Setup and Programming the new ATtiny Microcontrollers —
The new ATtiny-0 and ATtiny-1 microcontrollers have really nice peripherals and are promising replacements for the old ATtiny85. While others do seem to miss the ISP interface, I think the new UPDI interface is actually really neat since it allows for way smaller programming connector of only three pins instead of the six pins used for ISP.…
Oct 3, 2020
Flashing Bootloader onto Arduino Mini Pro —
The Arduino Pro Mini comes without a USB interface for programming. This is great during operation since the board only has the minimal set of peripherals needed to operate the ATMega328p.…
Sep 27, 2020
Arduino with Vim —
Call me weird but one of my main gripes with Arduino was the UI. After having worked and coded with vim for over 5 years now, I feels like a regression to try and program in a UI that feels more like Microsoft Word.…
Sep 7, 2020
Minimum Power Consumption Atmel vs. STM32 —
What is the (theoretical) power requirement for different micro controllers to during deep sleep and to generate a PWM signal and measure voltages?…
May 4, 2020
Micro watt ATtiny LED blinker —
Since starting the light harvesting projects, I have been possible to run a microcontroller from harvested energy alone. Looking at the Atmel microcontroller lineup the best suited controllers seemed to be the ATtiny family ones.…
Apr 26, 2020
Arduino Solar Cell Characterization —
As shown in the previous post about stabilizing the voltage of a solar cell, solar cells have a characteristic U-I operating curve as shown below.…
Apr 23, 2020
Analog Solar Cell Voltage Stabilizer for Maximum Power Output —
Solar cells are non-ideal power sources that need managing in order to derive maximum power from them. The one of the reasons are the non-negligible series and parallel resistance in solar cells.…
Apr 20, 2020
Two Transistor LED Current Source —
For various reasons we may want to control the current through a load. For example current control is a great way to drive LEDs.…
Apr 19, 2020
The Appeals of Energy Harvesting —
Energy harvesting is the process of capturing energy from physical processes such as light, vibrations, or electromagnetic fields. While there are large scale applications like solar or wind farms, I am interested in harvesting tiny amounts of energy in places that would usually not be considered power sources and doing something interesting with the harvested energy.…
Apr 17, 2020
Harvesting Light with five BPW34 PIN photodiodes —
Inspired by the desire for a minimal light harvester that relies on a very small and even form-able solar cell, I recently had the idea of trying to use photo-diodes for light harvesting instead of “big” solar cells.…