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Annoyed by the inaccuracy of people saying, "It takes six tenths of a volt to turn a transistor on", I did a graph of a bipolar transistor (2N4250A) to see what happened. The graph shows an almost perfect straight line from 1na to 1 ma on a lin/log graph. (I quit at 1 ma to avoid heating the...
I was postponing this post until I got a chance to acquire and test a 2x20 3V LCD.
I have not gotten one as yet so the test will have to wait.
I wanted the display to show the date and time like this:
However, when Wednesday comes around, I need 18 characters across, hence the need for a...
SRF(Self-resonant frequency)
The frequency at which the inductor's distributed capacitance resonateds with the inductance, it is at this frequency that the inductance is equal to the capacitance and they cancell each other, the inductore will act purely resistive with a high impedance at the SRF...
Saturation Current
The DC bias current flowing through the inductor which causes the inductance to drop by a specified amount from the initial zero DC bias inductance value , common specified inductance drop percentages include 10% and 20%.it is useful to use the 10% inductance drop value for...
Here is a 24-hr Clock/Calendar project with a twist.
The idea is to create a perpetual clock that will run for 10,000 years without requiring calibration. This idea was inspired by the 10,000 Year Clock project from the Long Now Foundation:
http://longnow.org/clock/
To achieve this goal, I...
You can use your handheld TV remote controller to turn on/off lights, appliances, gadgets, robots, etc.
Here I will show you how you can receive and decode the infra-red (IR) signals transmitted by the controller. This is also an excellent exercise to learn and use the intricate functions of...
Here is my MSP430G2553 LCD Terminal program.
Where would I use something like this?
1) If I am debugging a system and would like to see some internal results I can send ASCII text to a dumb terminal. Can I not use the IDE debugger to trace the code? Many times I am debugging in "real time" and...
Here is the MSP430G2553 to LCD example, test setup, circuit diagram and program.
//************************************************
// MSP430 - LCD Test Program
//************************************************
/************************************************
2013.06.22 - MrChips...
Sometimes when I am developing and debugging a system I need to monitor some intermediate result. I do this by sending ASCII text serially to a "dumb terminal" such as HyperTerm. Believe me, I have a PC on my workbench running COMM on MSDOS just for this purpose.
I also have a microcontroller...
Now that we have verified that the ADC is configured properly and working, we can connect the LM35 and then look at the numbers.
Connect the LM35 to Vcc and GND of the MSP430G2553. Connect Vout from the LM35 to P1.7 (pin-15) of the MSP430G2553.
It is educational to look at the math.
The LM35...
Now that we have three digits being displayed, what can we do with them?
The first project that comes to mind is a digital thermometer. We will use the popular LM35 temperature sensor which outputs an increasing voltage as the temperature rises. The transfer function of the LM35 is a linear...
Now that you have seen how easy it is to interface to a single seven-segment display, let us add multiple digits to the design.
In a traditional digital counter design using standard digital ICs, every time you need to add another digit you need to add another counter, latch, decoder/driver...
I have found that there are not many digital simulators that work well for digital circuits that operate on the gate level.
Now, when I say well, I also mean free. I'm a cheapskate and don't like to pay for software when a freeware, or open-source program is available to do the same thing as...
Ok, it's time to get back into the MSP430 tutorials. In the next few blogs I will present examples on driving seven-segment LEDs followed by interfacing with the popular alphanumeric LCD modules.
So let's get coding and debugging a seven-segment LED example.
The classic way to drive a common...
I am thinking of possible followups to this blog.
Every microcontroller is a useless chunk of silicon if it does not have some form of output such as LEDs, relays, motors, analog voltage, PWM or digital displays.
Here are some possible programming exercises:
output to seven-segment display...
The TI MSP-EXP430G2 LaunchPad is ok for quick testing of code during program development. Eventually you would like to program the target mcu in-circuit on your protoboard or project PCB.
When laying out your PCB make sure you provide programming headers to the programming pins. You only need...
