to generate a sound wave, a tone. The tone’s frequency (if it’s a high or low sound) is controlled by the variable resistor. The sound volume of this circuit is considerable so, don’t put your ear too close to the speaker on the first run .
Still have a PC with a parallel port laying around? In this AVR tutorial I will describe how to setup a minimalist system to develop AVR programs, using the C programming language, under Windows. This comprises of a really cheap hardware programmer, a test circuit and PC software. You will end following this tutorial with an AVR programmed by you blinking a LED on your bench . I’ll not explain in detail what all commands do; this tutorial focuses on setting up the development environment, leaving the applications development for another tutorial.
Portuguese speakers: Podem ver uma versão portuguesa deste artigo aqui.
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