www.elekEor- electronics .cq.u k EXPLORER-16 Microchip PIC24F Design Series lektor lektuur Microchip i R7 W 'ifl m | wm j y utfmri J Mi w — iHIri ■ " i . -f j x— J i— t ' — I — 1 Year ctrofi' G 1 \ cete brate viVth tbe toes a tree cov 0 3 | miP L< caw'°9 ue - ,^i.\aV care POST AND PACKING CHARGES: Orde r Value Cost Orde r Value Cos £20 - £49.99 £5 £200 - £499.99 £30 £50 - £99.99 £10 £500r £40 £100 - £199.99 £20 Max weight 12tb (5kg). Heavier parcels POA, Minimum order DO, Hole: Pfcducts are dispatched from Australia, focal customs du ty taxes may apply. Galactic Voice Kit KC-5431 £13-25 4- post 6. packing Be the envy af everyone at the nexi Interplanetary Conference for Evil Beings with this galactic voice simulator kit. Effect and depth controls allow you to vaty ihe effect to Simulate everything from the mcTa ll i rally-challenged C-3PO, to the hysterical ranting of Daieks hell-bent on exterminating anything not nailed down The kit indudes RGB with .. overlay, enclosure, speaker ^ and all components. For ^ v.no really need to ge; out o i the house a lot V£ more. Take- me to your W] leader. * Requires 9V battery Magnetic Cartridge Pre-amp KC-5433 £11.75 - post & packing mis kit is Lisc-d to amplify the 3 -4 mV signals from a phono* tsrtndge to ' ne level., so you can use your ii-i‘ r 1 1 1 L" ' =■ v.TSh the CD or tuner inputs on your HnFi amplifier Tn-j design t$ sellable for 12 LPs, and also allow? for ft IAA equalisation of ait the reeSfy old TBs Please note that trie input \ ^ sensitivity of this design means it* only • suitable for moving miagnet not m o . ing-coi ea n rid ge-s, Kit . 1 j. ft includes PCB with ^ - % iiw' M * ■ ml . f overlay and all S electronic components. * i'JJ - Requites 12VAC power , riW Battery Zapper MKII KC-5i27 £29.00 + post & packing This kit attacks a common cause of failure in wet lead add cell batteries; sulphabon The drum produces shorr bursts of high level energy to reverse the damaging sulphation effect This new improved unit features a battery health checker with LED indicator, new circuit protection against badly sulfated batteries, test points for a DMM and connection for a battery charger. Kit includes case wtlh * * screen printed lid, PCB ^?]p roVtl , with overlay, all ^ -Modt^r _ electronic components and %j ri7. 1? dear English t ;*>|\ R instructions. ffl I Suitable for 6„ 12 ^ J) and 24V b s tteri ■ Po wered by mm the battery mm |V^B itself & Theremin Synthesiser MKII KC-5426 £43,50 — post & packing By moving your rand between the metal antennae, creeie unusual sound effects! Trie Theremin Mkll improves on its predecessor by allowing adjustments to the tonal quality by providing a better waveform. With a multitude of controls this instrument s musical potential ;e only limbed by trie skill and Imagination of its player. Kit include* stand, PCB with overlay, machined case vvilh s r k screen printed lid. loudspeaker, pitch antennae, all specified electronic n s| Components and . u v^- : Clear Erigiish ^ ir.itruchons- Requires 9-12 VDC X V wall adapter (Map I In #H GOT B £13.99) High Performance Electronic Projects for Cars Book BS'SOBO £700 4 post 5. packing Australia's leading electronics magazine Silicon Chip, has developed 3 range of projects for performance cars. There are 15 projects in total, ranging from devices for remapping fuel curves, co nitrous com rollers Ttte book includes all instructions, components lists, color pictures, and circuit layouts, mere are also chapters on engine management advanced systems and DIY modifications Over 150 pages! All the projects are available in kit form, exclusively to J a year. Check out our website for all Lhe details. for Independent Electronic : Boost Controller & packing KC-5387 £22-75 + post & packing -d f or It can be used in cars filled with factory electronic le independant c-Eecmmic boost control using the- factory control solenoid or n right) it features a two line ar5 without electronic boost control using a h buttons. It can be used to solenoid from a wrecker etc. Tins is ideal for n removed, or left switching between say. a raceT street mode or a ^ display the adjusters performance/ wet weather mode. Boost curve s an interface and display, selection is via a dashboard switch, and is ail nera! adjuster functions after programmed using the handheld digital controller ned Kit supplied with KC-5386 (shown left). Kit supplied with 0 _ P ^ 0r nia ^bined case, and * all electronic PES components. ; £ * Suitable for EFI and engine management , y \ :: : systems only { ffi £rS JT Ue slack nn t \kmsii L nirigi af quality aulnmolhe ki ts IR Remote Control Extender MKII KC-5432 £725 - post & packing Operate ymir DVD piayer or digital decoder using its remote control from another room It picks up the signal from the remoie control and sends it via a .' /, re cable to an infrared LED located dose to the device. This improved model features fast data transfer tap.;b e of trensmitting Foxtei digital remote Control signals using the Pace 4 DO series decoder. Kit supplied with case, screen pnnted front panel PCB with overlay and all electronic ccmponefits. 'P r ov G( j Requires 9VDC wall adaptor (Maplin #GS74R £10.99) All prices F In £ Sig ^ — . / * — “Free 410-ri page Catafogue_f^ Log on to vw.jayca re ronics.co.uk/efekl for your FREE catalogue! Q8G0 032 7241 . B (Monday - Friday 09,00 to 1730 GMT .+ 10 hours only) For those who want to write: 100 Silverwater Rd Srlverwater NSW 2128 Sydney AUSTRALIA DSO Test Instrument Software for BitScope Mixed Signal Oscilloscopes a wkM ■V|| ,i‘i i s * - , } . j liuu MIiMm "H ; | Mixed Signal Oscilloscope Capture and display up to 4 analog and 8 logic channels with sophisticated cross-triggers. Spectrum Analyzer Integrated real-time spectrum analyzer for each analog channel with concurrent waveform display Logic Analyzer 8 logic, External Trigger and special purpose inputs to capture digital signals down to 25nS, Data Recorder Record anything DSO cars capture. Supports live data replay and display export. Networking Flexible network connectivity supporting multi-scope operation, remote monitoring and data acquisition. Data Export Export data with DSO using portable CSV files or use libraries to build custom BitScope solutions. Storage Oscilloscope Up to 4 analog channels using industry standard probes or POD connected analog inputs. 2 Channel BitScope Pocket Analyzer BitScope DSO Software for Windows and Linux BitScope DSO s feet and intuitive multi-channel test ana measurement software for your PC or notebook. Whether it's a digital scope, spectrum analyzer, mixed signal scope, logic analyzer, waveform generator or data recorder. BitScope DSO supports them ail. Capture deep buffer one-shots or display waveforms live just like an analog scope. Comprehensive lest instrument integration means you can view the same data in different ways simultaneously at the click of a button. DSO may even be used stand-alone to share data with colleagues, students cr custcners. Waveforms may be exported as portable image files or live captures replayed cn other PCs as if a BitScope was locally connected. BitScope DSO supports all current BitScope models., auto-configures when it connects and can manage multiple BrtScopes concmrentiy. No manual saiup is normally requ red. Data export is available for use with third party software tools and BilSccpe's networked data acquisition capabilities are fully supported. Teaming up It you are not in the electronics mdusfry or without a formal qualifica- tion in the field, II may be good to realise that electronics as a pastime would be non-existent .vithoul the wide diversity of manufacturers of equipment, tools, components and, recently, software to run an your PC, not rorgeiiing a growing number of PGB-toorder service providers. Although some readers have expressed a desire to see a version of Elector Electronics without any advertising pages, short discussions o n the phone or by email are usually sufficient to agree that their vision is unrealistic. For one thing, our advertisers make up for a good part or our income, the other main pillars being subscribers., newsstand sales and product sales. On the other hand, from a reader viewpoint ad- vertisers are the gateway So services and products [including components and tools) ihai are essential to enjoy electronics as a pastime cr pursue it at any level in education. Sure, ofd hands with a fully loaded workshop may object to seeing basi- cally the same advertisers far years on end. But then when I was learn- ing about electronics at a relatively young age I believe I got os much information and fun cur of browsing adverts, comparing component prices and seeing the big names In industry, than from actually reading articles, trying to understand it all and build- ing circuits in Front of me. I am happy to say that Elekror Electronics is attracting an increas- ing number ot companies, big and small advertiser or not, wishing to run projects with us Without their input we would not have been able to publish hugely successful projects like the E-SIM DVD (October 2006; mis- cellaneous software suppliers) RFIDs (September 2006; Philips/ACG/Vi- stoncard) and RSC Tom Thumb (Feb- ruary 2006; Renesa s/Glynn) in the past year. With this January 2007 issue come two massive contribu- tions. one from advertisers Microchip and Labcenter in the form of a free CD-ROM coupled to a 1 o-bit micro- controller development kit the other from Collnbus offering a kit of parts So assemble a milling machine for use in the electronics or mechanical work- shop Both deals have taken us much effort to arrange exclusively for you — or should t say 'far your pleasure'. More is in the pipeline. Jan Bailing, Editor J y cj j J J din If ever y©u dreamed of havi your own milling machine workshop bur found it just expensive, we have the perfect solution for you. Working in close collab- oration with Coiinbus, we present Profiler , a construction kit that ena- bles you to build a pro- fessional milling machine for a fraction of the cost of a ready-made model. the in If ever there was a golden opportunity to move on to 1 6-bit microcomputing at a serious level, join Microchip, Labcenter ond Elektor with their groundbreaking txp/orer-J6 project. As a kick off, you get a free CD-ROM this month, allowing you to install Microchip MPLAB IDE as a development platform, MPLAB C30 for C language compiling and Proteus VSM for some really powerful simulation right up to a complete PIC24F system. The most advanced atomic clocks are breath 28 The Quest for Accuracy takingly accurate, many millions of times more so than the best quartz-based clocks. How do they manage it? Jens Nickel reports. 