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Generic PCB design guidelines

How repeatedly make good PCB? Many hobbyists face this issue every time they are prototyping their ideas. Designing the PCB layout (it doesn’t matter it is a through-hole or surface mount) may be a tricky task, especially when dealing with dimensions like 0.2mm tracks or 0.5mm surface-mount pitches. A laser printer, plotting, or other similar transfer technologies can’t deal with such dimensions. After I have tried the photographic method of PCB artwork transfer, I don’t even want to touch the Iron and laser printer. Using photosensitive laminate and single transparent media, I can repeatedly make any number of PCBs. The benefits of using photographic methods are as follows:

Design and Implementation of DTMF Detector

Telephone units are ubiquitous. They can be found in almost every house. In some houses with many rooms, a line is paralleled so that anybody can receive and make calls from different rooms. Their presence could be used for other purposes instead of making call per se. This module’s application can be found in the smart home automatic system incorporating a telephone unit as an input module. Using a telephone unit, somebody can control a remote system, as far as the telephone line can reach. To do so, such an interface between the telephone line and the control system is needed. DTMF Detector 2.0 is designed for this purpose. Description DTMF Detector 2.0 is a microcontroller system extension module that detects TMF tones and then decodes the tones into coded binary digits. Using DTMF Decoder, the 2.0 design engineer could interface the analog signal of the telephone line with the microcontroller system’s digital logic in a straight-ahead manner. Module Specifications The module specifications are as follows: 1. Input: DTMF tones from telephone line (analog signal) 2. Output: Decoded binary digits which correspond with DTMF tones. Block Diagram Figure 1 shows the block diagram of DTMF Detector 2.0. The module consists…

7-Segments-Board for Embedded Systems

Design and Implementation of 7-Segments-Board 1.0 – An Extension Module for Embedded System Prototype Introduction When developing embedded systems, it would be helpful if we could have a module for monitoring purposes. For instance, let say that your system has to process data streams. In the testing and verification step, we need to compare each input and output bytes to verify that your system is doing right. Having a monitor module is surely a great help for engineers. Some development board has monitor module integrated, such as Altera UP1X FPGA Development Board. Inspired by its usage and benefit of such a monitor, 7-Segments-Board 1.0 is designed as an extension module for embedded system prototypes. Description 7-Segments-Board 1.0 is a low-cost, low-power MCU extension module for monitoring purposes. It aims to help engineers doing the firmware testing and debugging on hardware prototypes. For those who build microcontroller prototype devices from scratch and do not have access to sophisticated debugging instruments, using this module would make the testing and verification process less painful. 7-Segments-Board 1.0 is designed for an 8-bit microcontroller system. Module Specifications The module specifications are as follows: Input: General purpose push-button (PB) switches (dry contact). Output: Seven-segments LED to…

AVR controlled signal generator-first impression

Lazy evening. I decided to take a couple of shots of couple generated signals. Without going too deep into timings, I wrote a couple of algorithms to ensure the signals are generated correctly at all voltage range 0-5V. First is the Sawtooth signal using ASM in AVRStudio: (My oscilloscope is old, so sorry for the bad quality) Second signal Triangle. This one I programmed using the WinAVR toolset.

Second-Order DSP Filter explained

A Second-order DSP filter is more complex than a first-order filter. There is one more delay block (z-1) added. Function diagram of second-order DSP filter. The equation for second order DSP Filter can be written as follows:

AVR controlled signal generator-skeleton board

This is continuing of thread AVR controlled signal generator. In earlier post 1 layer PCB prototype, I described a little about making this small project’s PCB. Now a few words about soldering and making the first test run. >This is my PCB board’s bottom. During soldering, I discovered one mistake – ISP headers pin MISO and MOSI were swapped. So I had to do some fixes (the green wire). Another small problem I discovered was that I couldn’t find 20k SMD resistors for my R-2R leader. For this DAC R-2R leader, I need 10k and 20k resistors to make DAC work properly. So I decided to make “fun” with my Board and soldered 10k SMD resistors in series to gain 20k:

From analog to digital signal filtering

A signal filter is an electrical equipment that attenuates the unwanted signal characteristic wave. Filters can be analog or digital. An analog filter processes analog signals. They are mainly arranged with capacitors and resistors. Digital signal filters process digital signals which are quantized. Digital filters are arranged with solid-state components to process the signals. L’s start from analog filters. An Analog filter is a circuit that filters unwanted frequencies. Filtering is done by choosing the circuit transfer function. Simplest analog low pass filter: The current in RC circuit can be calculated as follows:

Building embedded software using algorithm flow charts

Embedded software consists of various functions performing particular tasks. Before writing any ASM or C code, it is good to draw an algorithm flow chart. Flow charts are a visual method of representing the inner algorithm. It is easier to analyze the algorithm and write the code according to the diagram. The main parts of diagram:

AVR controlled signal generator-1 layer PCB prototype

This is continuing of the thread of making AVR controlled signal generator. This section is devoted to 1 layer PCB prototype making using ultraviolet light exposure and etching. I’ve chosen Eagle as PCB designing software. This is convenient software for making hobby circuits. First, I designed a circuit of AVR controlled signal generator:

AVR controlled signal generator design considerations

A signal generator is a second must-have tool after oscilloscope while working with electronics designs. I don’t have any signal generators, so I decided to make one. This is gone be a simple AVR-controlled signal generator. I’ve chosen the Atmega8 microcontroller as this is the simplest one of Atmega’s series microcontrollers. It has 8kB flash memory. This is an initial post of the project. I have only designed a schematic and PCB board. I’ll be adding project progress in further posts. A little bit about AVR controlled signal generator. This is going to be a stand-alone generator coated in a 100x60x35mm metal box, the one I’ve found in my drawer. It will be powered by a 9V battery (through a 7805 voltage regulator). Controlling will be done with a series of buttons on the box side. And the information will be viewed on the 2×16 LCD screen on top of the box.