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[Reply #255 on:]

doublet,

Where is that store you shopped from? Pretty good price!

[Reply #256 on:]

doublet,

Where is that store you shopped from? Pretty good price!

Amazing price, I know! I once was searching for a L298 on google products, and they were 2 times cheaper than the others. I've been adding stuff the last few months.
I would absolutely recommend them for LEDs (no RBG LEDs, sadly): 100 LEDs for $2.20 (sparkfun: 25 for $2.95).
Here's the link: taydaelectronics.com.

[Reply #257 on:]

Thanks for renewing my memory. I've seen this store in the past, price is pretty much bottom. It's in Asia though. For faster shipping, I normally go to dipmicro.com. I'm in the US and they're in Canada and ship to US customers FROM US.

My leds are high brightness ones I used for this project:



Just FYI, Canadian dollars are bit more than US$:

Order Inventory:
Product: Temic TSSP4400 Infrared Emitting Diode
Quantity: 20
Product Code: TSSP4400
Price: C$2.85

Product: Straight RJ45 8p8c PCB Mount Jack Receptable
Quantity: 10
Product Code: TYCO-5555164-1
Price: C$8.03

Product: Blue ø 5mm Clear LED Extra Bright 8000mcd
Quantity: 50
Product Code: LED5B
Price: C$2.74

Product: Green ø 5mm Clear LED Extra Bright 15000mcd
Quantity: 50
Product Code: LED5G
Price: C$4.06

Product: Red ø 5mm Clear LED Extra Bright 15,000mcd
Quantity: 50
Product Code: LED5R
Price: C$2.79

Product: White ø 5mm Clear LED Extra Bright 20,000mcd
Quantity: 50
Product Code: LED5W
Price: C$2.72

Product: Yellow ø 5mm Clear LED Extra Bright 7,000mcd
Quantity: 50
Product Code: LED5Y
Price: C$2.84

Product: Lithium Battery CR2025 Ф20mm 150mAh 3V
Quantity: 27
Product Code: BAT-CR2025
Price: C$8.64

Product: DS1307 Dallas Maxim 64 x 8 Serial Real-Time Clock
Quantity: 10
Product Code: DS1307N
Price: C$6.83

Product: Coin Battery Holder ø 20mm (CR2025, CR2032)
Quantity: 20
Product Code: BH2025
Price: C$4.37

Product: 74HC595 8-bit Serial-In Parallel Out Shift Register
Quantity: 12
Product Code: 74HC595
Price: C$2.55

[Reply #258 on:]

AVR Dragon programmer board (comes in a nice box with a dragon on it):



The battery in the photo is because the programmer detects the voltage levels your device is using, and thus the device must be independently powered. I thought for a moment I had broken it when nothing happened when I plugged it in. As you can see, I seem to have misplaced my ICSP female-to-female cables (or never owned one, not sure about that).

The AVR Studio download (which is incredibly large, and needs Microsoft's .NET framework which is also incredibly large) does give you some nice visual viewings of your fuses etc.:

[Reply #259 on:]

I installed a 40-pin ZIF socket onto the Dragon, and some other headers for programming, and found, somewhat annoyingly, that it would not even recognize a spare Atmega328P chip programmed with the Optiboot loader, because it required a crystal.

Hence the need to run a resonator (off to the right) before I could do anything with it.



As an alternative, with somewhat more wires, it could be configured to use Parallel programming.

[Reply #260 on:]

Wow, a western dragon and an eastern dragon biting each others tail. The box art is nice. How much is it?

[Reply #261 on:]

The box art is nice. How much is it?

You want him to sell you the box or are you asking how much the AVR Dragon is?

[Reply #262 on:]

The box art is nice. How much is it?

You want him to sell you the box or are you asking how much the AVR Dragon is?

Sorry. I meant the programmer, with the box. 

[Reply #263 on:]

Ah yes, the box isn't for sale.

The whole thing is available for about $US 52 from Digi-key. I paid a bit more in Australia, but I am used to that.

I am going to try to make up a parallel programming header board (as suggested on other web sites) so that (for a particular processor) you just press one board into place (onto all the breakout pins) and it correctly connects together all of the relevant pins. My photo above shows the ICSP connections which are complex enough, and the parallel connections are about twice as many. I'm thinking of using a small piece of board, some sockets and some wire-wrapping to connect them all. Should work OK. Then I can recover if I mis-program the fuses or something.

[Reply #264 on:]

Nick,

So you'll be flashing atmega chips for some projects? BTW, the 9V battery cap/power barrel connector looks awfully like the one I just got from adafruit.

[Reply #265 on:]

Yes I think I got it from them.

And yes, I wanted to have a fallback in case I did something I shouldn't to the fuses. Like disable serial programming.

[Reply #266 on:]

Yes I think I got it from them.

And yes, I wanted to have a fallback in case I did something I shouldn't to the fuses. Like disable serial programming.

Nice programmer. Here is my version using a ladyada usbtiny and using a windows avrdude GUI:

 





Lefty

[Reply #267 on:]

Well, it's been a struggle to get the Dragon to do parallel programming. This is what is looks like with the extra socket and headers installed:



To save a lot of mucking around with wires, I made up a jig that connects everything together as specified by the wiring diagram for parallel programming. Here is the back (the underneath):



And the top, which has everything wire-wrapped (thanks again Crossroads!). You just press it into place and all 21 connections are made in a couple of seconds:



To make it actually work I downloaded AVR Studio 5 (the latest version, which is somewhat large: 554 Mb download plus installing Microsoft's .NET framework).

After installing it wanted to upgrade the firmware in my Dragon, so I said OK, and it did that. But, it only recognized SPI (serial) programming, which required an external crystal. I wanted the good stuff, the high-voltage parallel programming. But the AVR Studio 5 didn't offer that.

I fired off a detailed email to Atmel, and was pleasantly surprised that it got added in as a "ticket" into their system within a few minutes. So far so good.

But meanwhile, I thought "how would you sell these if they didn't perform as advertised?". So I then looked around for their earlier version, AVR Studio 4. Aha! Somewhat smaller download (116 Mb), much faster install.

When I connected to the Dragon it said something like "your firmware is too recent - do you want do downgrade?". Well, who can resist such an offer? So I downgraded the firmware.

After that, yes it worked! The Parallel programming worked, and I could read the fuses download the program memory, whatever. And without needing a crystal.

[Reply #268 on:]

A solar powered grasshopper.
This is a great cheap electronics gift for a little kid.  It has a small motor on it so that it will jiggle across a hard surface in the sunlight.  You can get them for $3 U.S. 
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Solar-Powered-Insect-Bug-6-Legs-grasshopper-B1314-/390307835435?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5ae028ee2b
If the link stops working you can search ebay for 'solar powered insect'

[Reply #269 on:]

Saleae 16-channel USB Logic Analyzer:



Sample up to 2 channels at 100 MHz, 4 channels at 50 MHz, 8 channels at 25 MHz, and all 16 channels at 12.5 MHz.

Lets you save 10 billion samples. Also works with 3.3V logic levels.

Ach, didn't mean to come across as an ad. But I found my 8-channel analyzer one of the most useful tools for finding out problems with SPI, serial, I2C etc. because you can hook it up to your pins and see whether you are sending anything, and if so, what it is.

16 channels might be a  bit of an overkill for Arduino, but hey, you could hook some channels up to your main processor, and some up to "the other end" and see how long it takes to respond.