Sunday, September 20, 2009

Arduino – Breadboard Arduino

As I have said in earlier posts I have been working with Arduino for the last several months. My latest project was to take the ATmega328 chip and assemble a very basic Arduino on a breadboard.

Using various sources found using Google I was able to assemble the breadboard Arduino in an evening and get it running a basic blink program.

ArduinoBreadboard

I found several excellent sources for parts and information which I pass along below:

Once I got all the parts and pieces the project was easy to assemble and get running. I was also able to combined this with the power supplies I built earlier to have a free standing finished product.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Simple 5V Regulated Power Supply Projects

Spent this Labor Day Weekend on a number of projects around the house but still had some time to undertake a couple of simple electronics projects.

The first project was to bread board a simple 5V regulated power supply using parts from Radio Shack and schematics from a couple of helpful websites found via Google.

The end result was a hybrid using the diagram below from http://www.tkk.fi/Misc/Electronics/circuits/psu_5v.html

and the schematic below from the Sparkfun Embeded Electronics Tutorial at http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorial_info.php?tutorials_id=57

http://www.sparkfun.com/images/tutorials/BEE-Lectures/1-PowerSupply/PowerSupply6.jpg

My design didn’t include the diode or the switch as the Sparkfun design does but did include the 0.1uF capacitor and the LED/resistor. The Sparkfun tutorial also included a diagram of the pinout for the 7805.

http://www.sparkfun.com/images/tutorials/BEE-Lectures/1-PowerSupply/LM7805-Pinout.jpg

The second project was to assemble the Sparkfun Breadboard Power Supply 5V/3.3V (Part No: PRT-00114) http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=114 which arrived during the week.

clip_image001[4]

The assembly was a breeze and took less than an hour.

A word of thanks to the folks at Sparkfun for all the good information on their website, the wonderful products they make available and for the speed with which they get things out the door. I have now ordered from them twice and both times have used the USPS Priority shipping option and gotten my order the in three days of placing it.