In this project, we’ll demonstrate how to make a colorful, king-sized coconut tree (5 feet) decorative showpiece using a digital RGB LED strip.  The RGB LED strip is cut and arranged to form the shape of a coconut tree. The ATMega328 microcontroller is used to control the LED strip, generating several flashing, fading, and blinking…

The 1-Wire protocol is a single-wire interface, half-duplex, bidirectional, low-speed and power, long-distance serial-data communication protocol. Although this protocol is classified as a 1-wire standard, at least two wires are required in the 1-wire standard bus — one for the data and/or power supply and another for the ground return. An additional wire might be…

With smartphones, autonomous vehicles, and 5G wireless connectivity dominating the landscape of embedded design in 2022, Microchip’s 8-bit PIC and AVR microcontroller (MCU) families are gaining market share. Over the past 50 years, the market for 8-bit MCUs has grown steadily and Microchip currently sells one device for every human in the western hemisphere each…

If we look around, we will find ourselves to be surrounded by computing systems. Every year millions of computing systems are built destined for desktop computers (Personal Computers, workstations, mainframes and servers) but surprisingly, billions of computing systems are built every year embedded within larger electronic devices and still goes unnoticed. Any device running on electric power either already has computing system or will soon have computing system embedded in it.

Most engineers start their journey in embedded systems with microcontrollers. With microcontrollers, one gets a complete miniature computing system on a single integrated circuit. The CPU, RAM, ROM and Input / Output peripherals all on a single thumb size SoC. This very popular approach to learning embedded design and development is in fact just the one side of the complete picture. Working with microcontrollers (and microprocessors) is all about software-based embedded design. 

ATtiny85 microcontroller is a very popular 8-bit RISC microcontroller. It has become the first choice for professionals and developers because of its incredible features in such a small size. As its name suggests, it’s a tiny 8-pin (PDIP) microcontroller with almost all required features that any microcontroller should have such as built-in FLASH, EEPROM, SRAM,…

I started working on a project with involves Atmega162 to be programmed in order to achieve the desired output. I started to write code using Atmel studio ide but I found it very hard to work with the Atmel studio ide. Atmel studio is slow and finding bugs etc is also very difficult. So I…

Brushless motors have much more satisfying results as compared to brushed motors. The basic difference between them is that in a brushless motor, the rotor itself contains the permanent magnets and the electromagnets move to the stator which is quite opposite as seen in a brushed motors. It’s more precise and can also factor the speed of the motor into the equation. This makes brushless motors more efficient. There is no sparking and much less electrical noise. There are no brushes to wear out. With the electromagnets on the stator, they are very easy to cool. You can have a lot of electromagnets on the stator for more precise control. The only disadvantage of a brushless motor is its higher initial cost, but you can often recover that cost through the greater efficiency over the life of the motor.

You may have seen many different LED chaser projects. Simple LED chaser can be built using IC555 and digital counter chips. Many LED chasers are built using micro controllers. Micro controller based LED chaser have variety of different chasing effect. One can generate awesome LED chasing effect using micro controller programming. There may be 8 or 10 or 16 or even more LEDs connected with micro controller and it will turn LEDs ON/OFF LED or vary its brightness or blink them to create wonderful effects.

With the rapid use of smartphones and tablets around the globe, apps have become an inseparable part of our lives. Not only we tend to use them for entertainment but these are also quite useful for educational as well as professional purposes. This wide spectrum of users also includes people belonging to the field of electronics ranging from beginners to professionals.There are different apps which provide access to important information regarding the materials, tools, calculations and notable theoretical knowledge involved in the electronics projects. 

Measuring an individual battery voltage or a whole bank of battery using any microcontroller(arduino, microship pic, Avr, Atmega, Intel, NXP, stm32)is an easy task. You can find many tutorials on internet on how to do so. But what about if we want to measure an individual battery connected to a cluster of batteries in series…

The first thing we need to understand is that what it servomechanism? Servomechanism means generating error output as a difference between output feedback and control input and reduces this error until it becomes zero – that means when the system reaches desired state when the system produces desired output.  

