Home built test console for ATMEGA168 Arduino

Practical Electronics and Electricity for Learning and Fun

by Lewis Loflin

Introduction These pages were originally setup to assist my electricity and electronics students at a local community college. As of 2009 this will be greatly expanded. The goal will be to expand interest at both the hobby level and practical level. This will target not only my students, but those interested in practical devices and ideas we can build at low cost in an average home or workshop. I'll also include links to other websites and specification sheets for the parts used.

This will be limited to items built, tested, and demonstrated in class. This is not a full scale electronics class, but an introduction on the basic electricity level. I'll avoid most of the complex math and stick to basics. This will be from a practical hands on approach that can produce real things one can easily build and see.

As in my classes, students come in with all kinds of skill levels and have often been out of formal school for years. They often work in industry doing real things. Most do far better with "hands on" than just theory alone. Other than those few that are just lazy, most do very well at grasping complex subjects if they see it working. So I take an approach of breaking the concepts down into small subjects and then combine them into more complex subjects.

Our textbook will be Electrical Studies for Trades by Stephen L. Herman. (3rd Edition) The book isn't necessary for the material here, but will help. My E-Mail lewis@sullivan-county.com Phone: 276-669-0565 if anyone has any questions.


Read this Safety Warning and Disclaimer

Added February 2009: Using a CdS Photo resistor. How to use photocells and touches on comparators, thermistors, relays, etc. Includes circuits to build and test.

Arduino demos:
Using the ATMEGA168/Arduino with the TA8050 Motor Controller
Demonstrates use of pulse-width modulation for motor speed control.
Using the ATMEGA168/Arduino with a 24LC08 Serial EEPROM
Using the ATMEGA168/Arduino with a DS1307 Real Time Clock
More to come. this will include using the MCP23016 I2C I/O Expander and several simple demo projects for robotics and power control.

Atmega168/Arduino features:
14k flash program storage
1k RAM for program memory
6 PWM outputs
6 A/D inputs
UART and SPI interfaces
2 Hardware interrupts
20 general purpose I/O pins (shared with PWM and Analog pins)
16 MHz RISC microcontroller
Open-source hardware, IDE, bootloader
Easy upgrade to more powerful hardware (Wiring)
Easy to use and learn.

Homepage: http://www.arduino.cc/
Reference page: http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/HomePage
Extended reference: http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/Extended

PDF files and spec sheets

To buy an Aduino boards, parts, etc. visit www.moderndevice.com

[ My Homepage ]

Note: pdf files require Acrobat reader.

Posted February 15, 2009. KIM-1 my first computer

PDF files and spec sheets

A picture of my duty station in West Berlin

Using the IBM Printer Port

Visitors since
March 2002