DIPDuino is Arduino-compatible board in a DIP32 package

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DIPDuino is an Arduino-compatible board that combines a number of useful interfaces in one DIP32 package.

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While the idea of having an entire MCU platform in a DIP format isn’t all that new,  Alex Gornostayev just wasn’t satisfied with some of those on the market today, like the Teensy and Arduino Nano. And so, the Maker decided to create his own Arduino-compatible board that crams many useful interfaces all into one easy-to-use DIP32 package.

The aptly named DIPDuino goes a step further than most of today’s breakout boards. Based an ATmega1284RFR2 along with a 2.4GHz ZigBee transceiver, the unit is equipped with a 128×32-pixel OLED display, a microSD card reader, a serial FTDI port, 1MB of SRAM, a full JTAG debugger port, USB and pin power supply, LEDs, and a stabilized 3V and 3.6V power output.

Looking ahead, Gornostayev is planning on using the board for a number of DIY projects, ranging from an OLED watch to a weather station and a home automation system. Aside from that, one of his friends even wants to build a DIPDuino-based RepRap controller. The possibilities are endless! However, first he would like to improve its software so that the firmware can be programmed and updated from an SD card.

“I want to be able to be able to program DIPDuino from SD card. Just save BIN file on SD card and boot the device. The bootloader must be able to flash the firmware and it does not look too complicated. (I call this project ‘DIPBoot’).”

“I want to implement a simple BASIC translator for DIPDuino to be able to write programs in BASIC using simple text editor, save it on SD card and execute it form file on DIPDuino (which will be DIPBasic in this case),” Gornostayev adds. “This is really cool, because I will be to write programs on any devices, including smartphones or even DIPDuino itself, and execute them without any compilers and connections.”

Intrigued? Read more about the project on its Hackaday.io page here.

ATtiny85 goes uber-mini with The Nanite

The Nanite is an uber-mini dev board built around Atmel’s ATtiny85 microcontroller (MCU). The board – which measures 0.4″ wide – boasts the same pin configuration as a DIP ATtiny85.

“[I wanted] to have my own ATtiny85 based development board based on a USB bootloader and optimized for the ubiquitous 170 point mini-breadboards. [The Nanite] sports a reset button, but lacks an integrated voltage converter as it is supposed to be powered by USB,” Nanite creator Tim explained in a recent blog post.

“Apart from the size considerations, the Nanite also uses a neat circuit trick to share a single pin with the LED and the reset button. The circuit of the board is shown below, the circuit attached to the reset pin, PB5, is to the right.”

Meaning, if PB5 is configured as the standard reset, the push button will simply act as a reset button, with the LED taking on the role of a pull up for the reset button. However, if reset is disabled and PB5 is configured as a normal I/O pin, the state of the button can be polled by simply reading from the port.

“The LED can be turned on by setting the output to ‘low’ and turned off by configuring the output into a high impedance state. It is not advised to set the output ‘high’, since in that case the pushbutton could short the output to ground,” said Tim.

“I use micronucleus in a configuration where it only starts when the button is pushed. This means that the user program is started without a delay after the device is powered up.”

Meanwhile, the functionality of the reset button is emulated via software, periodically polling the state of the button and activating the watch dog timer if it is pressed. If the watch dog times out, the device resets.

“Apart from the LED output, user interaction and soft-reset button, PB5 can also be used as a simple serial debug output – connected to the RX input of a serial to USB adapter. I use a simple software-UART implementation and a macro to redirect STDOUT to the serial output. This allows very convenient debugging with printf(),” he added.

Interested in learning more? You can check out Nanite’s official page here, while the Eagle design files and example code are available on Github here.

Building a Mini 7-Segment Clock (V2)

Kevin Rye recently re-designed his already impressive Mini 7-Segment Clock using an SMD version (instead of 28-pin DIP) of the ATmega328 microcontroller (MCU) and a custom PCB.

“I moved the switches a little off-center to the right and shuffled everything else around in order to fit the SMD ATmega,” Rye explained in a recent blog post.

“I rotated the ATmega 45 degrees. I think chips look cooler when they’re rotated, but in all seriousness, it is easier to run a trace from one side of the board to the far side of the chip when it’s rotated.”

Rye also moved most of the (PCB) text from the front to the back. However, with the exception of the ICP and FTDI headers, the board layout remained the same.

 After receiving his new PCBs, Rye decided to kick off a limited test of his new design.

“I didn’t want to put the whole thing together and find out that it didn’t work, [so] I decided to only solder in the ATmega, the 16MHz crystal, and the supporting caps and resistors – just enough so I could test loading the bootloader onto the ATmega and upload a sketch,” said Rye.

“I configured my Arduino Uno (ATmega328) as an ISP and attached the Mini Clock’s 6-pin ICP header to the Arduino via a ribbon cable and some jumpers. I then jumped into the Arduino IDE and burned the bootloader for an Uno.”

After successfully running the bootloader, Rye connected the FTDI adapter and uploaded the blink sketch, jamming an LED into the PCB and watching the LED blink. Last, but certainly not least, Rye validated the ICP and FTDI functions and soldered in the rest of the components.

Interested in learning more about version two of Kevin’s Mini 7-Segment Clock? You can check out his detailed project blog post here and download the source files here.