What keeps people from using a debugger? Well, it is mostly that one has initial costs in terms of setting up the debugging environment and of learning how to use the debugging tool. Hopefully, the next iteration of my hardware debugging tool dw-link, which is able to debug classic ATtinys and ATmegaX8s, will somewhat ease that burden, in particular, because you can buy the accompanying hardware now at Tindie.
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Calibrating Your AVR MCU
In building one’s own MCU board, one often does not use a crystal or resonator. Instead, the internal RC-oscillator is employed, which can be quite inaccurate. Similarly, if one wants to use the internal reference voltage to measure the supply voltage, it turns out that the reference voltage can deviate from its nominal value quite a lot. Both, the RC-oscillator and the internal reference voltage can be calibrated, though. In this blog post, I describe a simple method to calibrate both using only a UNO board and a multimeter employing the avrCalibrate library.
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Drifting in the Flow of Time
What happens if you take a dozen clocks and throw them into the flow of time?
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ATmega328P: Fake or Real?
Recently, I bought some ATmega328P-PU (DIP packages) chips in China and was concerned that they might be counterfeit, given that three years ago some ATmega328P clones, which did not support nano-power, had been found on Pro Mini boards. The first check looked as if they were fake chips, but apparently, they were the real thing. but they seem to work fine.
The Return of the Y2K Bug
If you are old enough, you probably remember the Y2k bug. Now, mankind should have learned from it, right? Wrong!
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Everything You Wanted to Know About Real-Time Clocks but Were Afraid to Ask
What is a real-time clock? Why do you need one? What are the use cases? How accurate can a real-time clock be? Which features can a real-time clock have? Which models are around? And which one should you buy?
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A Sunset Cache Box
What does it take to build a geocaching box that can only be opened at sunset? A box, a button, an electronic lock, an electronic clock, and a controller that ties everything together.
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SD-WIFI by FYSETC: Wireless 3D printing
How do you communicate with your 3D printer? Carrying an SD card between your computer and the printer? This can end now using the SD-WIFI module! If you try to get it running on a Mac, some extra effort may be necessary.
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Synchronism
In 2013, we found the Seattle-Köln Exchange Multicache, which requires cooperation between geocachers from Cologne and Seattle. This led to the idea of a geocache where two people at different locations had to press a button at exactly the same time in order to be able to open their respective cache boxes. And now the idea has become a reality!
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Create Your Own World: Print it!
Now it has happened. I finally assembled the 3D printer kit Prusa i3 MK3, which I bought in 2018.
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