Circuit-Zone.com - Electronic Projects
Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 • Category: USB Interface Adapters
This article contains information about getting a USB interface working between an 18F4550 PIC and a PC using C# .NET 2.0, using the Microchip-supplied driver mpusbapi.dll. In this article, the PIC is configured using some (slightly modified) demo code originally for the PICDEM FS USB demo board, in which it is configured as a generic class device, with one IN + OUT interrupt endpoint. The device is set up with a bootloader, allowing the PIC to be programmed through software after the initial programming.
Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 • Category: AC / DC Innveters
 This is 100W inverter circuit. It uses 4047 IC and IRF540 Mosfet instead of 2N3055 transistor. Power output is 100W from 2-3A transformer.
Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 • Category: LED
 It's a little wisp of a circuit that allows you to drive a blue or white LED from a low voltage. Normally, if you want to light up a blue or white LED you need to provide it with 3 - 3.5 V, like from a 3 V lithium coin cell. But a 1.5 V battery like a AA cell simply will not work. But using the Joule Thief, it works like a charm. Not only does it work with a brand new battery, but it works until the battery is nearly dead-- down to 0.3 V. That's well below the point where your other toys will tell you the battery is dead, so it can steal every last joule of energy from the battery (hence the name). To learn how to make one, watch the video, which is available in a variety of formats.
Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 • Category: iPOD Hacks
 Using the USB port on your computer to charge your player’s batteries is not always practical. What if you do not have a computer available at the time or if you do not want to power up a computer just for charging? Or what if you are travelling?
Chargers for iPODs and MP3 players are available but they are expensive and you need separate models for charging at home and in the car. SILICON CHIP’s new charger can be used virtually anywhere.
While we call the unit a charger, it really is nothing more than a 5V supply that has a USB outlet. The actual charging circuit is incorporated within the iPOD or MP3 player itself, which only requires a 5V supply.
As well as charging, this supply can run USB-powered accessories such as reading lights, fans and chargers, particularly for mobile phones.
Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 • Category: Stepper Motors
 This is an easy to build stepper motor driver that will allow you to precisely control a unipolar stepper motor through your computer's parallel port. With a stepper motor you can build a lot of interesting gadgets such as robots, elevator, PCB drilling mill, camera panning system, automatic fish feeder, etc. If you have never worked with stepper motors before you will surely have a lot of fun with this project.
Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 • Category: FM Radio / Receivers
 This simple one chip FM receiver / TV tuner will allow you to receive frequencies from 70 up to 120MHz. With this small receiver it is possible to pickup TV stations, entire 88 - 108MHz FM band, aircraft conversation and many other private transmissions. It is a perfect companion to any FM Transmitter especially if FM band in your area is very crowded. TDA7000 receiver offers very good sensitivity therefore it will even allow you to pickup weaker signals that cannot be heard on conventional FM receivers.
Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 • Category: Power Supplies
 This is a bench power supply with regulated DC outputs -12V, -15V, +5V, +12V, +15V, and variable and one +35VDC unregulated output. I based this bench supply almost exclusively upon Andrew Kilpatrick's design. I did add a few things, but it's essentially the same and I am not writing here to claim any shred of originality. I spent somewhere around 80$ US on the project (including the GIANT transformer), which isn't bad compared with commercial supplies boasting similar features. Please note that I DID find a few minor errors in Kilpatrick's schematic, which have been fixed here. For details, read Kilpatrick's original page.
Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 • Category: FM Transmitters
 Very stable FM transmitter based on TSA5511 synthesizer. Frequency is performed with three buttons through PIC16F84 microcontroller. Frequency is displayed on 16×1 LCD.
Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 • Category: PCB
 To design my circuit boards, I use the freeware version of the Eagle Layout Editor by CadSoft Computer GmbH. The software is located in the download area of their site.
I give an introduction to Eagle under the category Eagle CAD. For convenience, here is a list of the posts:
* Eagle 1: Description
* Eagle 2: Libraries
* Eagle 3: Setup
* Eagle 4: Schematics
* Eagle 5: Components
* Ground Pour
* Setting All Drill Sizes
* Setting All Pad Sizes
Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 • Category: AVR
My goal is to build a kind of a mobile tracker. There are many different use cases you can think of but one of the obvious is a device, that is able to report where it is. This device can be put in your car and it could trigger an alarm, if the car got stolen. Actually it could tell you where it is.
There are already mobile tracking devices out there, but they seemed to be too expensive and too closed for my needs. Another option is one of these new Nokia N95 which have built-in GPS. They are really nice, but about 600€, which is not a bargain. So I decided to do my own.
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