While measuring voltage and current with multi-meter, the probes have to be changed its position carefully. There is a probability of damaging the multi-meter, if voltage is measured in high current mode by mistake.  In case, both voltage and current to be measured at a time, we have to use two multi-meters and care should be taken while wiring both the multi-meters. VAT meter is combination of Voltmeter, Ammeter and Thermometer. It can measure voltage and current simultaneously along with the temperature. 

In this post i am going to explain how to interface 24×2 lcd with microcontroller. I am going to interface lcd with 8051(89c51,89c52) and Microchip Pic16f877 microcontrollers. 24×2 means 24-Coulombs and 2-Rows. Total characters which we can display on 24×2 lcd  (24×2=48) 48. 24 Characters on each row. Interfacing 24×2 lcd with microcontroller is same as…

This is a common dilemma among electronics community of engineers whether they are DIY hobbyists or professionals working on a prototype. There may be a case that one might have worked on some microcontrollers and now willing to propel the academic excellence by working on development boards or do one needs to choose a development board for a do-it-yourself engineering project. Let’s have a fundamental understanding of both the boards to make clear which to select.First thing is that both Arduino and Raspberry Pi offer a range of development boards with different specifications and features.

A microcontroller is a device which has an inbuilt processor surrounded by few dedicated hardware modules. Once the microcontroller initializes them they start operating on their own. In case of an ADC it will do the sampling and digital to analog conversion all by itself and keep the converted data in its buffer so that the microcontroller can read that later. The advantage of this kind of implementation is that the microcontroller is free to do other tasks during that time and hence increase the overall efficiency. That was the case of hardware modules or peripherals inside a microcontroller which increases the processing efficiency of the built in processor. The efficiency can increase even more if the external hardware attached to the microcontroller can also does lot more tasks by their own without depending the microcontroller. 

The Boot-Loader is a code which executes when a microcontroller is powered ON or reset. It basically sets an environment for the application code to execute. It is the Boot-Loader that sets the hardware and loads the application code from any storage medium or received through external communication and let the application to execute. Thus a Boot-Loader has to perform the following basic function : Initialize the controller peripherals, Initialize the devices in the board, Allow an option for the user to select from the available applications to load, Load the selected application, Let the application code to execute. Apart from the above mentioned functions some Boot-Loaders can perform many other functions and there are Boot-Loaders which don’t perform all these functions like provide option to select the required application etc. The Boot-Loader codes in microcontrollers are actually very small and simple compared to the Boot-Loaders in advanced devices like PC. In most of the microcontroller the functionality of a Boot-Loader is limited only to set the initial clock and other settings for the microcontroller, load an application binary from the serial port etc. 

In any microcontroller the Boot-Loader is the first code which executes before the application code does. The major function of the Boot-Loader is to load the application code into the flash memory of the microcontroller and execute it. In AVR microcontroller the Self Programming Mode (SPM) helps the Boot-Loader to load a particular application from where the application binary is stored.The Boot-Loader may receive the code binary from other memory chips, SD-cards or through the serial port of the microcontroller in case of serial programming. It is then with the help of the SPM that the microcontroller write the binary code into the application flash section. In this particular project the operation of a Boot-Loader code using the SPM is demonstrated by re-writing flash memory with the code binary which has already been flashed into the built-in EEPROM of the ATMEGA16. The hardware used in this project includes ATMEGA16 as microcontroller, USBASP as the programmer and the software used are AVR STUDIO4 as IDE and AVR-BURNO-MAT as the burner software. 

The Self Programming Mode (SPM) is a feature which enables a microcontroller to program its own flash memory. Using the SPM a microcontroller can program itself with an SPM code. The SPM is commonly used with the microcontroller Boot-Loader codes which help to program the microcontroller serially. In AVR microcontroller the SPM is available only for the code running in the BLS of the flash memory. With the help of the SPM a code in BLS can rewrite the application flash memory entirely or a part of it. It can even rewrite its own code in the BLS section. The SPM is a key factor of the Boot-Loader code since the major function of the Boot-Loader is to load an application code into the application flash section. The Boot-Loader may receive the code binary from other memory chips, SD-cards or through the serial port of the microcontroller in case of serial programming.