Gizmo Projects

I have my way of taking notes. I’ve tried to find paper that would suit my needs. Notebook paper is a no-go. What? Just a bunch of lines? No. Regular green engineering paper comes pretty close, but I always end up modifying each and every page by hand.

So I broke down and made my own. With a color printer (I have a color laser) I can make my own faint blue graph paper. I can print them as I need them.

My Project Paper has small boxes to fill in for Project name, for the Title of the page (where you can put a specific label for that page), a box for the Date, as well as boxes for tracking this page among many. On the bottom is a box for the Engineer Signature and for a Witness Signature.

The graph paper part of this Project Paper is used like other engineering paper – for notes, charts, drawings, schematics, etc.

The Project Paper also incorporates a to-do list. A to-do item can be noted alongside one of the boxes on the left side of the page. Listed along the left edge is the marking system that I use. A blank box, perhaps obviously, is a to-do that is not done. A check mark in the box is a done item. An “X” in the box is a to-do item that has been canceled – it doesn’t need to be done. A “+” in the box indicates that the task noted on this page has been moved to another later page.

As a little bonus the right side of the page can be used as a ruler.

Here is the Project Paper as a PDF file: Project Paper

Happy documenting. :-P

=Gizmo=

Filed under:
Engineering, Tools by Gizmo

The 6-pin programming header.

SoR Kit assembly, Part 1
SoR Kit assembly, Part 2

If you have purchased the SORKIT1 here at CircuitGizmos, or even if you purchased the parts somewhere else, you might be interested in the Gizmo build of the circuit board controller. The Society of Robots instructions here have a handful of steps for building the $50 robot. Steps 3A, 3B, and 3C have to do with making the electronics of the robot. Step 3B specifically is the step that has to deal with building the controller board. The Society of Robots step 3B also shows board assembly if you have a 10-pin AVR programmer, where here in this blog the 6-pin programmer is used.This blog entry will highlight steps that will help make your controller assembly a little more likely to succeed.

This blog entry is where the controller board being built has part placement different from the board in step 3B of the SoR documentation. This board uses the 6-pin programming header.

Old programming header:

Stole this pic from the SoR website. It shows the old(er) 10 pin header.

New programming header:

Stole this pic from the SoR website, too. It shows the 6 pin header.

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Projects by Gizmo

Assembling parts onto the SORKIT1 controller board.

SoR Kit assembly, Part 1
SoR Kit assembly, Part 3

If you have purchased the SORKIT1 here at CircuitGizmos, or even if you purchased the parts somewhere else, you might be interested in the Gizmo build of the circuit board controller. The Society of Robots instructions here have a handful of steps for building the $50 robot. Steps 3A, 3B, and 3C have to do with making the electronics of the robot. Step 3B specifically is the step that has to deal with building the controller board. The Society of Robots step 3B also shows board assembly if you have a 10-pin AVR programmer, where here in this blog the 6-pin programmer is used.This blog entry will highlight steps that will help make your controller assembly a little more likely to succeed.

You should also read the step 3B documentation on the SoR website along with these instructions.

Mounting the DIP socket:

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Filed under:
Projects by Gizmo

If you have purchased the SORKIT1 here at CircuitGizmos, or even if you purchased the parts somewhere else, you might be interested in the Gizmo build of the circuit board controller. The Society of Robots instructions here have a handful of steps for building the $50 robot. Steps 3A, 3B, and 3C have to do with making the electronics of the robot. Step 3B specifically is the step that has to deal with building the controller board. The Society of Robots step 3B also shows board assembly if you have a 10-pin AVR programmer, where here in this blog the 6-pin programmer is used.This blog entry will highlight steps that will help make your controller assembly a little more likely to succeed.

SoR Kit assembly, Part 2
SoR Kit assembly, Part 3

The SORKIT1 Controller Board:

The picture above shows the finished SORKIT1 board. You might note a few differences from the board built in step 3B on the SoR website. First, the AVR programming header is the newer 2 by 3 pin type, rather than the older 2 by 5 pin type. The newer 6 pin programming connection is now more common. The 10 pin programming connection can still be found on older programmers.

Second you might notice that the placement of the regulator and the power connections are different than the connections on the SoR board in step 3B. I made changes in the part placement, but the functionality remains unchanged.

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Projects by Gizmo

I’m still testing the newest USBmicro firmware. Meanwhile I thought I would document a little serial port to AVR programmer I made. The design is from a schematic on the Internet. Obviously the design was by Olimex. Note that the simple programmers of this type only work with a laptop or PC with a “real” serial port – a USB-to-serial does not work.

This is the schematic. Ignore the 10-pin header on the right. You will want to replace it with the 6 pin header.

This is the top of the board:

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Filed under:
Projects, Tools by Gizmo

On the Liberty BASIC Community Forum was a posting asking:

Has anyone used LB to interface to USBmicro I/O modules see http://usbmicro.com/
RobotBasic & VB provide this functionality

The moderator “Rod” replied:

If I take the short VB example listed on the web page it would convert like this.

'open the .dll
Open "USBm.dll" for dll as #micro

'find device
CallDll #micro, "USBm_FindDevices", w as long, Result as long
if w then
    print "Device number ";w;" is open"
else
    print "Device not found"
    end
end if

'initiate the ports on device w
CallDll #micro, "USBm_InitPorts", w as long, Result as long

Easy peasy.

=Gizmo=

Filed under:
News by Gizmo

New capabilities are being added to the U401/U421 firmware. The first new function that I am testing here is a “Quiz Show” function. Also called “Fastest Finger First”, as it shows which line, of all sixteen of the lines on the device, has been pressed first. This capability is used in game/quiz shows and contests. If a U401/U421 is used without this new firmware, you can poll the device once every eight milliseconds. The trouble is, two buttons may both have been pushed in that time. So then who is the winner? The new device firmware works to fix that.

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Projects by Gizmo

I keep a lot of old things that I’ve made. Perhaps too many. In cleaning out boxes of old circuit boards – full designs, partial designs, experiments – I found a board that I had put to a lot of good use. Many times I’ll have a latched 8-bit port on a microcontroller that I use for debugging or showing status. Running those lines to 8 LEDs is okay, but one notch better is displaying the value of that port on some seven-segment displays.

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Projects, Tools by Gizmo

Wow.

I found this site: Radio Shack Catalogs of digitized old Radio Shack catalogs. Wow, does that bring back memories. I mean: Groovy, man, does that bring back some far-out memories.

Don’t get lost on memory lane…

=Gizmo=

Filed under:
Engineering by Gizmo

A customer was kind enough to share an example project for the U401/U421 centered around the 1-wire temperature device. The project was written in Delphi and is available for download (source and executable) here: http://www.circuitgizmos.com/files/u401delphi.zip

You can get the DS1822 from CircuitGizmos along with the U401 USB Interface and the U421 USB interface

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Projects by Gizmo