Pin Change interrupts on the Arduino have eluded me for awhile so when I finally figured them out last week, I also started messing with Pin Change Interrupts on the ATtiny. Unlike with the ATmega chips, examples are much harder to find for the ATtiny interrupts and even when you find them, I don’t think the quality is quite as good. So here is a simple guide to working with Pin Change Interrupts on the ATtiny85. Continue reading “Pin Change Interrupts on ATtiny85”
Category: Electrical
Arduino Pin Change Interrupts
I recently needed to do some work with Pin Change Interrupts and it was a bit of a learning experience for me. As it turns out, they’re actually pretty easy. I’m posting this so that when I need to look it up in the future, I can easily find it and maybe I can help somebody else out too. Continue reading “Arduino Pin Change Interrupts”
AVR (& Arduino) Default ISR – Resetting Pin Change Interrupt Problem
I just got done wasting 10 very frustrating hours on a Interrupt Service Routine problem. In this case it was a pin change interrupt that causes the chip/board to reset. It turned out to be a simple capitalization error but luckily I also discovered some info about the AVR default ISR. I wanted to post it here in case somebody accidentally found it useful. Continue reading “AVR (& Arduino) Default ISR – Resetting Pin Change Interrupt Problem”
Burn bootload to Arduino Mego without ISCP pins
This tutorial is pretty simple but it is worth a mention in case others with less experience get into a similar jam. I was having trouble uploading some programs to my Arduino Mega so I decided to burn the bootloader again to see if that fixed the problem. Unfortunately, I had chopped the ICSP headers off about a year ago when I didn’t really understand what they were used for and didn’t want them touching a shield I was putting on top. Fortunately, there is a way around this.
Continue reading “Burn bootload to Arduino Mego without ISCP pins”
Current Capacity of Wires and Traces
I’ve been looking at the maximum current ratings of both wires and traces and have had a hard time finding good numbers. So this is a collection of what I’ve found but limited to the ranges that I normally use. There are lots of very advanced calculators online but I had difficulty finding a nice clear chart. So I hope this helps others or at least helps me next time I need to look it up. Continue reading “Current Capacity of Wires and Traces”
Easy and Cheap Reflow Soldering Without Solder Paste
I’ve recently gotten into SMD soldering and have been thrilled at how much easier it is than I imagined. However, there are some parts that are very difficult to solder because the solder pads are under the part. The obvious answer is reflow soldering, but I have no experience with it and it can be expensive and difficult to do. So this is my experiment in finding a cheap and easy way to do reflow soldering. Continue reading “Easy and Cheap Reflow Soldering Without Solder Paste”
Testing the range of the Xbee Pro 900
My master’s thesis is a hexakopter that captures weather data. It stores this data locally but also sends it back to a base station on the ground using a series one Xbee Pro 900MHz. I finally received my pair of Xbees last week (don’t you love slow purchasing departments?) and wanted to test the range of the wireless link. Continue reading “Testing the range of the Xbee Pro 900”
Programming the ATtiny with an Arduino
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m starting to look at projects that for various reasons don’t require a full arduino. There are some projects that even the Arduino Pro Mini is too large for. For this, I’m looking at using an ATtiny85 since I only need a few pins. But first, we have to figure out how to program it. There are several ways to program a stand alone IC and future posts will show these, but this post will focus on how to program using an Arduino. There are already numerous tutorials of this online, but many of them are either incomplete or wrong. Others just don’t answer some of the questions I had when I started and this is what I hope to fix with my version. Continue reading “Programming the ATtiny with an Arduino”
Comparison of ATmel chips
I’ve got a few projects I’m working on thinking about that just don’t make sense with an arduino, both for size and cost reasons. This post was originally going to be about how to program and ATtiny with the arduino IDE (don’t worry, I’ll get to this soon). As I was writing it, I started comparing chips and realized the distinctions weren’t as cut and dry as I thought. So instead, this post will be a comparison of some of the popular Atmel chips: the ATmega328 used in the Arduino Uno, the ATmega2560 used in the Arduino Mega, the ATtiny84, ATtiny85, and ATtiny2313. Continue reading “Comparison of ATmel chips”
The Wandering Engineer 