Aria G25 - Embedded Linux 25€ Aria G25 is a cost-effective System-on-Module (SoM) thought of to drastically reduce the development time needed to design a low-power and low-EMI Linux Embedded device. The more complex hardware like CPU, RAM, Ethernet, power and EMI components are integrated on a single SMD component in just 40x40 mm (1.57x1.57 inch) using an complex eight layers PCB permitting hardware designers to create their simple and cheap carrier boards. Software main features AriaG25 sections Click on the following image to take to see how it's simple to wire external components to design your custom board using Aria G25: Aria G25 is designed to boot a Linux Embedded distribution compiled for ARM9 architecure from a microSD or a SD card. We propose, by default, a ready-to-use Linux Debian distribution stored on a microSD card. Some ready to use bootable microSD cards are available on the microSD on-line catalog but they can be generated by yourself from binaries or from the sources following our tutorials.
Tutorial: Arduino and the AREF pin - Birds on the Wire Welcome back fellow arduidans! Today we are going to spend some time with the AREF pin - what it is, how it works and why you may want to use it. First of all, here it is on our boards: Uno/TwentyTen AREF [Please read whole article before working with your hardware] In chapter one of this series we used the analogRead() function to measure a voltage that fell between zero and five volts DC. But why is the result a value between 0~1023? We measure resolution in the terms of the number of bits of resolution. It is easier to imagine this with the following image: So with our example ADC with 2-bit resolution, it can only represent the voltage with four possible resulting values. With our Arduino's ADC range of 0~1023 - we have 1024 possible values - or 2 to the power of 10. However - not all Arduino boards are created equally. What if we want to measure voltages between 0 and 2, or 0 and 4.6? And therein lies the reason for the AREF pin! So how do we tell our Arduinos to use AREF?
PIC32 Pinguino dev board - $31.46 For PIC fans, or anyone who wants a dev board with a little more horsepower under the hood, the PIC32 Pinguino presents a step up from Arduino. This board is the same size and shape, but has a 32-bit microcontroller, running at 80 MHz with a huge amount of flash and RAM for intensive application. It also has some neat extras like a DC/DC converter input and a built in lithium-ion/polymer charger for portable projects.
usbpicprog Mosquino: energy harvesting board Mosquino is a software-compatible derivative of the open-source Arduino platform that is designed for extremely low power consumption, operating from ambient (harvested) environmental energy sources such as heat, sunlight and vibration. (Or coincells, if you’re not feeling adventurous.) Note: This project is in its early beginnings, and has not been exhaustively tested yet. This text is mainly a placeholder for proper documentation. Why Mosquino? Important specs: Operating voltage range: 1.8 ~ 3.3V Input voltage range: Depends on power shield (the board expects to receive 1.8 ~ 3.6V pre-regulated or 0 ~ 6V unregulated from the power shield). Downloads / design files WARNING – This is a very new project and these have not been fully tested yet. Mosquino’s code and design files are now hosted on Google Code. If anyone has built the old ‘rev1′ version, its design and support files can be downloaded below. Features (or, Why create yet another Arduino-based variant): Low-power features:
Burning AVR boot loader with USB TTL Serial Cable I am working with some kids at local high school that ordered a Sanguino kit to put together just after Makerbot went online. The kit was missing some components and others were the wrong size. How ever the big problem was that processor chip did not get the boot strap loader for the Arduino IDE development environment flashed into it. Generally you use a programmer to burn your target program onto an AVR chip, for the Arduino IDE environment we burn a boot loader that lets us upload new programs into the flash memory via the Arduino IDE. There are multiple ways to burn the loader that we need. External ISP or JTAG programmerUse the Arduino-IDE via a parallel port and adapterUse another Sanguino or Arduino as a programmerUse the USB Serial cable TTL-232R in bit banger mode A good article on AVR family programming options is at: What is bit banger mode? avrdude done.