14 20 42 48 54 66 69 70 72 34 38 58 60 Fifty years after the launch the first arliftc ial satellite, it seems fitting to build a dock in the shape of the Sputnik- 1 that combines a nostalgic Nixie tube display with o modern microcontroller and a lightweight state of the high-volt- age supply in a single design. 10 81 84 76 77 Volume 33 January 2007 no. 361 know-how I he Quest for Accuracy hands-o 'Profiler' Milling Machine Explorer- 1 6 ( i j Sputnik Time Machine Berlin Clock Remake Text at the Speed of Light FPGA Course (8) Design Tips Blinking Christmas decoration Test beeper for your stereo Improving RFID Reader Sensitivity Display Recycling technology Clocking, Texas Style Turbo Tricks Scoot me up, Scotty Warp Speed on Demand Colophon Mailbox News & New Products Elektor SHOP Sneak Preview infotainment Electromechanical switching technology Hexadoku II . -Ikl ■ ; lecfronics Volume 33, Number 361 , janu ary 2007 ISSN 0268/4519 HBCtftutFCJ zirriz 21 inspiring people ic master Eleztrcnlcz =t any personal level by presenting construction projects and spotting develop men a in electronics and Information technology. Publishers: Befcicr Bectrorucs Regus Bren beret (SSD Great Wfe Rnari , ErEfEtfcrdTWS 9HH. &i^S5d- (—44) IPS 26 } 4*3)9* fen —44 203 Is ■■ •-•=- 7 ■ 3 cc -_ e “0/3'-:- : i.i 3-r Fp cr- re l Eraeecno" =3 :3 :__-:i : ■ _ 5 — - - - - Etc - — : : - s"sc trre= * ev - — 5 ::■. :t _■ G.-A^r. Uneferrt nyre iE+dzr and Eefem: me rragi-xe s Q_D:i'si n ft^rch. Sctrah. GsTran arc jrr “i^rTrie Ji’tri. "=rcr ss e=icr-i me -m e— re s cr 03 etcc r “ 7 “ 51 i:'j“e£. tnsernaiionsl Editor * “v : . " ■ Editor a" | a International editorial staff: 4|=-r, Es££e _ — r i E-i:-i i Ems 1 Y-:±r e .3 ■ . 7*7 G. r - Piederstk-'f Design staff: "5: ■ “ = certs. ReoJ Goqss&s. Luc Ls^ — --; O-hstati Editorial secretarial z Her ■+ ere .■ - e 1 :-~: Graphic design f DTP: G = Dee Managing Director Publisher: = i_ Hark Eli ng: Cif£ . e ‘ * s:='- ecv Customer Services: ‘■Izrmr.e t C zi-: . — 7:-7-:_ c " : -rTHrsin: Subscriptions; : : '7:3 r r 3 -_: i r | COj G^esi ’.Vest Read L — + t~ 7 i~ 1 7e . -— ICS 26 45 C^ k -— ZZE G 4447 "nemai: vr . :- : :■:■ -c :r: - 3 :: ^ Ertteii: : ; ; 7 — vi‘-e43. : _ _ _■ 7 :='T; ere £ c~ tre j~ O+er fezr Head Office: ;e— - . z 7 E~* “5 ._-c Bee*. — ■ e Aetrerorz'j ~z ephone; (+31)464369444. fee (+31 1 46 437DI61 Distribution: 5=. — 7.~ Z = -~ r :_iz 5 £tc-*zl EC 1 E- i e : >epr,^2:— 4 2C7 415 4C^3 UR Advertising; Husxi IrpemevooaE Melt*, Canrtfarkfge Hoifie, GG^nore Lane, O^rtse-;, E_— ■ 'CT 4 9A4 Er-r'ir-d . ~e er - one: - — ^ 5 3 649>9. =&- - — z 5 1 • 5 =4 - -£ E~e i; ' G ' - . • •■^cenet: ■'■ ■■■ ' — . +7,7“ E “ ; ~7E 7 _ : 77rn--5 7-7 £7 7 Gn r 77 J 7T Intemadonai Advertising: 43 t» .'et da sdd'zzL =s ■ L £iz Z “ _= Eo'Tl i7, : c£ -j : : t_ . A7.su £-g — =- : te — s ~=v^ _m'-7 -- r 7c:_e: + Copyright Kotice T re GTiiS cestrced n svs far ddroeSc use or A- A1 pi xt c gcap hfc pwnted snit boe/d l^aH, prafri'Trr^d intis-sed cstiila. cfai CD-POMs 5^n*fjre i + 3 ^~rri7+e *eat5 pjtfthftl rv our boc^ ibd rr^^iTes (ot^sr dwi iw^psrTy 3^trta fr^>S V trs g^t^4 b , ^“-z "z: ze -7z :c_z±z : — =• ■ -■. : _.d,^ P'^'^ipr^ s^rvog recorctf^ in >stioe or n part wtkxt prior vitctSi pem^on fern me FUCKsT^rt Sadi written pem^jon rnust he c££3ned befef^^y pst rf 4A pjtaizztiai e r ■-. . ■ i r E' _ - - i]E'E“ m =■ ■ 5 z±et: iz-irzc- — z. " ±::zz z _ z ze. ~ef - : ■ J j . ' . E-ji-z iEz j i i~i “e:iz z ~ _ z r _zi.z - -e : :zs - z: ::z:: ~zzz "zz z, z,- - - r ID <3m?Jy tuth ceififAi) or cCber pfi+rzzorz Tj^e z_fcrnzE5zri zf cr smzes zzpiizz perr& 5ZTi jd H« zi+eri 7 z : =■ . z :z z z~z rzz^v rndtir^ tfe iz>tez* d O ther iefrert publzz- ZGT3 :Z. Css Tre +:■ J'zz e - ~ f_ie p b=7 :z z:_ z ■ rrz:- ^ r . ■"-— Disclaimer r- : _- -- - - : ---- --: : r_r zr. t ;i:z: :t - : zz:r E' : : lm : ■ „ : : -■ _ _z_-: & Segment b,v. 2007 Printed in the Netheriandb com Your price conscious PCB supplier Verified CIRCUITS Online price calculation Online ordering Online order tracking Online 24/24H and 7/7D pooling for standard boards up to 6 layers from 1 to 1000 pieces from 3 working days onwards A la carte pooling with more options up to 8 layers from 1 to 1Q00 pieces from 3 working days onwards Interested? Contact us; +44 2088 167 005 E-mail: euro@eurocjrcuits.com r ■ On demand your boards our challenge up to 20 layers from 1 piece onwards from 2 working days onwards www.ElmScan5.com/elek lor • Diagnose any car with EOBD * Based on the ELM327 1C 4 Supports all EOBD and OBD4I protocols ✓ 15015765 ^ (CAN) * ISO! 4220-4 (Keyword 2000) S IS09 14 1 -2 SJI8S0 VM *0/650 PVVM 4 9600 or 3B400 baud 4 Supported by more software than any other OBD interface * Inexpensive * Full Speed USB 1.1 * Automatic protocol detection * Package indudes cables, software CD. and Quick Start Guide * Buy from your local UK distributors! 6 ekkl&r d-d ranks - 1/2007 Easy-PC version 10 sets another milestone Winning accolades the world over, Easy- PC for Windows VIO is another major milestone in the evolution of this extremely popular software tool. Try a demonstration copy of Easy*PC and prepare to be amazed at the power, versatility and remarkable value for money. Version 10 features M Intelligent Gerber Import option £0 Track/Shape ‘Hug’ Mode Routing H Text Callouts ■ Layer & Via Stack Previews 1 i Blind & Buried Via Support H Te a rd ro p Rad s I j Draw Spacing Clearances 19 Spiral Tracks & Shapes Plus many more exciting features,..,. Fully integrated Schematics & PCB layout in a single application complete with forward and back annotation. Design and rules checks at all stages ensure integrity at ail times. Professional manufacturing outputs allow you to finish the design process with ease. Stop press... Stop press, Stop press... Stop press,,. Easy-PC imports Eagle files as well asTsien Boardmaker 2 files call for a brochure, prices & CD on +44 (0)1684 773662 or e-mail salE5@numberone.com you can also download a demo from www.numberone.com * Oak Lane, Bred on, Tewkesbury Gfos. GL2G 7LR. United Kingdom Technologv Other oscilloscopes in this price range force you to compromise on one of the key specifications: sampling rate, memory depth or bandwidth The PicoScope 5000 series is a no compromise PC oscilloscope at a price every engineer can afford. IGS.s sampling rate 250 MHz bandwidth I28M sample buffer memory USMS/s 12 bit AWG built In PicoScope 5203 32M buffer £ 2199 WWW. .com386 01480 396395 PicoScope 5204 I28M buffer £ 3299 1/2007 - dslitoF elKtromcs 7 INFO & MAILBOX Electronics for youngsters Dear Jan — f have been sub- scribing to Elektor Electronics for a couple of years and quite frankly I ihink you are missing a trick or two. Many of your projects are extre- mely clever and interesting, and in quite a few designs it anticipates the reader has ac- quired o PhD in Electronics or Communications Technology! The bulk of your projects are far too complex for the ma jo- pupils will find inspiring and eagerly want to build, test and run, a) Each 'junior' project needs lo be carefully packaged and include a comprehen- sive Parrs List, bj Contain a list of Test Equipment, c) The availability of a PCB, d) If software is included in the project — the source coding fines need labelling in an 'unambiguous' man- rity of 1 1-15 years olds! You need to nurture and encoura- ge this age group — they ore potentially your future readers and contributors! My advice is to allocate 15- 20% of the magazine to less complex projects that school ner to explain the program steps. e) The inclusion of a Flow Diagram would be an advantage. F) What software and hard- ware ore required ro run the program Finally, a good starting point for a junior' project, are those constructed using the Parollax BASIC Stamp I and II chips. Quite complex circuits can be designed and built, and there is an element of programming involved. From my experience of projects in past issues of your maga- zine! You and your contributors might undersiand the gob- bledegook included in some of your software listing, but an eleven year old will struggle for □ while, ihen give up and put the magazine in the shredder and the partially tested PCB in the bin! (1 imagine quite a few adult Elektor readers have gone down this route l] David Jack (UK) Many thanks for your email feedback of the level you supply is few and for between and the- refore much appreciated. I agree that many of our projects ere ambitious, certainty compa- red to those as: to see in other magazines. Having said that, f shoLijd attempt to adjust your view somew hat by o dinting out me following articles that ap- peared in recent issues, which I believe should not deter H-J5 year olds: f. A* least 10 to 20 items in each Summer Circuits edition published these pas T 3 ’ years . 2. The Madding & Tweaking pages authored by student Jeroen Dombcrg. 3 Selected items from -he 'Design Tips pages in o number of recent issues. A hio n - construction a i articles like the ones an Cuhesate ■ RF Ds, tiectrosm eg etc. which , ah hough unlikely to be fulh understood, do ore sen' a mind challen ae to v J M5 year olds, as wallas topical information an the role at electronics in today's society*. 5 . Lois of free downloads with published or doles; even if the associated project is not actually built (or even under- stood}. source code listings etc . are great as educational material. 