Category Archives: AVR Tutorials

4×3 Matrix Keypad Interface – AVR Tutorial

Many application requires large number of keys connected to a computing system. Example includes a PC keyboard, Cell Phone keypad and Calculators. If we connect a single key to MCU, we just connect it directly to i/o line. But we cannot connect, say 10 or 100 keys directly MCUs i/o. Because :- It will eat up precious i/o line. MCU to Keypad interface will contain lots of wires. Buy Matrix Keypad We want to avoid all these troubles so we use some clever technique. The technique is called multiplexed matrix keypad. In this technique keys are connected in a matrix (row/column) style as shown below. Matrix Keypad Basic Connection The rows R0 to R3 are connected to Input lines of Microcontroller. The i/o pins where they are connected are made Input. This is done by setting the proper DDR Register in AVR and TRIS Register in PIC. The column C0 to C3 are also connected to MCUs i/o line. These are kept at High Impedance State (AKA input), in high z state (z= impedance) state these pins are neither HIGH or LOW they are in TRISTATE. And in their PORT value we set them all as low, so as soon as we change their DDR bit to 1 they become output with value LOW. One by One we make each […]

Interfacing Ultrasonic Rangefinder with AVR MCUs – AVR Tutorial

Obstacle detecting sensors are one of the most basic type of sensors that electronic hobbyists use. There are several methods to make cheap obstacle sensors. These simple sensors are made using a IR Rx/Tx pair or Normal LED and LDR pair(this design is most basic and is heavily affected by environment lighting conditions). These sensor may be useful for simple requirement but they have following drawbacks :- Can’t say anything about the real distance of obstacle. Give different result for different coloured obstacles. Need calibration (like setting up a variable resistor). To solve these problems we have IR Range Finder Module (like one made by Sharp) but they have small range. Sharp GP2D12 Distance Measurement Sensor has a maximum range of 80cm Sharp GP2D120 Distance Measurement Sensor has a maximum range of 30cm only. To solve all these problem we can use an Ultrasonic Range Finder Module. An Ultrasonic Range Finder Module uses ultrasonic waves (inaudible to humans) to measure distance. These module consist of an Ultrasonic Transmitter (Tx) that emits the ultrasonic wave, the waves after striking any obstacle bounces back and reach the Ultrasonic Receiver (Rx). By measuring the time it take for the whole process to complete and using simple arithmetic we can measure the distance to the obstacle. The Ultrasonic Range Finder Modules has a wide […]

Interfacing RFID Reader with AVR MCUs – AVR Tutorial

Hello Friends!, RFID is a great technology, has may uses and become very cheap and easy to implement these days. Very interesting and useful project can be made by using RFID technology. In our tutorial series on RFID we will get introduced to this magical technology and practically create RFID based solutions. In RFID or Radio Frequency Identification their is a tag (or label) which has a unique ID stored on it. We can read this ID by using a RFID reader. Not much fun yet? Well the features which makes magical are :- The RFID tag does not need to make any electrical contact with reader (Wow!) The RFID Tag is an active device which has a chip and antenna but does NOT need any power and are low cost!(Some tags need battery) RFID tags are very small, don’t need battery so can be put in cards (looks like a credit/ATM cards) or key chains. By reading the features offered by RDIF technologies you may be wondering that the application would be much sophisticated or costly. But the good news is that we have done enough research to find the best RFID solution and they are available from our online shop. And with the help of our beginner friendly tutorials you can easily get it to work in no […]

Interfacing Graphical LCD with AVR MCU – Part III

Hello Friends, Welcome Back. This is the continuation of our tutorial series on Graphical LCD Programming. Till now we have made the hardware for testing and setup avr studio project for graphical development. Now as our hardware and software is ready, its time to get our hands dirty by digging deep into ProGFX graphical programming. Introduction The graphical LCD is made up of a grid of pixels. Common resolution is 128×64. That means that their are 64 horizontal lines and each line has 128 pixels. These displays are monochrome that means each pixel can either be ON or OFF. ON pixels looks dark while OFF pixels are nearly invisible. The glcd has a graphic RAM where each bit in ram corresponds to one pixel on screen. You write to the graphic RAM to modify its contents and the screen will change accordingly. The LCD module offers just that much functionality. You can’t do much with that. Pixel Matrix of Graphical LCD You need a graphic library that takes high level commands like Graphic primitives like line,circles, rectangle etc Text Drawing Image/Icon drawing. Double buffering. and changes the graphic memory accordingly. These operation requires some advance algorithms (at least from beginners point of view!). So the graphic library will help you generate complex graphical output very easily. Pixel Addressing The horizontal […]

