Category Archives: Electronics

Water Level Transmitter – RS-485

Posted on 2013/11/05 by andy

Serial transmission over long line was the last stage of first iteration in prototyping. Local communication between microcontroller’s USART and PC was already working with MODBUS thus adding RS-485 driver and couple passive elements meant to be piece of cake. … Continue reading →

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Water Level Transmitter – microcontroller

Posted on 2013/10/18 by andy

Once the signal from sensor is converted in ADC it has to be processed and delivered to remote master unit. Having extra local measurements sources, like temperature, it has to be combined altogether. Multiple transmitters coexisting on single line (bus) … Continue reading →

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Water Level Transmitter – digitization

Posted on 2013/10/09 by andy

It was a long and bumpy way from taking pressure transducer hardware in my hands to having stable digitized values. Most of the time I spent learning instrumentation circuitry from app notes and books, just to make sure the solution … Continue reading →

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Push and Shove in KiCad

Posted on 2013/10/06 by andy

When laying down PCB track manually usually some other tracks are obstacle and need to be moved away. In KiCad it is manual work, in advanced tools they are pushed making room automatically while another track is approaching. FreeRouter can … Continue reading →

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Water Level Transmitter – overview

Posted on 2013/10/01 by andy

One of methods for automatic water level metering is to put a waterproof pressure sensor under the surface at well-known absolute depth and measure hydrostatic pressure that translates into the level of water over the pressure sensor. There is a … Continue reading →

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Making of Water Level Station

Posted on 2013/09/28 by andy

Since the spring of 2013 I am working on most complex hardware & software solution I have ever designed and built myself. The undertaking is challenging as I am dealing with complete life-cycle of solution from electronic, mechanic and software … Continue reading →

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FreeRouter for KiCad working in offline

Posted on 2013/08/14 by andy

KiCad has some built-in auto routing capabilities for laying out PCB wires. More advanced version, online auto-router from www.freerouting.net, can cooperate with KiCad and gives better results.  FreeRouter however does not work in offline even after copying Java Web Start resources to … Continue reading →

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FreeRTOS on Atmega8?

Posted on 2013/07/22 by andy

How to compile FreeRTOS real-time operating system on 8-bit AVR microcontroller Atmega8? It is not supported out of the box as well as google hardly helps with that issue. I did some experiments and understood why people are not doing … Continue reading →

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LED bulbs suck

Posted on 2012/04/26 by andy

I have a plenty of compact fluorescent light (CFL) at home. While energy saving is quite obvious, the time to warm up is drawback; using CFL in place of frequent toggling is not a good idea. On the other hand … Continue reading →

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Rainbow glowing ping-pong

Posted on 2012/04/10 by andy

While I was finalizing e-snowflake project, I imagined that single RGB 5050 LED would create nice rainbow effect if placed inside a ball like ping-pong. You can find plenty of such projects on the net, this one was heading to … Continue reading →

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