Circuits & Schematics - Microcontrollers Usage - 4

A recent Design Idea prompted me to offer the simpler solution that I used in a recent project (Reference 1). We needed a momentary power switch with processor supervision. This supervision would allow the processor to delay a power-down request ...

In this project, we will be using the ESP8266-01 Wi-Fi Development board to make a small IoT home automation that has Wi-Fi featured in it. The system operates on a local web server and is easy to use for the novice. With this project, we can ...

Laboratory data often appears as Gaussian curves, and today's laboratory data-acquisition software is designed to analyze these data to determine such things as peak location, amplitude, area, and width. A good test signal is useful in ...

You can use a microcontroller that includes an ADC to design a two-wire-plus-ground keyboard interface. For example, you can use a resistive voltage divider to identify a pressed key (Reference 1). A microcontroller's integrated ADC typically ...

The performance of the watchdog circuit in Figure 1 may not match that of a dedicated watchdog circuit, but this circuit is helpful when the only watchdog in the lab doesn’t meet your design’s temperature requirement and when you are in ...

Although microcontroller manufacturers try to offer designers products that almost exactly fit the needs of their designs, another output pin is often necessary. This situation is particularly true in small designs using microcontrollers with eight ...

In most keypads, pressing a key closes a contact that bridges two lines in an xy matrix. If you use a microcontroller to detect a key closure, checking the states of (x+y) lines requires an equal number of I/O pins. Occupying only one free I/O pin, ...

Why not take advantage of the micro-controller included in many systems these days? This design uses microcontroller feedback to produce a 50-V, 1-W power supply (see Figure 1). It leverages an unused analog-to-digital converter (ADC) input and a ...

TinyLoad is a simple electronic constant current dummy load. The ATtiny measures voltage, current and temperature of the heat sink, calculates power, energy and battery capacity, controls the fan and displays all relevant data on the OLED (Figure ...

The ATtiny45/85 USB Phone Charge Guard controls and monitors the charging of phones and other devices (Figure 1). Voltage, current, power and energy are constantly measured via the INA219 and compared with the user limit values. It cuts off the ...