Interfacing Graphical LCD with AVR MCU – Part II

This tutorial deals with downloading and installing ProGFX graphic engine. ProGFX is a free and easy to use embedded graphic library that can control several display modules and can run on AVR, PIC and ARM MCUs. In this tutorial we will make a ProGFX graphical application with Atmel AVR ATmega32 MCU using AVR Studio and WinAVR (C Compiler). So lets begin. Downloading ProGFX engine. Please download the ProGFX engine from the following link. Download ProGFX v1.0 Installing ProGFX Engine. You need WinZIP to extract the files to your hard disk. Please extract it to root of any drive like "C:". Following Folders will be created. C:\progfx\include C:\progfx\lib Folders Created after extracting the ProGFX package Note that core of the engine is contained in two folders named "include" and "lib" but there may be some others folders too, like "Help" depending on your version of ProGFX engine. Creating a Graphical Project using AVR Studio. The basic tools required for developing with AVRs are Atmel Studio (Integrated development environment with integrated C compiler) eXtreme Burner AVR (to transfer program files to chip) These tools must be installed and set up correctly as described in the following tutorial. Creating "Hello World" project with Atmel AVR. Start AVR Studio and you will be presented with the following screen. Atmel Studio 6 Startup Screen The […]

Interfacing KS0108 based 128×64 Graphical LCD with AVR MCU.

Those how are building microcontroller based project for little long must have got bored with the good old character LCDs. Whether you are bored or your application require to present more data to the user in a better way, you need Graphic LCD. Character LCD Interfacing is quite easy so every one uses it, but when I comes to Graphic LCD you need a well written and powerful graphic library. Its not enough that you read the LCD datasheet and connect it your MCU and start sending data. Because the LCD just appears to be block of memory whose contents are directly visible on screen. The datasheet can only guide you how to access this memory. You just can’t do much by writing to the memory. The graphic library is a piece of software that has complex algorithms to render graphic primitives like line, rectangles, circles, images and more. It also helps load fonts and render text and numbers on screen. So it provide high level access to the LCD screen and applications can be written much more easily. While I was researching for graphic library for the GLCDs, I found some but I was not fully satisfied by any of them. So I began to write a clean, powerful, portable and easy to use library that can handle sever […]

Interfacing MMA7260 Triple Axis Accelerometer with ATmega32 – AVR Tutorial

Accelerometers are recently developed solid state electronics devices that makes it very easy to measure acceleration. They are completely modular and very tiny devices which gives voltage proportional to acceleration. These type are called analog accelerometers as their output is voltage. Some other gives a PWM output or direct binary digital data, they are called digital accelerometers. Accelerometers are used widely in modern devices. Apple iPhone,iPad and Nokia series 60v5 devices for automatic screen orientation changing. Also for motion gaming and other showoff stuff like Xpress Beer in above devices. Portable Hard disk and Notebooks for fall detection. Anti-theft devices. Motion Gaming Consoles like Nintendo Wii. Balancing Robots and UAVs. Experiments which needs to find force, like car crash experiments. And Possibly many other. Accelerometers can measure acceleration in 2 dimensional or 3 dimensional space. They are called 2D and 3D accelerometers respectively. Accelerometers have certain range, i.e. the maximum acceleration they can measure. It is specified in terms of g. ‘g’ is the acceleration due to gravity of earth and it is equal to 9.80665m/s2. Common accelerometers can have a range of 1.5g to 6g. It is obvious that 1.5g accelerometer is more precise than 6g. So use 1.5g where more accuracy is needed while use 6g for much more harsh experiments. Renault R26 can pick up 100km/hr is […]

Servo Motor Control by Using AVR ATmega32 Microcontroller

Servo motors are a type of electromechanical actuators that do not rotate continuously like DC/AC or stepper motors, rather they used to position and hold some object. They are used where continuous rotation is not required so they are not used to drive wheels (unless a servo is modified). In contrast they are used where something is needed to move to particular position and then stopped and hold there. Most common use is to position the rudder of aircrafts and boats etc. Servos can be used effectively here because the rudder do not need to move full 360 degrees nor they require continuous rotation like a wheel. The servo can be commanded to rotate to a particular angle (say 30) and then hold the rudder there. Servos also employs a feedback mechanism, so it can sense an error in its positioning and correct it. This is called servomechanism. So if the air flow exerts pressure on rudder and deflects it the servo will apply force in opposite direction and try to correct the error. Say if you ask servo to go and lock itself to 30 degrees and then try to rotate it with your hand, the servo will try hard and its best to overcome the force and keep servo locked in its specified angle. Servos are also used […]

