Circuit Cellar Ink 216
July 2008

Table of Contents

4


CJ Abate

HTML Task Manager

Energy Costs Drive Design Ingenuity

8


John Gorsky

HTML New Product News

13


David Tweed

HTML Test Your EQ

12


DJ Delorie

'Net-Enabled Alarm Clock

Unlike old-school mechanical alarm clocks that you have to set manually, DJ's Internet-connected alarm clock provides three primary features: automatic time setting on power-up, streaming MP3 music, and remote management. The PIC24FJ64-based clock is connected to an ENC28J60 Ethernet chip, an MP3 decoder chip, an organic LED graphical display, and a 24LC512 EEPROM for storage.

Download: Delorie-216.zip

Lessons from the Trenches

22


George Martin

Living And Working Off The Grid

Part 1: Planning And Design

George is going solar by installing an off-the-grid photovoltaic (PV) power-generating system at his workshop/apartment in New Mexico. In the first part of this series, he describes how he planned and designed the system.

Download: Martin-216.zip

30


Fernando Jordan

Internet Information Retrieval

Target And Display Web Site Content

Fernando's SwissJazz system retrieves artist and song title information from an Internet radio station's web site without a PC. Information is shown on an LM3S811 evaluation board's display and updates every time a new song begins.

Download: Jordan-216.zip

38


Andrew Sterian

Launch Control

Build A Coil GunController And Launcher

Andrew's educational system works as a controller and data recorder for a dual-coil coil gun. Use the LM3S811-based controller to experiment with various aspects of the coil gun, including timing and voltage control. You can also measure the real-time voltage and current.

Download: Sterian-216.zip

46


Carlo Tauraso

Card Connection

Magnetic Card Data Decoding And Transmission

Almost a decade after he built his first magnetic stripe card reader, Carlo updated his design with a PIC18F2550 microcontroller. His new system is an inexpensive commercial TTL swipe card reader that reads, analyzes, decodes, and codes bitstreams.

Download: Tauraso-216.zip

54


Aubrey Kagan

Create A Modbus Slave

Several months after creating a Modbus master, Aubrey continues his Modbus exploration by creating a Modbus slave on a Cypress PSoC microcontroller. To enable you to change configurations or speed up the CRC generation, he describes three different methods of slave creation.

Download: Kagan-216.zip

62


Chris Paiano

PSoC Design Techniques

Part 1: Build An Eight-Channel Mixer

Ready to learn several useful PSoC design techniques? Chris describes a switched capacitor and continuous time modules. He also walks you through an interesting PSoC project:an eight-channel mixer with adjustment knobs.

Download: Paiano-216.zip

69


Robert Papp

Sound Effects Processing

The StellarisGFX is a well-designed sound effects processor. The system's keyboard is used for navigating through the user menu. You can set the volume level and select effects such as overdrive, tube overdrive, and distortion.

Download: Papp-216.zip Papp214Fig1b_corrected.pdf

From the Bench

74


Jeff Bachiochi

Electric Motor Technology

Theory, Construction, And Requirements

The principles behind electric motors have been around for almost two centuries, but the technology has come a long way during the past few years. Jeff examines electric motor theory, construction, and requirements.

Silicon Update

80


Tom Cantrell

MIPS For The Masses

To compete with the rest of the 32-bit market, Microchip Technology designed its 32-bit offering around the MIPS architecture. The PIC32 combines Microchip's in-house MCU know-how with MIPS Technology's extensive IP, software, and tool library. Expect to see PIC32s for a long time to come.

93

Crossword Puzzle

94

Advertiser's Index / August Preview

96


Steve Ciarcia

HTML Priority Interrupt

A Real Rube Goldberg Solution

FTP Directory for INK 216
Follow this link to order a copy of INK 216

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