Articles and news - Microcontrollers - 7

The power-up cycle of the supply voltage in embedded-system applications is sometimes not a clean event. This fact holds especially true in battery-operated systems, because the insertion of a battery often causes significant ringing or glitching on the supply line...

The Arduino began life as a simple and inexpensive 8-bit microcontroller teaching tool. In the intervening decade plus, it’s grown into a diverse platform that has revolutionized the microcontroller education and hobby worlds. Recent, more powerful additions to the Arduino family have added 16 and 32 bit processors and have brought the Arduino into commercial development as a rapid prototyping platform...

When you need an analog output from a microcontroller that does not have a digital-to-analog converter, you can connect an external DAC chip. But for a cheaper solution, use a pulse-width modulated output and add a low-pass filter to extract its average value, which equals the duty cycle of the PWM signal...

Microchip Technology has further expanded its AVR microcontroller portfolio by adding three new devices to the tinyAVR MCU family. The new ATtiny1617 series of MCUs expand the range of AVR devices that feature Core Independent Peripherals, which help increase system throughput while lowering overall power consumption...

The PIC16F15386 family, the most powerful launching point into the 8-bit PIC microcontroller portfolio, is now available from Microchip Technology. In addition to our current Core Independent Peripherals, this family includes a high-accuracy 32 MHz internal oscillator and memory features...

The tiny Pixel 2.0 is basically an Arduino board wedded to a tiny 1.5″ 128×128 color OLED screen. This means you can stick it inside a wearable and address the screen directly from the Arduino board, an improvement on current “solder the screen to the Arduino and hope it works” world of DIY electronics. This teeny-weeny board costs $75 on Kickstarter and should ship in June...

Seiko Epson Corporation has begun shipping samples of the S7C17M11, a low-power 16-bit microcontroller with on-chip Flash memory, a crystal unit, and a highly accurate real-time clock...

A good, reliable and easy to use dc power supply is probably the most important thing for every electronics hobbyists. Since a proper electronically stabilized power supply is crucial for almost all microcontroller-related diy projects, here we are presenting a simple diy project of an easy to build and very affordable power supply for microcontrollers...

It’s been a long wait, but our latest single board computer for review is finally here! The BBC micro:bit, given free to every seventh-grade British child, has landed at Hackaday courtesy of a friend in the world of education. It’s been a year of false starts and delays for the project, but schools started receiving shipments just before the Easter holidays, pupils should begin lessons with them any time now, and you might even be able to buy one for yourself by the time this article goes to press...

Many Design Ideas have shown how to use the Charlieplexing technique to drive as many LEDs as possible with a minimum number of I/O lines. This Design Idea shows how you can drive three LEDs and scan three switches with only three I/O lines instead of six...