Interfacing 12 bit SPI ADC (MCP3204) with AVR Micro

Hello All, Sometimes the Internal ADC is not enough. Like when you need more resolution or high speed. The internal ADC of AVR generally has the following specifications. 15K samples per second 10 bit resolution. If you need more than that you need an external ADC. You may also need external ADCs if you have already used the internal ones. This tutorial will guide you how to install an external ADC with AVR MCU and write a test program to get data from it. A very common external ADC is from Microchip the MCP3204. It has the following configuration. 100K samples per second. (More than 6 times faster than AVRs inbuilt) 12 bit resolution (4 times more detailed) 4 input channels (MCP3208 has 8 channels). SPI Bus Compatible. Basic SPI Tutorial These ADCs are SPI Bus based which is a serial bus. So the number of pins in IC is very low. Total of 4 lines are required to interface it with AVR MCU. MISO (Master In Slave Out) MOSI (Master Out Slave In) SCK (Serial Clock) CS (Chip Select) As you know in synchronous serial communication their is a clock line (SCK in case of SPI) which synchronizes the transfer. Please read the article :- Synchronous Serial Communication Tutorial – The Basics of I2C and SPI. The clock is […]

Sound Generation by AVR Micro – Tutorial I

Many project requires some kind of Audio output. For example a burglar alarm, an automated school bell or simple electronic games or even a robot! In Old days we used some some dedicated Music and Audio Effect chip to do that. At that time ICs such as UM66 were very popular. Now in the days of microcontrollers, a good design is to use least number of external components to get the job done. So if you still use external audio ICs with a MCU based design then your design is inefficient and costly. The smart idea is to get most of the job done in software. In this article we will learn step by step how to produce different kinds of audio effect by just using an AVR MCU and A speaker. After reading this you would be able to provide simple sound output in many AVR based projects. So lets get started! I will start this series with a direct runnable example so that you can burn it into an AVR and see how it sounds! In latter parts I will elaborate how this was achieved. Some techniques that were used to achieve audio generation are. PWM or Pulse width modulation: It is a technique to generate analog voltage levels by a digital device (say a MCU). Generally a […]

RF Communication Between Microcontrollers – Part III

Welcome to the 3rd part of RF Communication tutorial. In the last two parts I have introduced the basics of RF Communication. RF Communication Between Microcontrollers – Part I : Introduction to RF Communication and Modules. RF Communication Between Microcontrollers – Part II : Algorithm and general description of data transfer. Part III will be covering mostly the practical part, i.e. we will build a complete & working data transfer system. Here you will get circuit and program to implement the solution. The application is very simple in this case, just to transfer a byte of data from Tx station to the Rx station. Once you implement it and get it working you will have enough information and experience to make other RF based projects. I request all users to follows the instruction exactly as given (unless they are smart enough to know what they are doing). The most important thing in this article is timing of the MCU, so Use the exact frequency crystals as used in the designs. Write High Fuse = C9 (HEX Value) and Low Fuse FF (HEX Value) to enable external crystal. Hardware We will have two units. One is Tx (Transmitter) and Other is Rx (Receiver). Both units are based around ATmega16 MCU(you can use ATmega32 also) on external 16MHz crystal. On the Tx […]

Interfacing DS1307 RTC Chip with AVR Microcontroller

Real Time Clocks, as the name suggests are clock modules. They are available as integrated circuits (ICs) and manages timing like a clock. Some RTC ICs also manages date like a calendar. The main advantage is that they have a system of battery backup which keeps the clock/ca lender running even in case of power failure. A very small current is required for keeping the RTC alive. This in most case is provided by a miniature 3v lithium coin cell. So even if the embedded system with RTC is powered off the RTC module is up and running by the backup cell. This same technique is used in PC timing also. If you have opened your computer case you will notice a small coin cell in the mother board. In this tutorial we will learn to use a very famous RTC IC named DS1307. The DS1307 is described in the datasheet as follows The DS1307 is a low-power clock/calendar with 56 bytes of battery-backed SRAM. The clock/calendar provides seconds, minutes, hours, day, date, month, and year information. The date at the end of the month is automatically adjusted for months with fewer than 31 days, including corrections for leap year. The DS1307 operates as a slave device on the I2C bus. So the aim of the project will be to […]