6. .4 number of 'lesser pro- grams on our free e-SIM DVD. 7. All projects in our free 24- page J- TRIXK s up pi erne n t s vpp I i e d v. ith the December 2006 issue. In fad a number of these circuits were sup- plied to us by youngsters! Sadly our A4mi Greeks articles were discontinued due to lack of interest and feedback pedicular , , from the age group you mention., as well as their teachers. Ado, from c commercial po n; of view sales of FCBs specie y designed for these projects were negligi- ble. We .rill however, consider publishing Mini Circuits again . Ws a re g ru is ~u tar e r coi rag r n-g us to took after the coming gene- radon in respect of publications on electronics and hops to serve them better in the future. Gn another positive note I should mention that an t e >; fo r Beg inn ers K i r is b -c irg developed and hopefully goes on sate b ter this year. FTP for free down toads What about having an FTP for the free software where we can download it easily? A well arranged FTP with every year Issues in a separate folder will be a great help to grab the free software of the whale issue by simply drag and drop using any FTP client and if will reduce the bandwidth used to browse each article and downlead each attached free software separately. Also, you can enclose a link for the PCB [if exists) to direct im- mediately lo the purchase page with ihe compressed files, ll will save you lots of band- width and save us a lot of time browsing arllcles and downloading & arranging files. All the best! MAI [reproduced from Forum) From a publishers point of view, it is not desirable to rev erf to the? system on the previous version of the vvebsre where clients could fust grab a lot at ~ee software S eletitof eledTQnits - 1/2007 or PCS layout files from o smg e oo go. often without making the sma- effort to find cot what the associated article was about Unfortunately this .system, caused a Jo: of unnecessary queries sent :o our customer services, design and editorial staff. Tee current system. : s a little mare ca r p > a te d but =l p e r iar > n th □ t customers ar leas: hove an idea what the magozme articles are about I through the short intro supplied) hence da not star/ downloading free software they will never require. Secondly the system currently in use is a result o I d at abas e-drive n p u bits king which wilt be s Iren evened in the future to enable us to run the entire Efektor operation in ten I languages with the resources and staff we have available. Everyone is we borne fo down- bad our free software and do whatever they Jrke with it ( but subject to copyrights) — all it ta- kes is a little effort in navigating arc rsadina what's on the tin v as our mothers taught us. Vintage Etekfor audio projects Dear Jon — 1 hove pleasure in sending you some photo- graphs oF Elektor projects I built over the years. The first shows your Portable Mixer from 1986 (I think), I actually built three of these! The circuit boards and the chassis are 100% do it yourself products and all three units silll work fine after all those years. 1 got a lot of fun from building and using them! The second photo shows the 1 00-v/att audio power amp From your April 1982 issue complemented with the DC and switch-on delay from January 1983. I built ten of these amplifiers and none of them ever failed in (rough) use. Unlike some of my friends, [ should odd, who on occasions asked me to replace BDX66 or BDX67 power transistors as a result of short-circuiting the output or connecting loudspeakers with an Impedance well below 4 ohms. As with the mixer project, the PCBs and chassis are home-made', Roger Demarsin [Belgium) Congratulations on your pro- jects , Roger, it goes to show how our desians store be test of time u if buih properly:. Separated grounds Dear Editor — in the article ECG using o Soundcard' [October 2006, Ed.) I noticed in the circuit diagram that the input and output have the same ground sign, while in actual fact electrical isolation exists between them. The de^ sign of the associated circuit board confirms that separate grounds are used. I was won- dering how this should be in- dicated in a circuit diagram? Or is the motier I'm trying to raise largely academic? W. Wade {UK] It is not — in bet, a is essential far electrical safety cor.ce ms and we a r e grateful to you for writing in on the subject The two elec- trically isolated sub-circuits are shewn with two different around v jymeo/s a small h arizen to car Mail Box Terms ■Pubttcat : f aazfar's r jr^srir:--. :% at : r 'r discretion of ihe Edilti * •, jfi’A-p' 3to5 "»■ rF ; = ; , Z ' ponctents are rot necessarily ffrosa at tne Editor.pr Publisher, • Correspondence may ba translated or ediled flat iaagth, ciefiiy ar;d style. * V/ben replying to Mailbox ■r.''aspcf a s n -i 5 :: za -a ol " tz Z5..z : - •Please send your Mai -Box “GnespofKiancE lo; 5di l C I @ fils 1 to f-£:u : L: C n 0 a. Z Z . f ^ k Or BaKlor Bectronics. Tre Editor. t OGQ ur£-s! V*s£? Read Era n ■ = - : ti T, V 0 5 H H England. and a triangle. Unfortunately, the indicators tor ‘input and but put' give rise to contusion because they ail include the same ground symbol fa sm all bar). In circuits drawn to our standards , the ground bar h included almost automatically with circuit inputs and outputs (open and solid arrow respecti- vely), and that is where we went wrong in this specific case as the diagram now suggests that the input ground is the same os rfre output ground. With the output ground we snout'd’ nave printed a solid triangle fas used in the rest of the output circuitry) — * this would have precluded any miscon cep f ion, | Corrections & Updates ] I DiSEqC Monitor * September 2006, 1 ref* 040393-1 1 1 1 I The value of C5 was § ] originally 2.2nF according g I fo /he Eufe/saf specs and j I worked okay with Nokia | I sets, later it was discovered j [ that 220 pF was required j [ lor Dream box sets — as it j I fumed out this value also \ \ worked wi/ft fhe Nokia j I 9500 set Some experimen- \ ( la tie n w/7h fhe capacitor | I value may be required for \ l other brands . \ b = = B a j 1/2007 - elsl.jyt r-lsmcnirs 9 ■ INFO & MARKET NEWS & NEW PRODUCTS I Pico USB scopes get a Pico Technology have opened up o new class of applications for their PicoScope 3000 Series USB instru- ments by hugely increasing iheir data transfer speed. The new, fast streaming mode can transfer over six million samples per second, bypassing the oscillo- scope hardware's memory buffer and transferring data direct to the PC. This allows programs lo capture waveforms at high sampling rotes over long periods of time, result- ing in very large data sets limited speed boost only by the size of the PC s physical memory. Previously, the only way to sample a! high speed was to use 'block mode , which resulted in lost data due to the deed time between blocks. The new streaming mode uses high-efficiency USB 2.0 data transfers to capture data continu- ously without dead lime. Now it's possible to capture high resolution data in situations such as vehicle road tests and lengthy laboratory experiments. For ex- ample, when used with □ PC with i GB of available physical RAM a PicoScope oscilloscope can cap- ture over 8 minutes of data sam- pled at 1 million samples per sec- ond. Using functions built in to the driver, the developer can easily display this data as a single wave- form representing the entire 8 min- utes, or zoom in one million times to show half a millisecond of data in great detail* Pico has released the ne L W driver with a fully documented API and on example C++ program aimed Surface- mount resistor with 20 watts power rating Providing design engineers with a thermally efficient high current resistor in a surface mount pack- age, IT electronics B! Technolo- gies 5MT Division has developed a non-inductive power resistor rated up to 20 W. Designated the SMHP Series the resistor is housed in a small, thin TG-263 package suitable for high density PCB installation. The TO-263 style package is claimed to offer extremely law ther- mal resistance. The surface mount power resistors are particularly suit- able far high precision CRT colour video amplifiers, pulse generator load resistors, in rush current pro- tection, and bleeder resistors. The SMHP Senes device is an exten- sion of the com pony's MHP Series through-hole resistors. The MHP Watch "ur" PCB® PCB POOL© with over 1 8000 cus- tomers is said to be 8 u rope's largest supplier of prototype printed circuit boards (PCBs). The PCB POOL© concept convinces two hundred new customers a month to use this service, not only due to the low cost cos! sharing' principle, but aka with first class customer service* For the past few years the possibil- ity to frock your order online has been amongst these services* Now, the innovative electronic company has spent the last I 8 months devel- oping o way to seriously increase the scope of that information* Watch ur PCB © is the result — Series non-inductive high power re- sistors are available in five power ratings (2GW to 140W] and three TO-sh/ie package tyoss, induaina TOl 26, TO220 and TO-247. The SMHP Series resistors ore rated for 20W power dissipa- tion, with resistance ranges from 0.0] Q to 220 Q with values to 5 1 kQ available. TCRs range from ■with its help the customer doesn't just find out that an order has been processed, Ihey can now actually watch the progress of their printed circuit board through each manu- facturing stage. Customers can now log into their personal account and view high-resolution photographic images of their current order. Whether the production phase h drilling, exposure, tin stripping, UV curing ar hot air levelling [sur- face Finish) — the customer can view the printed circuit board os a large picture. Watch ur ‘ PCB© is an easy and convenient way of monitoring the 50ppm/ : C to 25Qppm/ : C, with tolerances of ±5% and ± 1 %. Maxi- mum operating voltage is 500 V and dielectric withstanding voltage is 2000 VDC. Thermal resistance is 3-3"C/W from the resistor's "hot spot to the package's metal flange and operating temperature range is-55X to +155 D C. 81 Technologies will also produce progress of your order* The images available ore exact representations of what the customer will receive. If there is a layout problem or a data issue, then the customer can discover this tang before he/she has the beard delivered. The customer con respond much quicker and send PCB-PGOL© new files for an immediate res fart of production. The customer can ptan in advance to remedy any errors and prepare for re-design, therefore sav- ing valuable time and money* If me board is perfect, customers will know this long before the delivery and can begin preparation for com- ponent assembly. Simply brilliants at experienced programmers so shat developers can start to use it Immediately. Like most Flea soft- ware, it is free of charge, and is available to download from the ■web without registration. The PicoScope 3000 Series soft- ware can be downloaded from the Pico Technology website. Pico Technology TeL (+44) (0) 1480 396 395. www.pIcotech.com tC672lE+I] devices outside these specifications to meet customer requirements, with comprehensive application engineering and design support available ter customers worldwide. Samples are available immediate- ly for engineering evaluation and cos to m e r prototy pes . Free engineering evaluation sam- ples of the SMHP Series power re- sistors and further product infarmc- lion are available. TT electronics BI Technologies 5MT Division, Telford Road, Eastfreld Industrial Park, Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland KY7 4NX. TeL (+44) 1 592-662200 e-mail soks@bifechnologIes.co.uk , www, blterhno ! ogles, com/p o we r/ Indexitm. VCl-i-C Using the Watch ur PCB produc- tion monitoring service, the cus- tomer can hove the pictures of his boards sent to him/her as o Zip file* On request he/ she can even be informed by E-moil whenever