Arduino: ATMega168/328 Handy Breadboard Header

 

Arduino: In-System Programming "Big ISP Brothers Little ISP Brother"

 

Just finished up a couple of Arduino ISP sheilds one for the Atmel ATmega 328's and his little brother the ATtiny 45/85.

Electronics: Eagle PCB Gridrunner Measuring tool & thinking out of the box

The Beta of Cadsoft Eagle PCB 6 (Shows as 5.91) is available for download here 

It just reminded me to post about my Gridrunner Measuring tool (ruler)  i made for CadSoft's Eagle PCB which is available for download  in the files section

I noticed in the Beta they have included a measuring tool at long last, but alas I found it is still not the best. Although you can always move the zero mark (0,0)  but often you would just like to take a quick measurement between 2 points and keep zero intact. Another way was to move the PCB points to zero but still it's awkward when taking quick measurements.

This is where the Gridrunner ruler comes in its basically a custom library which you add just like any other PCB component but you get a groovy 200mm ruler in 10th of a millimeter increments you can fly around the PCB taking measurements very accurately and quickly by eye .

Gridrunner installation and overview

                           

Audio: Simple 555 Headphone Delayed ON Circuit

 The Legendary 555 IC gets the job done again stopping the nasty power on "THUMP"

The point of the circuit is to protect your expensive headphones from the Thump or pop noise you sometimes get when powering up an amplifier with headphones connected.

The circuit disconnects the attached headphones for a period of time, say 5 seconds then the circuit engages the output.

The benefits are no damaged headphones.

Arduino: Ti BQ32000 RTC (Real Time Clock) Shield'let

        After the success of the household iron SMD soldering test i decided to have a go at my first true double sided PCB a Real Time Clock  Module  for Arduino/PIC projects . The"RTC" allows your projects to keep real time even when the power is off.

Although not a true shield in the Arduino sense it can be plugged directly into the Arduino analog pins so i guess you could call it a shieldlet if you pull pin 2 LOW which equals GND and pin 3 HIGH which equals +5v pin 4,5 are SDA/SQL the 5th pin on the RTC PCB hangs off the edge of the Arduino which is SQW or INT this is not really used and produces a Square Wave if needed.

I used the Ti BQ3200 which is code and pin compatible with the popular Dallas/Maxim DS1307 chip