Overview Sometimes you need 8Mhz and other times, 16Mhz. This Dual resonator makes sure you have both always on hand. Easy to breadboard at a moments notice. Just flick the switch for the speed you need! Included 1x PCB 1x 16Mhz Resonator 1x 8Mhz Resonator 1x DPDT SMD Switch 1x 3pin header Requires some soldering mostly through hole. Even though the switch is SMD it is easy to solder. Purchase: Tindie or FriedCircuits
Science: Water temp over time
Every few weeks or so we make a trip to the water store to fill up our 3 gallon water container all while trying to avoid their delicious Santa Cruz ice cream. Upon arriving home, the container gets put into the refrigerator. At which point I started to wonder about the effect of the ambient temperature and how long it takes the water to reach equilibrium. My first attempt went pretty well. Here is the hardware I used, most of what I had available except for the waterproof temp sensor and the food grade heat shrink. DS18B20 – Waterproof temp sensor – AdafruitFood-grade heat shrink tubing – AdafruitArduino LeonardoArduino Ethernet Shield (for SD Card)Cardboard boxSHT1x TempHumidity SensorTenergy 7.4v 5200mAh LiPo Battery – …
BBB: Adventures in ROS – Getting Setup
Originally written about a month ago when I started this project. I will be posting more as I make progress. Now that I finally have a Beaglebone Black, I can start to explore and have some fun. I want to get back to working on the SBot and with all the features I want to add, I was leaning towards an onboard Linux system with an Arduino or similar to do the low level timing stuff. Originally I wasn’t going to go the ROS route and write everything from scratch, but the more I dive into ROS (Robot Operating System), this seems the way to go. So first things first, get ROS running on the BBB and see what I can do …
Teardown: ZIF Socket
I recently designed a ZIF programmer for an ATmega328p. This will mainly be used for programming the TinyISP-Tuner and preloaded ICs for the FriedCircuits shop. One problem I ran into was the footprint for the ATmega328p has smaller drills than your standard 0.1in headers, which the ZIF socket would fit in. In trying to make it, fit I messed up the metal clips inside the ZIF which made them closed all the time. So here is a teardown of the ZIF socket as I took it apart to fix it by bending the metal clips back into shape. These are from Adafruit . Sparkfun sells them as well. ZIF socket all parts ZIF socket metal clips ZIF socket without top ZIF …
Raspberry Pi Camera Module and Streaming
Now that the camera is connected it’s time to test it. I have always liked setting up a camera for real-time streaming, plus it’s helpful whenever I am away on a trip. With the PIR project, I could use that to record on motion instead of using image based motion. This would allow for no false positives, unless of course you have animals. You can use the standard mjpg-streamer but it can’t read from the camera module directly and therefore you need to save a file and then read it back. This would be a fast way to wear out your your SD card. I knew there had to be a better solution. Then low and behold I found this: https://github.com/jacksonliam/mjpg-streamer …
Raspberry Pi Camera Module + PiBow
Previously I show how to mount the Raspberry Pi module in the Pimoroni camera mount, but now we need to connect it. Connecting the camera to the RPi is pretty easy if you are careful and there plenty of guides, but I wanted to use it with the Pibow case. The new PiBow cases have a slit for the ribbon cable but if you have the older version, you can make it work. Here is how I did it: Check out this post about using the camera and real-time streaming with mjpg-streamer.
TinyISP-Tuner
In my recent experience with the ATtiny2313, I had problems with the serial communication at 8Mhz. Which in turn my research led me to learning about tuning the internal oscillator. The ATtiny is a small microcontroller by Atmel, the same company that makes the ATmega328p in the Arduino UNO. It doesn’t have all the features but it is cheap and great for embedding in projects. Here is a link to more info on them: http://www.atmel.com/products/microcontrollers/avr/tinyavr.aspx . The great part is that there is a add-on for the Arduino IDE called Arduino-Tiny. This way you can use the same code with the ATtiny’s. After some trial and error and some help from the forms, I was able to figure out how to …
PiGlow from Pimoroni
In a recent Adafruit order I couldn’t resist picking up the new PiGlow for the Raspberry Pi. This is a neat 18 LED add-on that connects to the GPIO header of the Raspberry Pi and communicates over I2C. With the example Python code, I was blinking in color in no time. You can buy them from Adafruit in the US or directly from Pimoroni in the UK. The Pimoroni site has all the links to get you started. I used the link to Jason Barnett’s Gihub which has a in depth how-to and a lot of examples to get you started and playing in color. The LEDs are in a spiral pattern, making for a great binary clock, which is …
FriedCircuits Now Live!
We’d like to welcome you to our grand opening of our new online store, FriedCircuits.us! Over the past few months, we have diligently worked toward creating a one-stop-shop that offers tools & parts for sale as well as detailed documentation. There we hope to provide new products, tutorials and share FriedCircuits related projects. Fear not! This here blog will remain active, and host most of MobileWill’s personal projects and such. After all, it is through this blog that we were able to grow many ideas and tools that helped launched our FriedCircuits tindie shop (which we still plan to support)! Speaking of supporting – we’d like to thank all of our supporters for helping us succeed to where we are …
OLED Backpack New Features
Recently, the OLED Backpack has gone through a few updates and it has come to be quite a new tool! Thanks to Edouard Lafargue for all his hard work, he has made the OLED Backpack extra amazing. New features: Auto scaling (can change scale range in code) Multiple Screens – Short button press Scope View Energy Readings Peak and Min values Large font for each of the 3 readings (Voltage, Watts, Amperes) Amperes display auto adjusts decimal Button resets peak, min and energy counts Check out Edouard’s review http://www.aerodynes.fr/2013/09/08/fried-circuits-tester-multiscreen-and-energy-measurement/ You can get the latest version on Github: https://github.com/FriedCircuits/FC-USB-Tester-OLED-Backpack You can buy the OLED Backpack on Tindie.com: https://www.tindie.com/products/FriedCircuits/usb-tester-oled-backpack-bundle/