there is a new picture available to view. This means PCB POOL cus- tomers will miss nothing, and can archive all printed circuit board im- ages for future reference. Bela Layout ltd (PCB-P00L), Freephone UK 030Q 3898560, www.pcb-pool.tom \0 eteklor eletlrario - I; 20-07 p ~ — — — — — — — ^ — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Become c video game developer with the Propeller powe red Hydra Lf you have ever thought about becoming o video game de- veloper, now is your chance. Parallax, Inc, a privately held company located in Rocklin, CA has partnered with Nun ve Networks LLC and Andre LaMothe, best-selling game development author, to re- lease a new Propeller powe- red gaming product, the HY- DRA Game Console! With the HYDRA you can develop games, graphics and media applications. For beginner to intermediate coders, you need only basic programming experience in any BASIC or C-like language. All of the hardware and software you need is included. Additionally, the HYDRA hardware is cov- ered in detail with schematics, descriptions, dozens of games, demos, and tips allowing you to take full advantage of its re- sources, including its expansion port and 128K game cord. But it gets even better! The HY- DRA kit also comes with Game Programming for the Propel- ler Powered HYDRA , Andre LaMothe's latest book. This com- prehensive book covers every- thing you need to know about gome programming for the Pro- peller in Spin and assembly lan- guage. All aspects of the Propel- ler chip are introduced, from its architecture to using the Propel- ler Tool for programming. The Propeller chip was released by Parallax, Inc. in April of this year. The chip, designed at the transistor level, uses a new cus- tom-silicon design tor simultane- ous multi-processing. The Propel- ler is a 32-bit architecture con- sisting of eight processors which run at 3.3 V up to 80 MHz. The Propeller is programmed in both □ high-level language, called Spin 7 \ and low-level {assem- bly) language. The HYDRA Game Console is available at www.paTollQX.com or by colling lb Parallax Soles Department at (+1)888-512-1024. (JEPKH- L J See twelve cylinders of secondary ignition on your oscilloscope just one channel of your automotive oscilloscope to show an ignition parade af up to twelve cylinders. If you have a twochanne! scape, then Mixmoster can also display two en- g Ins banks separately with up -o six cylinders per bank Mixmoster is battery-powered and conveniently portable, with a shockproof rubber case suitable far heavy-duty workshop use. It is sup- plied with a set af four secondary ignition leads, three BNC leads to connect to the oscilloscope, an en- gine-block ground lead, and an il- lustrated manual in English, French, Italian. German and Spanish, Additional features include a trig- ger output to synchronise the scape to o known cylinder, and on 'in- vert" switch to deal with negative- going wasted-spark signals. Alan Tong, Technical Director of Pico Technology, explained, ' Mix- master will enable engineers and technicians to lest V8 and even VI 2 engines using a standard two- Pico Technology has released the new Mixmoster secondary ignition signal mixer for automo- tive diagnostics. The Mixmoster can produce a parade display of up to twelve cylinders using a single channel af an automotive oscilloscope. In the world af automotive oscil- loscopes. more cylinders usually means more money. Mixmasler saves you money by letting you use channel or four-channel automotive oscilloscope Owners of our Auto- motive Oscilloscope Kits will be able to work on a wider range of engines without having to buy an expensive multi-channel scope. Mixmoster is available now, priced ot £197. Extra packs of four sec- ondary ignition leads are also available at £60. Pico Technology, {+44) 0 1480 396 395* www.pkotecfucm c" -r, T JiTiYlT Tel: 01635 40347 NcWtury Electronics Lid Fzj: CHESS 56143 tessry ftaaS ^Ft eoj> F.G 14 W* E-mail- c kai i ti ©rxwttt ry. Icom co tak «nns jwvrfcurietecirisiscsxa, t&rm it E5 Std'A com t/2007 - dsktoretsdrcmiis 11 INFO & MARKET NEWS & NEW PRODUCTS Split-core transducers for AC current measurement LEM has introduced the AT series of AC current transducers, reduc- ing ihe price point for products made to LEM s demanding qual- ify standards. An innovative core material enables split-core current transformer technology to reach new levels of performance for this category of products. The AT transducers combine an accurate current transformer and signal conditioning electronics in o very light and compact cose to offer substantial savings in size They measure only 44.5 x 67 x 36,5 mm with a 16-mm diameter sensing aperture for non-contact measurement and are, therefore, particularly suitable for installation in tight environments. Being split-core and either self- powered or loop-powered they are easy to install and put into op- eration, which means they can be retro-fitted into existing installations .viihout shutting down operation. This ease of mounting, coupled with the transducers high relia- bility, wilt reduce installation and maintenance casts. The transducers have been de- signed to measure 50 /oOHz AC signals with RMS (average) com- putation, They provide an abso- lute accuracy better than 1 .5 per- cent of the nominal current over a broad range of inputs, A choice of primary current measurement ranges from 5 A to 50 A are avail- able, with a selection of industry standard output types [4-20 mA, 0-5 VDC or 0-10 VDC). The AT integrated transducers will simplify the development of ac- curate reliable and cost-effective solutions for real-time process au- tomation, supervision and regula- tion, Principal applications will be in the field of industrial process control and condition monitoring of equipment such as HVAC con- veyers and pumps. Wivw.lem.com {0q7227-VIi ICs simplify HID ballast circuits and extend lamp life International Rectifier introduced the IRS2453D family of integrated 600-V self-oscillating full-bridge driver ICs for HID ballast appli- cations including general light- ing. outdoor street lighting and projectors. The new ICs utilize IR's proprie- tary high-voltage integrated circuit |HV!C) technology Integrating two high-side and two low-side gate drivers. This process allows im- provements in device capabilities, lighter specifications, temperature stability and the integration of pre- viously unavailable features. The IR52453D features a simple RC network to program the oscil- lator, eliminating the need to syn- chronize two half-bridge drivers. In contrast, solutions using two SO-3 driver JCs require a separate os- cillator to drive each half-bridge, resulting in unsymmelricat voltages across the load due to mismatching of the on-time slates caused by tol- erances and temperature. In light- ing applications, this can cause mercury migration shortening lamp life. The JRS2453D overcomes this problem by driving both half- bridge drivers with o single oscilla- tor to guarantee accurate matching over ihe complete temperature and supply voltage range. Greatly simplifying overall design, the IRS2453D integrates both a latched and norvlotched shutdown input, and eliminates up to seven components. The latched shutdown allows for implementation of vari- ous protection features such os cy- cl&by-cyde over-current, open-lead or short-circuit detection without additional components, while the non lotched shutdown allows for easy interface to a microcontroller for use in o wider variety of power management applications. Available in ] 4-lead DIP and SO packages, the lead-free devices provides 50% duly cycle, fixed one micro-second (typical) inter- nal deadlime and integrated boot- strap circuitry. While the new ICs are designed to drive the required low frequency AC voltage in HID lamps, they can also be used os o general purpose block for other high-frequency applications such as fluorescent ballasts and pov.er supplies. Other key specifications for the IRS2453D include 15.6V Zen- er diode clamp on V :c and typi- cal micropower startup current of !40uA. Noise immunity is achieved by low di/di peak of the gate drivers and with an under- valtage lockout hysteresis of great- er than 1,5 V. wwwdrf.com ' - ic - - - - 12 elektor dcdriUfics - 1/2007 UL Prov^| Pl^gh Qyaltty c ISO 9000 Certificated ^ * Accept Orders From 3pcs to 1M Pcs. • € . A \ 2 • 5my Tteck/ Space • 0” Hole Size p Blind And Buried Vias • RoHs/tyVEgE Compliant rices: J g\ * Only $50 For 5pcs 4 M i J 4' 2L - .. Only $188 For ,3 pcs 4" x 4/V4L Only $288 Fpr. 3 pcs 4" X 4" £L ' Free Sol^ef Mask & Silkscf§ien V ea b- Competitive Price For Bulk, Orders ;i - “ ^ Http: //www* ezpcb. com -V * « ja sales^ezDcb' com C Compiler Applications for PIC & AVR Microcontrollers b Complete ANSI C Compiler Development Environments for PIC and AVR B Rapid Application Designer (RAD) front end - the fastest way to fully working code b Drag & Drop interface into library routines and hardware drivers B Link C functions into hardware events B Hugely featured Simulator including Logic Analyser and big range of external devices Our development systems are standalone and indude RAD front end, compiler, assembler and smiulaotr. All systems indude elements library functicms for Timers, Pons, A /D, SPL I2C. U 5 ART, Watchdog, Delays, USB. PWM. Capture, Compare, Oscillator functions, Voltage Ref, LCD modules, 7 Segment Displays. Graphic LCD, ANSI libraries and many more Forest Electronics www.fored.co.uk sales@fored.co.uk 01590-681511 r FED Support the complete development Lifecycle Learn Design Develop (IDE) Free manuals including C tutorials for Lhe PIC AVR RAD front end to WIZ-C Complete integrated development environment Simulate Fast simulator with huge range of device ivpes Prototype We supply a variety of prototyping boards Program Forest have Serial. USB and In Circuit Programmers Debug In Circuit Debugging operates with all our IDE's L 2007 - tkklfir elsdmnks 13 HANDS-ON MILLING Harry Baggen Have you always dreamed of having your own milling machine bui found them just too expensive? If so, we have the perfect solution for you. Working in close collaboration with the Belgian manufacturer Colinbus, we have put together a construction kit for our readers that enables you to build a professional milling machine for □ fraction of the cost of a ready-made model. This machine is suitable for a wide variety of [obs, ranging from making parts for models to milling circuit boards. As an electronic hobbyist or profes- sional, you have to work with more than just pure electronics, and you of- ten have to deal with a lot of mechan- ical tasks. This includes jobs such as making printed