Embedded Linux 39 low cost boards 39 low-cost boards for embedded Linux application development starting with Raspberry Pi. Want the list? Thanks to Google+, I just found this very interesting list of 39 low-cost development boards supporting embedded Linux development. Most of these boards cost less than US $200 and many of them cost less than US $100. The list was published on CNX Software’s Web site, which supplies more details on each board such as the price. Here’s the product list, including the processors used on the boards: Raspberry Pi Model B – Broadcom BCM2835 (ARM11)Rikomagic MK802 – Allwiner A10 (ARM Cortex-A8)Mele A1000 – AllWinner A10 (ARM Cortex-A8)Rhombus-Tech A10 EOMA-68 – AllWinner A10 (ARM Cortex-A8)Gooseberry board – AllWinner A10 (ARM Cortex-A8)A13-OLinuXino – AllWinner A13 (ARM Cortex-A8)VIA APC – Wondermedia WM8650 (ARM11)VIA ARTiGO A1200 – VIA Eden X2 (x86)VIA ARTiGO A1150 – VIA Eden X2 (x86)BeagleBoard Rev. The reason for pointing these boards out is because they are the symptom of a trend.
V-USB - A Firmware-Only USB Driver for Atmel AVR Microcontrollers V-USB is a software-only implementation of a low-speed USB device for Atmel’s AVR® microcontrollers, making it possible to build USB hardware with almost any AVR® microcontroller, not requiring any additional chip. V-USB can be licensed freely under the GNU General Public License or alternatively under a commercial license. A comprehensive set of example projects demonstrates the wide range of possible applications. Features For a comparison to other USB solutions for microcontrollers please click here. Hardware This diagram shows a typical circuit for a bus powered device (click the image to enlarge). D1 and D2 are a low cost replacement for a low drop 3.3 V regulator chip, such as the LE33. For a prototyping board, please see metaboard. Documentation Resources Download the V-USB package containing a short description and several simple code examples.
Arduino shrunk - how to use ATtiny13 with Arduino IDE Lots of different MCUs can be worked on using the Arduino IDE, not just the Arduino boards! Arduino IDE (Integrated Development Environment), currently in version 1.0, is a great system for programming the Arduino boards. It has an easy-to-learn intuitive interface and comes with all the necessary settings for the most common Arduino boards – Uno, Duemilanove, Nano and others based on ATmega168 and ATmega328 microcontrollers. The latest version also includes some of the most recent ATmega1280 and ATmega2560 boards. The hardware-specific libraries are called cores and they are located under ~/sketchbook/hardware/xxxx/cores where xxxx can be either arduino or a hardware name that the developer of the libraries settled on – tiny, for example. So far I came across three different sets of libraries suitable for programming of ATtiny microcontrollers: Most of them contain versions of several basic Arduino functions that can run on MCUs with such small Flash and SRAM sizes as the ATtiny.
electronics I recently started toying around with microcontrollers and built a few simple things, mostly taking other people's projects as a starting point and morphing them into something that does the same thing, but worseWdifferent. this project is based on obdev's RemoteSensor example and their firmware-only USB implementation; the main change is the replacement of the analog sensors with a Sensirion SHT11 digital temperature and humidity sensor. sensor unit the sensor unit consists of an ATTiny45 microcontroller, a SHT11 sensor, and a hoperf RFM12 868 MHz transceiver module. it is powered by 2 AA cells and is expected to give >1 year of battery life. receiver the receiver uses the same RFM12 module and an ATMega8 µC; received data is transmitted via USB to the PC. host software the host software can write out the received data in CSV format and in a one-line-per-value format for integration into the Cricket graphing system. download here's the tgz file with schematics (PNG and eagle) and software.
Programming an ATtiny w/ Arduino This tutorial shows you how to program an ATtiny45 or ATtiny85 microcontroller using the Arduino software and hardware. The ATtiny45 and ATtiny85 are small (8-leg), cheap ($2-3) microcontrollers that are convenient for running simple programs. This tutorial is obsolete! See the updated version of this tutorial (with support for Arduino 1.0). They are almost identical, except that the ATtiny85 has twice the memory of the ATtiny45 and can therefore hold more complex programs. We like to use both of them with paper circuits and other craft electronics. Materials and Tools For this tutorial, you’ll need: Arduino Uno or Duemilanove (w/ an ATmega328, not an older board with an ATmega168) ATtiny45 or ATtiny85 (8-pin DIP package) a 10 uF capacitor (e.g. from Sparkfun or from Digi-Key ) a breadboard jumper wires For more information, see our list of materials and parts and our list of prototyping supplies . Software Download: Arduino software , attiny45_85.zip The ATtiny45 / ATtiny85 Microcontroller