Saturday, March 3, 2018
Eagle CAD Quick Tip | How to remove unwanted copper pour
Beautify your PCB with this quick tip. A short video on how to remove unwanted copper pour around some traces in Eagle CAD without increasing the clearance between tracks.
Friday, March 2, 2018
Cheap and powerful 50 cents microcontroller | EFM8 Family
This is a step-by-step tutorial on how to setup and program an
EFM8BB10F8G-A microcontroller or any other EFM8 Busy Bee microcontroller family
from Silicon Labs. It is assumed that the reader knows the C programming language and basics about microcontrollers.
Why
would you want to learn to use
another microcontroller when there are many tutorials and libraries on
popular MCU's such as AVR and PIC? Well, because they are much more
cheaper but performant nonetheless - on Farnell you can buy them for
less than 50 cents - and also are pre-programed with a bootloader making
easy to program them using any USB to serial converter. Compare that
to Attiny13A which is around the same price but with half the pin count,
less speed and peripherals. Just see the features bellow.
Labels:
Microcontroller SiLabs,
Simplicity Studio
Thursday, February 1, 2018
How to build your own USB to UART serial converter using FT232 with voltage level shifting
The board includes 500mA fuse protection, EMI filtering, power LED indicator, RX and TX LED indicators, and a voltage level shifter that makes it compatible with 3.3V and 5V boards. This way you don't need to check the jumper if it outputs 5 or 3.3V so you don't risk burning your microcontroller. It works with both voltages.
Update: 2024, March, 6: I made another serial adapter build around FT231 which require less components since it is 5V tolerant and is also cheaper. It is part of a development board: https://www.programming-electronics-diy.xyz/2023/06/breadboard-development-board-for-avr.html#USB_Interface.
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
EAGLE CAD Tips | How to Add Custom Image Logo to Your PCB
Adding a custom image logo to your PCB can make your project look more professional. In the following video I will demonstrate how you can quick and easy import an image in Eagle CAD and place it on your PCB. You can place graphics on copper layers to be etched or on silkscreen to be printed.
In this video I show as an example a USB to UART board. Eagle expects a Bitmap image with less than 256 color depth.The text image was made in Inkscape and since Inkscape can't export Bitmap (.bmp), I exported the image as PNG, then using IrfanView I lowered the color depth to 2 colors and saved as Bitmap.
In this video I show as an example a USB to UART board. Eagle expects a Bitmap image with less than 256 color depth.The text image was made in Inkscape and since Inkscape can't export Bitmap (.bmp), I exported the image as PNG, then using IrfanView I lowered the color depth to 2 colors and saved as Bitmap.
Saturday, October 28, 2017
How to use A4988 stepper motor driver module tutorial
A4988 stepper motor driver module
This
driver can be used to easily control a bipolar stepper motor or a
uni-polar stepper connected in a bipolar mode. Can output up to 2A per
phase (with a heatsink) and works with motor voltages from 8 to 35
volts.
- Simple step and direction control interface
- Five different step resolutions: full-step, half-step, quarter-step, eighth-step, and sixteenth-step
- Adjustable current control lets you set the maximum current output with a potentiometer, which lets you use voltages above your stepper motor’s rated voltage to achieve higher step rates
- Intelligent chopping control that automatically selects the correct current decay mode (fast decay or slow decay)
- Over-temperature thermal shutdown, under-voltage lockout, and crossover-current protection
- Short-to-ground and shorted-load protection
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