circuit boards, rout- ing wiring, and fashioning a suitable enclosure with a corresponding front panel. Some of these jobs require suitable tools if you want to achieve good results - at least if you want to do it all yourself. Many hobbyists, as weLl as design- ers of prototypes and small develop- ment labs, would certainly be able to make good use of a small milling ma- chine for this sort of work. Investing in such a machine may be affordable for commercial use, but the situa- tion is a bit different for home use. A good, accurate milling machine can easily cost several thousand euros, and even then you only have a basic model without all the bells and whis- tles (such as vacuum swarf removal and a high-speed spindle motor). We launched this project especially for all electronics hobbyists and pro- fessionals who regularly pursue their job and/or hobby at home. Tire idea for this construction project arose spontaneously during a conversa- tion with Frank Jacops of the Belgian company Colinbus, which special- ises in milling machines. When you talk with someone who not only sells milling machines but also designs them from the ground up, the conver- sation quickly turns to the fact that most electronics types have splen- did ideas about all the nice things they could do with such a machine, but the price is an obstacle in most cases. Frank Jacops understood this immediately (he has been an avid reader of Elektar Electronics for many years), and he suggested offering a construction kit at a special price for a limited time, exclusively for readers of Elektor Electronics. Const ruction kit for a general-purpose milling machine 14 Victor electronics - 1/2007 specifications Dimensions Max. working area Interface Power X/Y/Z linear transport X/Y/Z drive Positioning speed Mechanical resolution Software resolution Software 453 (v.\ x 583 fd] x 468 (h) mm 300 fX] x 400 [Y) x 1GG [ 1 ] mm Serial 240 V, 50-60 Hz MulliStah guldewayi Stepper molars 60 mm/s 0,0075 mm 0.02S mm Colinbus User Interface Conversion program for Gerber and Excellon files racy, and a generous working area of 30 x 40 cm — now that’s something you can sink your teeth into! This ma- chine is suitable for all sorts of jobs T such as dispensing, potting, camera inspection, boring holes in boxes, milling front panels, and even Naturally, we must admit that the kit is not exactly inexpensive at £ 1099 or C 1599 plus shipping costs, but this still repre- sents a savings of nearly £ 1400 rela- tive to a comparable ready- assembled model Tli at 's an attractive reward for a day or so of assembly work. Of course, several small milling ma- chines are also commercially avail- able at a lower cost, but they are all quite small and have limited features. If you look at the photos m this arti- cle, you can see that we're talking about a completely different category here. Robust construction, high accu- 3D modelling (using separate software). You can also mill circuit boards with this machine, although the manufacturer explicitly wishes to state that this model is not designed primarily for this purpose, since it requires even higher accu- racy However, based on our experi- ence it yields excellent results for av- erage PCEs, and the necessary soft- ware is included. Assembly of the machine is quite straightforward, and the clearly written instructions practically ex- clude any problems. The accompa- nying circuit boards with the drive electronics are fully assembled and tested, so all you have to do is in- stall and connect them. It The ’Elektor Profiler', as we have christened the machine, is the small- est milling machine produced by Col- inhus. Its construction is largely the same as the commercial CBR-40 mod- el {see www.colinbus.coni). The machine is made from steel and aluminium parts, Th is combination of materials provides sufficient weight and stability to withstand the motion of the machine, while the accuracy of the guideways and the speed of travel axe very high thanks to the use of aluminium extrusions. The MultiStab system, which uses tlnee rollers per edge travelling along precision steel rods pressed into alu- minium extrusions, provides good mechanical guidance with minimum play This design is used for all three axes. One roller of each set of three for each guide way assembly can be manually positioned to adjust the amount of play as necessary. Each of the tlnee axes is driven by a spindle with a special ^ero -backlash nut. The milling machine is controlled by a built-in processor board fitted with a Renesas HS/3003 and a driv- er board fitted with three ST L6208 ICs, which look after driving the three stepper motors. This approach makes the timing independent of the connected PC. The computer simply sends commands and coordinates to the processor board, which proc- esses and executes the commands independently. The processing power of the built- in microcontroller is not sufficient to drive all three stepper motors at the 1, 2007 > Etekfor dstircms 15 HANDS-ON MILLING f j. € . The media meal ports of ihe cons! rod ion kil. You can order I he const ruction kit for fhu Profiler milling machine by filling in the Order Form on the Ilektor Elecl routes website at wv/w* elektar.com (click 'Milling Machine' under 'Quick Service'). The price is 1 099 pounds (1 599 euros) including VAT r plus shipping charges* The shipping c h urges dep e rrd o n 1 1 1 e cou n ! r 7 and ore slated ort the website Order form. The kit is supplied and invoiced directly and exclusively by the manufacturer, Le. not by Elekfor. There are also several optional extras available for the machine. Con suit the Co I inbus website for Information about these options. same time (this trick is reserved for the larger and more expensive Col- inbus models), so it can only drive two at the same time, The machine can thus execute smooth motions in a two-dimensional plane. For 3D motions, it switches rapidly back and forth between two axes, which makes it appear that all three motors move simultaneously. This has little noticeable effect in practice, since the steps resulting from the interpo- lation are very small. The control board in the millin g ma- chine has a serial interface, but a standard USB to RS232 adapter can be used without any problems to op- erate the machine via the USB port or the PC. The spindle motor supplied with the milling machine is a fairly basic mod- el from Perm, which allows you to start using the machine right away, Naturally, you can also fit other types of motors, but we should remark here that a true professional-quality spin- dle motor can easily cost more than the entire const ruction Mt. Construction kit What do you get for the price of £1099 or 1599? The photos in Figure 1 and Figure 2 show almost all the parts included in the kit. They include all the mechanical parts, screws and bolts, guide way rollers, spindles, bearings, stepper motors, cables and so on, plus the drive electron- ics on the two pre-ass em bled circuit boards. The previously mentioned Perm spindle motor (and associated bracket) is also included in the kit. A MDF panel (also included in the Mt) serves as the base plate. The companion software for the milling machine consists of two pro- grams: a user-friendly interface for configuring and operating the ma- chine and a conversion program for PCB layouts (see below). The kit includes assembly instruc- Figure The assembled ciicuit boards and Ihe spindle malar and bradref. 16 ekltfQr eiettrcmks - 1/2007 3 . CrosMetfton drawing ol Ihe boriog head mow* on Ihe bridge. : . ■ ; Detail of llie ptaslic nut with ihs Ironr^^ pins, which provide a lera-plny coaplingn tions that provide a step-by-step de- scription of how to put the machine together. There's not much that can go wrong during assembly. The various parts fit together very accurately thanks to the combination of precision holes in the steel panels and the steel rods in the aluminium extrusions, so no further alignment is necessary. You have to provide the necessary wir- ing for the two circuit boards for the control and drive electronics, and the connectors and transformer must be soldered in place. All the assembly steps are clearly described in the instructions. How- ever, we would like to clarify a few details here. Once the machine is partially assem- bled, the guide ways must be adjust- ed. The accuracy of the entire mill- ing machine depends entirely on this adjustment. The guide ways for the bridge (on the sides) have of three rollers, of which one can be adjusted using an adjustment plate. It must be adjusted so there is very Little play, but it should not be made too tight, since otherwise the rollers will jam. A similar construction is also lo- cated at the top of the bridge and in the motor column, but the latter part must be partially disassembled to access the rollers. Tire drives use spindles with trap- ezoidal threads that run in special plastic nuts (see Figure 4). These nuts are fitted with transverse pins that provide the coupling to the bridge or the boring column. The X and Y spindles must also be care- fully aligned to achieve the specified accuracy and linearity. Note that the special plastic nuts on these spin- dles must be lubricated using only the special grease included with the kit. Do not use normal grease! The rest of the assembly process is adequately described by the instruc- tions included with the kit. M 1/20Q7 * tickler eJectrcnia 17 MILLING r a tire The uier mlerfate. The vrorking surface of the machine is shown a 1 1 he up pe; right Software The user interface specially written for the Colinbus millin g machine pro- vides the operator interface for the machine (Figure 6). This program is designed such that even inexperi- enced users can work with it easily. The screen is composed of several windows. The effective working sur- face of the machine is shown in the right-hand window. After loading a hie, you can use the mouse to place the object to be machined in the de- sired location on this surface. The ma- . Gerbsr and fcaslbn files ca n be read in with the KB contouring program and converted into contour data for ihe milling machine. chine will then start working at ex- actly this position. You can also spec- ify the values of all the settings and preferences for the machine. In addi- tion, you can operate all machine axes manually using this program. Every- thing you can think of can be config- ured here, such as reading memory points, relative zero points and so on with micrometre accuracy The user interface includes a PCB contouring program (Figure 7), which you can use to edit and merge the Gerber and Excellon hies generated by commonly