Trials and Reviews — Volts and Bytes

Sure Electronics Matrix Display Test

November 2, 2010 By Jer 7 Comments

Few weeks ago, I purchased a 32×8 LED matrix board from Sure Electronics. It was a very nice board and I was really excited to use it in one of my projects.

This board is composed of four 8×8 LED matrix modules and HT1632 LED matrix driver. It can be powered by a 5VDC supply and at least three microcontroller pins are needed to control the board.

I tested the board using my 28-pin AVR breakout board and ATmega8 microcontroller. It was not very complicated to use but, to make things easier, I am planning to write my own library for this board.

Here’s the video of the test.

Hey, take a look also at my project about 8×8 LED matrix board using an AVR microcontroller.

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Filed Under: Articles, Trials and Reviews Tagged With: ATmega8, LED

STM32 Discovery – Unboxed and Reviewed

October 16, 2010 By Jer 5 Comments

Recently, ST Microelectronics launched STM32 Value Line Discovery, one of the cheapest microcontroller development boards available. I did not hesitate to purchase one because it’s priced at more or less 10 USD. When I received the kit, I unboxed it right away. The simplicity of the package really caught my attention and I can’t help but give it a review. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Articles, Trials and Reviews Tagged With: ARM, ARM Cortex M3, Development Board, STM32

My First Blue PCBs

October 2, 2010 By Jer 5 Comments

Just a few weeks ago, I availed the PCB order service offered by http://dorkbotpdx.org/. The price is US $2 per square inch of Printed Circuit Board or PCB and you are going to receive three copies of each PCB design. There is no setup fee and that makes the service very cheap. Shipping within US is free (am i right?) but the international shipping is not so cheap if you are going to avail the service for a single small PCB design.

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Filed Under: Articles, Trials and Reviews Tagged With: Blue PCB, Printed Circuit Board, Prototype

Handy FPGA Laboratory

October 26, 2009 By Jer 1 Comment

Want to learn real digital hardware design? You might want to consider Field Programmable Grid Array or FPGA. There are a lot of FPGA learning kits available today. Some are specially designed to target developments of commercial projects which are, of course, very expensive. Some are a little bit price friendly specially for students and FPGA newbies (like me).

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Filed Under: Articles, Trials and Reviews Tagged With: Development Board, FPGA, Spartan 3-E, Spartan3E

All-in-One AVR Development Tool

October 20, 2009 By Jer Leave a Comment

If you are an AVR fan, you must be familiar with most of Atmel’s AVR development tools: STK500, AVR Studio, AVRISP, AVR TJAGICE, AVR JTAGICE mkII, AVRISP mkII, STK600, etc. But there is one Atmel AVR development tool that provides ISP programming, High Voltage Programming, and debugging which comes in small form, beautiful box, and cheap price.

The development tool that I am talking about is the AVR Dragon.