I previously covered a method of programming the ATtiny85 using an Arduino Duemilanove. However, my Duemilanove board isn’t working at the moment and I need to work on a project so I decided to program it with an Atmel AVRISP mkII programmer. Here are the simple steps, mostly so that I don’t have to lookup the pinouts online next time I need to do this. Continue reading “Programming an ATtiny85 with the AVRISP mkII”
Category: Engineering
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”
Robot Tentacle/Trunk with Arduino – Version 1
For the past couple years I’ve had a vision of a robotic tentacle or elephant trunk. So, when I was having a particularly frustrating night of working on my thesis, I decided to spend a few hours on the tentacle for a mental break.
Continue reading “Robot Tentacle/Trunk with Arduino – Version 1”
New Laser Cutter!
Well, it’s not actually new to the University, but it’s new to me. I’ve known we’ve had it for awhile but I’ve never had a chance to play with it. Before now, pretty much every project I’ve needed to create was better made on a CNC, lathe, or 3D printer. That changed when I broke the legs on my hexakopter last week and new ones are too expensive. Continue reading “New Laser Cutter!”
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”
Rotary Encoder with the ATtiny85
One of the many projects I’m working on requires rotary encoders communicating with a drawing program running on a computer. As always, I’d prefer to do this as cheaply as possible and since I’m working with the ATtiny a lot lately, I thought I’d try it on that. Continue reading “Rotary Encoder with the ATtiny85”
Software Serial on the ATtiny85
One of the first things I wanted to work on after figuring out how to program the ATtiny85 was to get serial communication working. Turns out this is incredibly simple. You just have to use the standard software serial library and define the rx and tx pins. Continue reading “Software Serial on the ATtiny85”
Changing the Arduino IDE Indentions
Despite what the students in my Introductory Programming class seem to think, good coding style is actually really important. Not only does it make it easier for others to work on and debug your code, but it also makes it easier for you to work on it. For me, the most important thing is indention. Proper indention lets you line up brackets and easily see what loop or if statement you’re working in. This gets even more important when the brackets span more than a single page. Continue reading “Changing the Arduino IDE Indentions”
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”
The Wandering Engineer 