used PCB programs and then convert the coordinates in these hies into the contours used by the milling machine. You can manu- ally specify the reference points to be used on the circuit board and then use them to ensure that the data in the Gerber and Excellon hies a re reg- istered exactly with each other (the Gerber file contains the data for the PCB tracks, while the Excellon file contains the hole data). The hie gen- erated by the program can then be imported into the user interface pro- gram so you can see the PCB layout, which you can drag to a specific lo- cation on the working surface. If you want to process 3D hies (such as DXF files), you will need the sepa- rate RAM S3 D program, which is not included in the construction kit due to the special price. Finally there's something for diehard DIYers: the entire command set for controlling the milling machine is freely available, so you can also write your own code. 1001 jobs This robust, versatile milling machine opens up a world of opportunities for handy hobbyists and profession- als who aren't afraid to roll up their sleeves. With it, making rectangular openings in a box is a piece of cake and a machining a slot in a front pan- el tor a slider is no sooner said than done. What's more, this milling ma- chine is a handy tool for things that have nothing to do with electronics. For instance, you can use it to make your own parts for a model airplane or toys for your kids (and donate your jigsaw to local charity!). In short, there are more than enough things you can do with this machine. Once you've used it, you won’t want to do without it. >702 T 8 elaktor eledrcnis - 1/205? SERVICING YOUR COMPLETE PROTOTYPE NEEDS 1 EUROCARD + Tooling ^ t Pholophls. + W €49 Piiqtainpte An^siigiind conioiJT passJbJei Optional: * Soldemmk * Fust-turnmnd •Siikxreen * 4-Luyer Multilayer * 6-tnyer Multilayer MwhaM m ms iAYOursonmw mm ■ ? - u 4. BMts s^y ■r= EurH?C3| iSSS Slcn^y s*nd your fdas end Dfifer OfjfliH: PC8-POOL.COM ByVac El lectronics Control hardware using simple text commands Moiing Complex Iffiij Dang □ iwo lefts* test ccrrrnoria, ecmV^iJCO dspioyt, AnotoQue to tfg Ffccf mmfflfte*. rrajfan. tHyjxxb_ IH5 Tracts asptar 1. Al procfeycb ^ by series connsc^n. THs fci J_si i jtvlJ *c^ C’H ~ _ | x TbJttfciiPwbia* farhlrSiftH »A- 1 1. 1 ».« 4- 1 i ilii-t k m MP*!’ 4*. *4 • ;■ 1 % ■ ■. r -i-.i - ir£ - 1 — > m SwriiL^i Tsu LCD Display irJ centre*: ccrtrsi Bfcwy ta tf *t osp^iy £22 , 90 Wjjchrx«-. a} O 5 CD £"/ compalMB LG 9 L'? ta -4 Li.-as cy ^ chncten. Sactanf i*u iftjcftn&'e.,. LCD Controller £ 11.00 1 S:Si-st£H=-I SitK h? pru^--,£■ ..- - ..■' . i~3v f fi 1 f id r Mttfwd ttj r* ihm3 w-j. 1- 1! u .ii Jzr . t»' .rt:. Purchase Options: On ’Line at wvAv.byvac. co.uk * Telephone 07905 714 34S email salK® byvec.com ■ Cheque cr Postal Order to: By Vac, PO BOX 4049, ?e nistone, SHEFFIELD. S36 6WP Post and packing UK £2.50 World Wide £3.50 www . byvsc.css. u k l/gc 1/2007 - eleklDr dHlrorcks Professional Features - Exceptional Price 34 Channels sampled at 500 MHz Sophisticated Multi-level Triggering Transitional Sampling / Timing and State Connect this indispensable tool to your PCs USB 1J or 2.0 port and watch it pay far itself within hours! M1MB JVI K(lM\ Economical 2-day Shipping! LOGICPORT 14 CllANfll 1 1 nr. |, AI#At t M , I cml ll n.ll him i Li ili> t hih » i i _« * ! ; ». » * j. * 500 MHz MaxTMng Mode S 3 irip r c Bate (iniernaJ dock) * 200 MHz Max. Sample Race Soie Mods {ex’errsi] dt:ck) * Multi-level Triggering on Edge. Pairs m h Event Count, Group MsgnTtude/Ringe. OurcUerj etc. * Real-Time Hardware Sample CompreiaicHi * Qualified (Gated) State Mode Sampling V * Interpreters for l : C h SPl and RS232 included m Integrated 300 MHz Frequency Counter * +6V to -6V Adjustable Logic Threshold supports virtUd:ly all logit families ■ Full version of software free to download ■ Mictor adapter available (www.pcTestinstrumentsxom^ Visit our website for screenshots, specifications and to download the easy-to-use software. IntnoruxTest Instruments, fnc. I M2 1 NTkwi DKd.Un x 130 Pbcenbc Arizona B 5032 U£.A TeJ: (00 1 ] £02 492-0674 Fax (00 1 1 602 49T2258 wVfW.pcTestl nstrument3.com * T-- L'O.'f £2* D ■ ll “~r ? z J re ‘.rrs r. 3 a: cos zrz^tg. “jg irr. free .- 1 _c-r Efj'ii' vf *£= '£. t€ df 3_rrs$t Free d>2s net rciij5 r = L'< ■ i_ 7 T7 1'~- OLS = jTSl IT--M r ££-■• “-=-5c l s= r.i cdl e gs a -r re m d k ■*'! ': r ^ Ti s * :-rr ± r.^r 17£S HVPI HANDS-ON PIC24F DESIGN SERIES Jan Buifing & Luc Lemmens, j if Microchip UK & Labcenter Electronics EXPLORER- 16 Microchip PIC24F Design Series lektor lektuur Microchip pteus labcenterA AA January is a lime for fresh starts and good intentions. If ever there was a golden opportunity to move on to 1 6-bit microcomputing at a serious level, join Microchip, Labcenlerand Elelctorwrth their groundbreaking PROTEUS Explorer- 16 project for which a fantastic hardware offer will be made next month. And there's more in the pipeline if you like to run simulations on your PC. For now, no hardware is required. You have your free CD-ROM supplied with this issue so let's get started with installing Microchip MPLAB and C30 and then Proteus VSM. IF sve say that 'Explorer-16' is the next logical step from 8-bil micros, we should hasten io add that the project is also perfect for relative newcomers who will be aware of, but need not necessarily bolher about, the rock-solid foundations for popular microcomputing laid by so many 8-bit micros (including PJO MCUsj these past 15 years or so. There's no objection to starting with 1 6-bit microcom- puting straight away as the tools available for the job are powerful to soy the least. That said, we should warn that Explorer- 1 & takes off at a fairly high level allhough all materia] fa learn about programming your own 16-bit P3C micro is available as part of the project. Regarding the choice of o PIC 16-bit microcontroller, Ele- ctor Electronic ^ being very much an independent maga z\ ne, we never went down a single road by using one and ihe same processor family for years on end. Through our articles we will continue to underline the wide diver- sify of micros available on the market today and respect every user for his or her preference of PIC AVR ARM 805 1 or MC9 over the others'. In the case of Explorer- 16, the PIC MCU road oFfered good oplions and tools for o series of instructive, reader-interactive articles linking to high quality hardware that can be obtained at a discount- ed price, ond (mostly] free software. 20 etekfar Electronics - 1/2007 1/2007 - sbiim stectotmiEs 21 HANDS-ON PIC24F DESIGN SERIES 32-128 KB Flash 8 KB RAW Memory Bus 16 MIPS 16-M Com rh(tA ii, Register Rte 1 6 -brt ALU 16x1fi 17 x 17 MPY JTAG & Emul interface Generation Barrel Shifter Hate 1 i PFS aval&tife w\ 28- and 4*-p*n F1C24F vender™ - - ^ Ie ■ 1 t=L — TJ S ■o' =r G> — W ro in i - 1 i 1 - • AD. 10-bit, 16 oh Analog Compare, 2 Figua 1 PIC24F hinclionffl botk diagram. This is a l^bil micro. / ■ ■■ ~z “arc ■ £ -= 'todi^ss Figart- 2. PIC24F CPU care block diagram. Outlook on the series Thi s series of articles comprises three main ingredients which we need to men Hon right of the start. 1. Software The free CD-ROM you gel wilh this January 2007 issue contains three major pieces of software thal lock iogelher into a platform designed to help you become familiar not jusl with Microchip s TIC24F' 16-bit microcontroller, bul also with the general concept of microcontroller simula- tion, All three components are extremely user-friendly (if not downright 'slick'] programs ihat run on a reasonably fast PC with MS Windows installed: o MP1AB IDE — version 7.50 of ibis world famous plot- form for PIC MCU software development. • MPLAB C30 — version 2,05 (student edition) of the 'C high er programming language compiler for PIC micro- controllers, complete with an array of utilities, • Proteus V5M v_ 7,00 — a special edition of the Lab- center simulation software that's so Fast it can simulate a complete microcontroller board on your PC. Yes, on Explorer- 16 board, too, as (for the First time) a PIC24F simulation plug-in is included free of charge to provide ihe link with the Explorer-16 boardl The software is valuable in itself in that you can cheerfully use it without having any hardware available except of course your PC! 2. Hardware With the publication of the February 2007 issue, Elektor Electronics , the third parry in the triumvirate, will offer the Explorer*! 6 Development Board with a spe^ cial addnon configuration and at an unbeatable price. A preview of the board is shown in the introductory photo- graph. Mind you, the development board is supplied ex- clusively by Elektor, he., it's not available anywhere else in the configuration to be described in part 2. 3. Website support File support for the project will be built on a dedicated Explorer-16 page of our website at wv/w, dektorcom - Experts ar labcenter, Microchip and Efektor will be con- tributing and providing help as required. With Part 1 of this series an Explorer- 16 topic is available on the Elektor website. The forum is open for everyone to read but only registered users can post new topics and reply to existing ones. But then, registration is free. Three (possibly four) consecutive Instalments are planned. In these well be running demos and doing o pretty ad- vanced classroom exercise to explore the workings of Pro- teus V5M software. FIC24F Architecture You knew you had it coming — a functionally oriented block diagram of the PIC24F device (Figure 1) and the CPU Core black diagram (Figure 2). The good news is that this article series (and the Explorer- i 6 board] Is based on the top-end processor in the fam- ily, the PIC24FJ 1 28GA01 0 sporting 128 kB Flash... and a 100-pin easel Its "business card' is shown in the PIC24F1 28 Quick Specs inset This beast has A/D UART, SPJ, PC, RTCC, WDT ICE., ISP and POR, not forget- ting advanced power-saving technology and a parallel- port master and slave functionality. 22 elektor elsdrania - 1/2007 There are two pdf documents, Refs. [1] and [2] r you should download straight away and store in a fo3der named 'Explorer-! 6 r : The P1C24F datasheet is an incred- ible 230 pages, fortunately the pdf has tabs to guide you to the chapters, If you migrate from the popular PIC 1 8F to the 24F, the document in Ref. [3] is valuable. Software installation The Explorer-1 6 CD ROM you should have received with this issue presents a welcome screen (Figure 3] which should pop up after inserting the disc in your CD-ROM drive or DVD drive, if the welcome screen does not ap- pear automatically dick on Start — ' ► Run... and then use Browse to point to the File index. him on the CD-ROM or ! I t EXPLORER. T 6 _ CO-ROM JrJSSTSg fls “■«**» Eleklo, Electron, „fj W " h ,l,e '"''"lotiono lor"' ° D eve(op me . „ anuary 2007 i ssijfl T , f m fun of be on off™" 6 °" d -"■< o Rlug.