Some current and finished projects...

Last month i rewrote my bool solver from scratch. This time i wrote it in pure C - without C++ elements. It has almost all functions of the old version plus some new ones, but the new program is much shorter. Documentation and comments are in german... thats why i do not upload it.

Because the old firmware (version 4) of the AtTiny clock was pretty ugly, i rewrote and changed many parts of the firmware. The new version has the number 5. The new code runs like a charm and as a bonus it eliminates the problems i had with the buttons (it was not a hardware problem).
Release will be soon. Only a calibration function for the quartz is still missing. ^.^°

And one last thing: i disassembled my old Acer travelmate 220 notbook and under the sticker of an IC i found an Atmel AtTiny25 as part of the charging circuit. It communicates directly with the laptop battery through TWI/I²C. The foto was made with my Canon EO350 / Digital Rebel XT / Kiss Digital N with an hand hold lens in retro position - the IC was so damn small:

Movie about the build of integrated circuits

A movie made by Fairchild semiconductor about building integrated circuits. The video is from 1967!

Fairchild Briefing on Integrated Circuits

I finally watched the whole video (i have never found the time till today)... interesting. :D

UART - Video

In this small video, you can see a simple counter made with my UART board. The program for counting up the LEDs is running on a PC. The µC only communicates with the PC and is responsive to his commands.

Battery adapter

Yesterday i did a 5 minute hack.
Because i have lots of old AA batteries with some residual energy (i guessed) lying arround, but my mp3 player needs AAA batteries, i made this adapter, to make use of the old AA cells.


The AA cells were used in an old compact camera. They do not work in the camera any more - thx to the crappy cam! - but with one of those AA cells i was able to power my mp3 player for about 2 5 hours and the battery is still not empty!
Quite nice for a batterie which seemed to be empty. ;)

I think the images are self explaining.

UART - again

Here is a nice driver for Win2k + WinXP to enable the inportb and outporb commands under those systems: porttalk
This can be quite usefull, if you have old software, and you must work with those software - somehow.
The driver is quite nice. It works perfectly with my UART Testboard  example program (number 3).
I converted it from linux to Open Watcom (16 bit Dos).

Here is the output:

C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\xxxx>D:\Programme\porttalk\AllowIo.exe D:\Program
me\WATCOM\projects\uart\test3\test3.exe
AllowIO for PortTalk V2.0
Copyright 2002 Craig Peacock
http://www.beyondlogic.org
Executing D:\Programme\WATCOM\projects\uart\test3\test3.exe with a ProcessID of
2089937184
PortTalk Device Driver has set IOPM for ProcessID 2089937184.

C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\xxxx>

~RS232 Testboard~
Testing all possible combinations...

Handshake is: off
2400 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
2400 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
2400 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
4800 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
4800 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
4800 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
9600 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
9600 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
9600 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
14400 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
14400 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
14400 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
19200 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
19200 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
19200 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
28800 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
28800 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
28800 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
38400 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
38400 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
38400 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
57600 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
57600 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
57600 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
115200 Baud, p.: 0, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
115200 Baud, p.: 1, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
115200 Baud, p.: 2, hs: false... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
Handshake is: on
2400 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
2400 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
2400 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
4800 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
4800 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
4800 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
9600 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
9600 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
9600 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
14400 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
14400 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
14400 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
19200 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
19200 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
19200 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
28800 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
28800 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
28800 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
38400 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
38400 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
38400 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
57600 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
57600 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
57600 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
115200 Baud, p.: 0, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
115200 Baud, p.: 1, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
115200 Baud, p.: 2, hs: true... Device error: '0x00' UART error: 0x0000
End.

Black screen after upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 to 10.10

After upgrading my Ubuntu from 10.04 to 10.10 i got only black screens or weird distorted graphics on my Acer Tracelmate 220 laptop with Intel 830 graphics card.

The solution for this misery:

1. Boot in recovery mode with root console and log on
2. change the xorg.conf settings to "vesa" ("enable VESA": https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Bugs/Mavericki8xxStatus)
3. Then follow those instructions and set the "nomodesetup" for grub: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1613132

This gave me back X11 and Gnome - finally! :D

.oO(It cost me only several hours to fix the da** problem...)

UART toy - version 1.2

I made some modifications for the RS-232 Testboard.
Now the baud rate can be changed and the parity check can be enabled. Tons of other modifications, a new exciting sample program and lots of bug fixes were made too.

You can download the whole package (AVR source code, PC source code + libraries, drawing and the command list) here:
project.zip