Tag Archives: ARDUINO

DIGISPARK REV3 ATTINY85

#39 DIGISPARK REV3 ATTINY85 DEV BOARD

The Digispark rev3 USB board is an ATtiny85 based microcontroller development board. It comes with a USB interface. Coding is similar to Arduino, and it makes use of the familiar Arduino IDE for development.

BOARD SPECS

  • Support Arduino IDE 1.0+ (OSX/Win/Linux)
  • Can be powered by USB or 5v or 7-15v (automatic matching) extra power supply
  • There is a 500ma 5V regulator on the motherboard.
  • USB embedding (serial debugging)
  • 6 I/O Pins (2 for USB support)
  • 8k Flash Memory (about 6k after bootloader)
  • I2C and SPI (vis USI)
  • PWM on 3 pins (more possible with Software PWM)
  • ADC on 4 pins
  • Power LED and Test/Status LED (in Pin0)

The smallest USB Arduino

PDF Manual

UNO ATTINY85 PROGRAMMER

#38 DIY ARDUINO UNO ATTINY85 PROGRAMMER

Sometimes an Arduino pro mini is just not small enough for an electronics project. Enter the Arduino ATTINY85, this MCU comes in an extremely small package. It has only 8 pins and works with 5v.

Below are the specs of this microcontroller:

  • AVR MCU, 8K FLASH, 512B RAM, SPI
  • Controller Family/Series:AVR Tiny
  • Core Size:8bit
  • No. of I/O’s:6
  • Program Memory Size:8KB
  • EEPROM Memory Size:512Byte
  • RAM Memory Size:512Byte
  • CPU Speed: 8/16 MHz internal clock, up to 20MHz external clock
  • No. of Timers:2
  • Peripherals:ADC, Comparator
  • No. of PWM Channels:4
  • Digital IC Case Style:DIP
  • Supply Voltage Range:2.7V to 5.5V
  • Operating Temperature Range:-40°C to +85°C
  • No. of Pins:8

This is great and all but its a hassle to program the board unless you buy a dedicated programmer (expensive in SA) or if you’re happy to use a messy breadboard every time you want to program. So I decided to make a very crude but effective programming shield for my Arduino UNO.

SIM900 GSM MODULE TEXT

#30 SIM900 GSM MODULE TEXT

Hi all, recently  I was thinking about the AT command. What’s the AT command you might ask? well it’s an instruction sent to a cellular modem. for example: It’s an instruction which is sent from any suitable device (in this case and Arduino and a GSM module) to a phone/modem or GSM module. you can request something to be sent back to you or you can send something to another supporting device.

The abbreviation for ATtention is AT. each AT instruction starts with “AT” followed by the rest of the command. An easy example is:

AT+CMGF?AT=meaning that it’s an AT command, +=An extended command, CMGF= Select SMS message format, ?=Query character.

Ok enough of that lets get into the project.

The goal is to send a message from the Arduino+GSM module to a mobile cellphone. This can be quite useful.. since you can use this message as a “trigger”  for almost anything examples can be hooking up a relay to open your garage door or triggering a servo to open a lock.

you can even program the Arduino to receive a specific message and to execute a series of commands apon receiving this message. the possibilities are endless. so I suggest you have fun 🙂

So we will need a few items to get this project going.

* Arduino Uno.
* GSM module (I’m using the SIM900)
* 4 Male to Male jumpers.

You can ignore the relay for this project!

1.
The first thing you want to do is download the Arduino IDE from this link.

2.
After you have installed the IDE you’ll need to paste and modify the included code into your sketch (save the sketch)

3.
Next you’ll want to burn the sketch onto your Arduino.

So now you need to wire up the Arduino and the GSM module.
Thankfully the GSM module already has a MAX232 chip embedded into the board so we don’t need to worry about RS232 communication.
take a look at the pictures below and wire up your board.

GND=purple goes to 5V GND on the Arduino.
RX=red goes to pin 8 on the Arduino.
TX= yellow goes to pin 7 on the Arduino.
Trigger=grey goes to pin 2 on the Ardino.

The trigger is triggered when pulled low to GND

power to the SIM900 board gets connected to +5V and GND on the Arduino.

Now all you need to do is pull pin 3 on the arduino to GND (this is the trigger, in this case it will send a SMS)

You can also list all the messages saved to the SIM card since the SIM card is basically a tiny computer in itself!
Awesome!

Well that’s it for now HERE is the code saved in a nice zip file for you guys.