|„ ocrl ' ,he February j?° Unfed P^ce J* b °° rd will I 2 *o Z,! hS kbbOeotfon of ' in I Inlif-Vrl Cr-Conn J DVD drive. The software installation screen you should see after leaving the welcome screen is shown in Figure 4. No-frills installers are used for the software components of this project. We recommend installing all three components. It should be noted that ihe installer em- ploys the program installed as the default web browser on your PC. It was successfully used with Internet Explorer build 6.0.2900. PIC24FJ128 Quick Specs CPU • Modified Harvard architecture • Up to 16 MIPS operation @ 32 MHz • 8 MHz internal oscillator: - 4x FLL option - Multiple divide options • 17-bsfx 1 7 -bit single -cycle hardware Fractional 'Integer Multiplier • 32-bit by 16-bit hardware divider 0 16x1 6-bst working register array • C compiler optimized instruction set architecture: • 76 base instructions - Flexible addressing modes ® Linear program memory addressing up to 12 MBytes ° linear data memory' addressing up to 64 kBytes • Two address generation units far separate read and write addressing of data memory Special micro controller features • Operating voltage range of 2.0V to 3.6V • Flash program memory: - } 000 erase/ write cycles, typical - Flash retention 20 years, typical • Self- reprogrammable under software control 0 Selectable power management modes: - Sleep, idle ond alternate clock modes 0 Failsafe clock monitor operation- - Detects dock failure and switches to on-chip, low -power RC oscillator • On-chip LDD regulator m HAG boundary scon ond programming support 9 Power-on Reset (PORi, Power- up Timer (PWRT) and Oscil- lator Start-up Timer (©ST) ° Flexible Watchdog Timer fWDT) with an -chip, low-power RC oscillator for reliable operation • In-Circuit Serial Programming"' ftC5P r “ii and fn-CErcuit Emulation (ICE| via 2 pins Analogue features • 10-bit, up to 16-channel analogue-to-dlgilal Converter (A/D) - 500 ksps conversion rate - Conversion available during sleep and idle 1 0 Dual analogue comparators with programmable input output configuration Peripheral features ° Two 3 -wire/ 4 -wire SPl modules, supporting 4 Frame modes with 4 -level FIFO buffer 0 Two 1C modules support mufti rnasler/slave mode and 7-bit/ 1 G-bit addressing * Two UART modules: - Supports RS-232, R5-485 and UN 12 - Supports IrDA^ with on-chip hardware encoder/decoder - Auio-wake-up on start bit - Auto-boud detect - 4-level FIFO buffer * Parallel Master Stave Port (PMP/PSP): - Supports 8-bit or } 6-bit data - Supports 16 address tines * Hardware realtime dock, calendar (RTCC): - Provides clock, calendar and alarm functions * Five 1 6-bil ttmers/countere with programmable prescaler * Five I 6-bit capture inputs * Five 1 6-bIi compare/PWM outputs * High -current sink/source on select I/O pins: 1 8 mA/1 8 mA 0 Configurable open-drain output on digital I/O pins a Up ia 5 external interrupt sources A 1/2007 - elakloJ sledrcnifc 23 PIC24F DESIGN SERIES Explorer-16 Microchip PIC 24 F Design Series ,*tLi V.t 5lti * t Urffiirj Vi I-; : ::.n Dl-* it r: 1 ;- 1 ri» r ; S .;^1 S_ric- i h f _ - ■ ' ■' *5 ^ Microchip HitffiE FHMTf! IS [S^rtniH^WW— -x F i g u r e. j . Apart from being o gale^nf to the ihres installer^ the w^fccime Kfeen contains links lo taois'-kw unti documentation callecled spKially fa; ihe Iiplorer-16 project. MPLAB IDE v, 7*50 follows a traditional Windows program install procedure. At some point you will see this message: The publisher could not be verified , Are you sure you wo nt to run this software ? Click Run to continue, MPLAB C30 Compiler v 2*05 - Student Edition is a similar installation. The tfe/ease Notes document ihat s available ot fhe end of the installation is particularly worthwhile to read (and print), Proteus VSM 7*00 Demo is also easy to install sim- ply by accepting the defaults suggested by the installer program. The Guided Tour of the MPLAB viewer you II see near the end of fhe installation has some interesting information and shows the effort that Labcenter and Mi- Explorer-16 Microchip P1C24F Design Senes Install Software r^r- e ar. r^rCi sr* ^ F&3J-- T5 Ji.^Saj HfTBf & ii7Ssfc2 r^r* MPLAB IDE v7.50 * *3C£*7K ^nf*S(*WK MPLAB C30 Compiler V2.Q5 - Student Edition * ral -R0/i\ supplied Villh this issue. crcchip have pui info their cooperation for the txplorer- 1 6 project. MPLAB IDE Paradoxically — considering its size and power- — little needs to be said about this renowned PIC microcontroL ler development platform from Microchip. The reason is simple: MPLAB has been around for many years now and has matured into the de facto development platform for PIC MCUs. The program (or suite of utilities really), is comprehensive, user-friendly and marked by excellent support nor just by virtue of the Help file functions but also through Microchip's online Forum and technical support. MPLAB Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is a development platform for the Microchip Technology PIC MCU and dsPIC^ microcontroller families. MPLAB IDE includes the following component: MPASM^' Assembler; MPSIM 7 ’ 1 ' software simulator; MPUNK TV linker; Source Level Debugger; On-line Help; Project and set-up wizards; Project Manager; Visual Device Initializer; Programmer's Editor' drivers For various hard ware tools. Special versions of a number of utilities like fhe assembler and linker, are supplied for the dsPJC30 devices. With MPLAB IDE you can: a write, build and debug source code; • automatically locate errors in source files for editing; • debug with breakpoints a single-step ihe program with software simulator, in-circuit debugger or In-circuiF emulator; a view variables in watch windows; • program code with certain programmers; a find quick answers to questions using the MPLAB IDE on-line help, MPLAB looks rather dead when launched. To see some action on the screen follow File — » Open Workspace and then navigate to the examples folder. Various projects can be opened there. Alihough not very meaningful just yet, they allow the newcomer to explore a large number of Functions without 'serious con sequences r . Importanfly, release notes for all utilities in MPLAB can be round at Start — 1 All Programs — * Microchip —* MPLAB IDE v. 7.50 — * Documentation, This screen also lists 'install and repair' utilities. Even an Introductory discussion of fhe features packed into MPLAB and ihe best way to use mem for your PIC projects would easily fill an entire magazine hence is be- yond the scope of this article. Not to worry, the complete MPLAB Users Guide and various other pdf documents are accessible via the CD-ROM install screen under 'View Design Series Literature . Plus, there's MPLAB Gening Started. MPLAB C30 The free Explorer- 16 CD-ROM contains the student edi- tion of the Microchip C30 compiler, version 2.05. This Is a fully functioning C compiler For the first 60 days after which a number of the cleverest optimisations are disa- bled. If you start using the C30 compiler now, you will have a full version of the product oil the way fill the third article instalment. The functions disabled after 60 days are described by Microchip as: procedural abstraction and 'optimisation options -02; -03 and -Os\ Not too worrying, we'd say. Everything else works the same as I he full version and 24 elektcr elf-are n'cs - 1/2007 with the huge memory capacity on the PIC24F1 28 used, code size optimisation is unlikely to become o problem. Of course, you are free fo use C30 For any smaller 16-bit PIC MCU or dsPIC 1 DSC you may have available, just give it a try. The student edition of C30 may be upgraded to a full edi- tion by purchasing a licence key from Microchip, Good news: with the publf cation of the February 2007 issue,, buyers of the Explorer- 1 6 Development Board will be able to purchase the full version oF C30 at a discounted price by returning a voucher enclosed in the box. MPLAB C30 seems to be a lesser known plug-in 1 of the MPLAB environment so o short introduction is given here [realising that the real work starts with coding your own C programs, compiling, debugging and finally transferring them to □ PIC — but stop, da youf simulation first!]. MPLAB C30 is a fully ANSI compliant compiler with standard libraries for all popular PECs including the latest dsPlC- DSC devices. It is fully integrated with the MPLAB IDE for high level debugging at the source code level. This compiler comes complete with its own assembler, linker and librarian to write mixed-mode C and assembly programs and link the resulting object files into a single executable file. The MPLAB C30 library includes Functions For string ma- nipulation, dynamic memory allocation, data conversion, timekeeping, and math functions (trigonometric, exponen- tial and hyperbolic}. The 'small code model' offered by C30 takes advantage of a more efficient Farm of call instructions, while the small data model supports the use of com poet instruc- tions for accessing data in SFR space. Although C30 is embedded into the MPLAB environment, you still be able to run it as a separate command line pro- gram. Use the Open Workspace' menu item in MPLAB and navigate to MPLAB C30 Examples -* MPAB Link30. The example Locate_access_EEPROM' is shown in Figure 5 with the Program Memory and File Registers viewers open. The complete C30 Users Guide is accessible via the menu on the CD-ROM, as discussed with MPAB. Alternatively navigate to the folder Documentation' on the CD-ROM. Proteus VSM The circuit simulation component of the Explorer-] 6 project is presented fo you courtesy of our long-stand- ing advertiser Lobcenter Electronics. VSM (virtual systems modelling] is part of the Proteus Design Suite which also comprises: • ISIS schematic capture; « ProSPICE mixed mode simulation; « ARES PCB design. Specially for the Explorer- 16 project, Labeenferare sup- plying a large number of sample designs featuring the PIC 10, PIC 1 2, PIC 16, PIC 18 and, of course, the PIC24F. You can run any software code you like on the samples but to experiment on your own hardware designs you will need to purchase the full Proteus VSM package. Alterna- tively, you can take advantage of a special offer exclusive to Elektor readers by visiting wv/w.labcenter.ca.uk/pFod- ucts/elektoroFfer.htm. To get a taster, if you start a copy of ISIS via Start — » La- bcenfer — > Proteus 7 Demonstration — * ISIS 7 Demo, you are invited to view a number of examples. Some nice ones are found in the Tutorials folder. ■ Kick start to Proteus | VSM within MPLAB 1 This $har demonstration Ml! show you how the basics of * how io configure and run a Proteus VSM simulation under j the control of the MPLAB IDE. 1 7* Download the file Demol .zip from the Explorer*! 