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Saturday, December 13, 2008 - 10:08 AM, (449 Reads)
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Still playing with hardware... I think I'm actually learning. I've figured out how to use transistors, h-bridges, shift registers, and I can build basic circuits. I don't have an o-scope so I have trouble knowing when to add caps in certain places, but I'm getting there.
I'm getting pretty good with eagle, and I've had a few boards made at batchpcb, they have all worked as designed, which is great. I'm currently trying how to figure out how to put components on both sides of the board.
I'm still using arduino, but I have also started using C to program AVRs, I'm writing directly to registers in a lot of places. As soon as I can figure out the sleep functions, and get a little better with the timers for pwm, or prescaled timers I'll be moving to assembler.
I've breadboarded some neat multiplexed arrays, and recently charlieplexed arrays. Now I'm trying to make a nice 8x7 array out of smt leds. I think I'm going to use an atmega 168(or a 169) to drive the array, and I want the driver circuit to be on the backside of the array... all smt, nice and flat.
smt components are so damn cheap.. I can get 100 smt leds for $6, a cpu for well under $2. Resistors and caps are just pennies. I'm trying to put together a basic set up for making my own boards as well for rapid prototyping. They wont be as nice as the ones from batchpcb, but they will cost about the same, and I wont have to wait 4-6 weeks for them.
If I want to reproduce or improve a design, the cycle will be shorter, and my final designs can go out to a real fab house. For example the charlieplexed array I've come up with will evolve to be a 3X18 array(closest I can get to 56, maybe I'll make it wider, maybe I'll make it 5X18, which will be a 10x9 charliplex, yeah I like that more), and add an eeprom for memory, where I can save charset data, maybe a few buttons to make it easily programmable by user, a 3v coin cell, and bam, I have a really cool standalone, programmable, marquis for maybe $10 in retail components, probably half that if I kit it. dorky belt buckles are even better if they are home made ;)
The software part will be fun, the hardware part is still a bit challenging for me... but thats why I like it. Hobby a-la nerd.
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