Tips and Tricks
The following collection of Tips n Tricks can be applied to a variety of applications to help make the most of the microcontrollers.
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Building wireless sensor applications with DRF4432A and DRF5150S RF modulesDRF5150S and DRF4432S are two complimentary GFSK RF transmitter and receiver modules working in 433 MHz ISM band and are manufactured by Dorji Applied Technology. The presence of a pre-programmed microcontroller on board allows to connect selected analog and digital sensors directly to the DRF5150S module, which collects data from the sensor and sends out to the DRF4432S module at a configurable interval. |
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Measure amps with ACS712 current sensorThis tutorial talks about Allegro ACS712 device which works on the principle of Hall-effect and provides an economical and precise way of sensing AC and DC currents. |
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Setting up CCS v4 build and debug environment for MSP430 LaunchpadHere’s a step-by-step guide to set up the CCS v4 build and debug environment to get started with the MSP-EXP430G2 experimenter board. |
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Connecting multiple tact switches on a single input pin of a microcontrollerHere’s a trick of connecting multiple tact switches on a single input pin of a PIC microcontroller. The input pin must be an ADC channel for this technique to work. |
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Use mikroElektronika’s GLCD bitmap editor tool to convert a BMP image in to a data arrayThis tutorial describes how to use the mikroElektronika’s GLCD bitmap editor tool to convert a monochromatic bit map (BMP) image file into a data array so that it could be displayed on a graphics LCD using a microcontroller. |
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Experimenter’s I/O board for rapid prototypingThis article describes a general purpose I/O board that is easy to construct and is very useful for rapid prototyping of microcontroller-based projects. It can be connected to your breadboard circuit through male jumper wires. |
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Wireless data transmission between two PIC microcontrollers using low-cost RF modulesA lot of times we need to keep track of data from a device or a sensor located in a remote location from the point where it is processed. This article talks about interfacing low cost RF modules (KST-TX01 and KST-RX806) for transmitting data between two remotely located PIC microcontrollers. |
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Temperature and Relative Humidity measurements using HSM-20G sensorHSM-20G is an analog sensor for measuring temperature and relative humidity. Learn how to interface this sensor with Atmega8 or any other microcontroller to measure these two ambient parameters and display them on a LCD. |
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Using TC74 (Microchip) thermal sensor for temperature measurementThe TC74 chip is a serially accessible, digital temperature sensor from Microchip Technology that acquires and converts temperature information from its onboard solid-state sensor with a resolution of 1°C.This tutorial describes how to use the TC74 sensor with a PIC microcontroller to measure the surrounding temperature. |
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Using Fixed Voltage Reference (FVR) for A/D conversion in enhanced mid-range PIC microcontrollersThe enhanced mid-range family microcontrollers are equipped with FVR (fixed voltage reference) module that generates a stable reference voltage internally. This tutorial describes how to use the FVR output as the reference for more accurate A/D conversion in PIC microcontrollers. |
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How to use the DS1868 digital potentiometer with a PIC microcontrollerDigital potentiometers are replacing the traditional electro-mechanical forms in many digital applications. This tutorial describes MAXIM’s DS1868 dual digital potentiometer chip and its interface with a PIC microcontroller. |
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Expand the input/output capability of your microcontroller with MCP23008There are a number of ways of expanding the I/O capability of a microcontroller. Use of shift registers can simply expand the output pins but they don’t have input capabilities. MCP23008 provides both input and output using 2-wire serial interface. This tutorial illustrates how to add an 8-bit I/O port to PIC12683 microcontroller. |
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How to measure relative humidity and temperature with Sensirion’s SHT1x and SHT7x sensorsRelative humidity and temperature are important ambient parameters as they can impact on human comfort. Sensirion’s SHT1x and SHT7x are very popular series of humidity sensors that provide calibrated digital outputs. This tutorial describes how to interface these sensors with PIC microcontroller |
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Serial LCD using shift register (74HC595)HD44780 based LCD displays are very popular among hobbyists. They require at least 6 I/O pins of microcontroller to interface. Here, we describe a technique of reducing the required number of pins to 3 using a shift register. This allows you to include a LCD module to your 8-pin microcontroller based projects. |
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2-wire keypad interface using 555 timerThis article describes a technique of interfacing a keypad to a microcontroller using only two I/O pins. It uses a 555 timer IC configured as an astable multivibrator and pressed key information is retrieved from the frequency of oscillation. |
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How to measure DC current with microcontrollerMicrocontrollers usually don’t have specific ports for measuring currents, but they do have ADC channels through which you can measure analog voltages of a certain range. This tutorial explains a method of measuring DC current through a microcontroller’s ADC channel. |