6 page you can reach via wvav. elektor . com. Save the unzipped Demo 1 folder the director/: c: ..program files\ m \ c roch ip\ m p ! c b t3 0\ exa m pies . 2. Launch the MPAB IDE application, go to the Fib . menu, select the Open 1 Workspace command, navigate info the Demol directory ond open the Demo 1 .mew workspace. 3, Go to the Debugger Menu in the MPLAB IDE, select the Select Tool com- mand and ihen Probus VSM. This configures MPLAB to use Proteus as the tool of choice for debugging, 4. You should now see that the Proteus VSM Viewer *■* »r: "-jV. —>£■ -*-**, ■,* • , has opened inside MPLAB. Use the Open Icon on the viewer and select the Demol schematic from the resulting file selector. 5* Now select 'Build AH' from ihe Debugger menu 6. Now that we hove the schematic and project we can start the simulation. Use the green button ai the top of the MP AB IDE to connect the Proteus simulation to MPLAB. 7. At this point the simulation is paused at time zero. Start the Si mutation by clicking on the Play but- ton near the tap right of the MPLAB IDE. This wilt execute the program code and the VSM Viewer will show yog the effects of your program on the design, 8. Use the red button at the top of the MPLAB IDE to disconnect the VSM View- er from .MPLAB and stop the simulolion, A more detailed demonstration of debugging follows later in She series. 1/2007 - eSeVtor e’eefronics kBsa HANDS-ON PIC24F DESIGN SERIES Figure 5 . MPLAB GO in odion. Various windows can bs opened to whol the program is doing in memory and r£gif1er*wise. Like C30, VSM is embedded in MPLAB; you II Find it un- der Debugger — * Tool, If you are dying Jo see it in action at this point. Follow the 8-step kick start io VSM/MPlAB shown in the Kick start to Proteus VSM within MPLAB inset. This impressive demo requires on archive file colled Demo 1 .zip io be downloaded From ihe Ex- plorer-! 6 page of our svebsiie. You can also apply ihe same procedure to any or the pre-installed Virtual Evalua- tion Boards. More about VSM on [4], Next month We reckon ihe amount of software presented in this arti- cle will keep you busy For about a month. In the February 2007 issue well discuss the Explorer- 1 6 hardware [on special offer ihen) and show its first application which is related to speech reproduction. This will take us along C30 and MPLAB to see how the software is builL Well also delve into Proteus VSM to demonstrate that simula- tion is now a firmly established — if not essential — step in prototyping microcontroller circuits. Web links [1] Microchip PIC24FJ1 28GA Family Data Sheet: wv. 1 .microchip.com/ doy/nlaods/en DeviceDoc / 3974 7 C.pdf f2] Microchip High-Performance P1C24 Microcontroller Family overview: ww I . m j c rochip.com/ dow n I o ad s/e n/D&viceDoc/ 39754 b.pdf [3] P3C1 8F to PIC24F Migration, an Overview: w*v 1 .micrachip.com ■ downloads en DedceDoc 39764 a. oof [4] Proteus VSM WWW. 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Cstl now tor a free new product brochure SYSTEM 463. 4 COLOUR CAMERAS SYSTEM 90S. 9 COLOUR CAMERAS + DVR PACKAGE to Til TC K - 3 J 3 WZ 1 : StEUXES i IL SaupnmT _Tnr f ine IT mm mill j || m lJ_iiji fm 12 ’M' 26 clektof elcttic-niu - 1/2007 16 -bit Microcontrollers T Pi tJ iiit 1 1 * -i* , f *,* < ■ | i f ff«t u , jra -ii ■ Z . —ii — 16-bit PIC24 MCUs and dsPIC 3 Digital Signal Controllers Unified 16 -bit Architecture • PIC24F, low-cost entry level • PIC24H, 40 MIPS high performance • dsPIC30F/33F for seamless DSP integration Low-Risk Design ■ Easy migration from 8-bit MCUs • Common core instruction set and architecture • Peripheral and Pin compatible families • One development tool platform for all products • Free MPLAB 1 IDE integrated Development Environment • Other tools include C-compiler, programmer and In-Circuit Emulator Visualise.. .16-bit Microcontrollers with 32-bit Performance and 8-bit Simplicity Today's embedded systems demand more. The 16-bit P1C ; microcontroller families from Microchip give you the performance and flexibility you need with 8-bit simplicity. Pin and code compatibility lowers risk, and allows re-use of development tools, software and hardware designs. For the most demanding applications the dsPIC digital signal controller families seamlessly integrate high-performance DSP capabilities with the PIC microcontroller core. Over 50 PIC24 Microcontrollers and dsPIC Digital Signal Controllers sampling today. For data sheets, samples and pricing go to www.microchip.com/16bit microchip CSiRECT www.micrachipdlrBOt.cam oH S Com d I rant Microchip www, microchip. com/1 6bit Use ftsris and ipgo. PjC p $na c=i- C =-= -- - ot VtcrceJtti H d rdogy Jnccrpomad Srt LfS .4 c^ser ^ Al u-d-^=, tre at. srri ■j’ks ss ihe cr&ptfTi i f t-i? 3b!3l b SS5 Tea^Ci'TKj' fr>C - ' r'cr -3 ¥ElS^Er = ‘I Or] E < KNOW-HOW TIME MEASUREMENT Time measurement using atomic docks Jens Nickel Of all nature's physical quantities it is time that know how to measure best. The most advanced atomic clocks are breathfakingly accurate, many millions of times more so than the best quartz-based clocks. How do they manage it? Figure I. Sumflafs ore Ihe oldest docks kno 1 * n lo man. In this example a magnifying q\m Eg n lies □ powder charge in the Itiry cannon at midday, [Photograph: German Cloik Museum, FurtAangen[14]] B&iore we get down to business we should confess that bosed on this principle has continuously improved From we are going lo dodge the question \vhot is time? in this the earliest sundials (Figure I) to modern astronomical article by using the rather unhelp- ful definition 'lime is what a clock measures. A clock lets us put a number on the duration of an event or on how long ago an event oc- curred. The precision of the meas- urement depends on how small the briefest basic interval is that the clock can resolve, and the repeat- ability of the measurement depends on the extent to which these basic time intervals can be kept constant. To test the repeatability of a meas- urement we need access to anoth- er more accurate, clock. The first ciock J used by mankind was the rotation of the Earth. Over the centuries the precision of clocks Figure 2. The ocrurocyol ihe ben do*ks has Improved QY er the millennia by mote (ban i 2 orders o! magnitude; a fader of one ItiHian. t 2a etekter etetfrenks - 1/2037 Pill * * inslrumenfs. As recently as the last century the repeat- ability of this measurement was considered perfect' and the second was defined as one 86400th of a mean solar day [1 ]. It was not possible fo detect any changes to this period, as nothing of remotely comparable accuracy was available (Figure 2), History of timekeeping Waierc locks superseded sundials in antiquity; and in the Middle Ages glass-blowing technology improved to the paint where they in turn could be replaced ^ by sand-filled hourglasses. The first me- chanical clocks date from the thirteenth century driven first by weights and later by springs, the latter making For a more compact construction. In 1657 the Dutch- man Christian Huygens developed the first functional pendulum clock, claimed to have an accuracy oF around 1 0 s per day [2], That may not sound very impres- sive, but his revolutionary design paved the way far orders of magnitude improvements in accuracy. External influences on the pendulum were identified and eliminated one by one, exactly as would later happen with electronic clocks. Among the sources of inaccuracy were temperature and Feedback from the dock mechanism to the pendulum. A driving force behind these developments svas naviga- tion: only with the help of a chronometer having good long-term stability could one determine one's longitude when on the open sea. The first electrical dock [Figure 3] was also based on a pendulum. Developments ultimately culminated in a htghly^c- curate pendulum clack us- ing pendulums suspended in a vacuum and a kind of master-slave arrangement [3], achieving a final ac- Figure 3, 1 lie- llrst electrical clctks used pendulums in injunction with dectmmagneK This o ample, h* Aleicodej Bain, was mods in 1845. Sines there was no mains electricity at that time, I He mobr construct d his own ‘earth buttery' by burying two shoals at dissimilar metals En the ground. (Photograph: German Clock Museum, Furiwcngen (14)} id SI Base units Physical quantities su ch as resistance are measured infixed units, in this case the Ohm. So thai on Ohm represents the same resistance in every laboratory in the world its value must be defined. This is simple: if a voltage of one Voir ap- pears across a component and a current of one Ampere Flows, the resistance is one Ohm. The Ohm is therefore derived from other units, which, in turn, must of course be defined themselves. The Volt happens to be defined in terms at other units, but the Ampere is a ' base unit'. The choice here is somewhat arbitrary; the lows of physics will not change if we define Ihe Ampere via the Ohm rather ihan vice versa. However, international agreement has been reached on rhe use of seven base units. These SI base units [8] must be defined somehow, and there are various op- tions available. The classical, though rcriher awkward, approach, Is to have a 'standard 1 somewhere in the world. At present this is still how the kilogram is defined: one kilogram is the mass of the 'ur-kilogram', made of a special alloy end kept a! the International Bureau of Weights and Measures at Sevres near Paris, under several gloss envelopes. A more elegant way to define a unit is via v measurement rule. Par example, since 1967 the second has been defined os 9 192 631 770 times she period of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hype dine levels of the ground state of the 133Cs atom. Using a caesium atomic dock allows a precise standard for the second to be available anywhere in the world — even potentially in every hansel The Ampere is denned via on experimental procedure where □ carefully-control- led voltage and resistance are used [9], The reasons why the Ampere was nevert- heless chosen as a base unit are historical. Clocks at the German Federal Institute for Physical Technology (PTB) The German Federal Institute for Physical Technology (PTB) in Braunsch weig is the body responsible for providing a statutory time reference for the whole of Germany. Its ap- proximate UK counter oart is the Notional Physical Labora- tory (NP1). The PTB has Sen atomic docks ot which two are caesium atomic fountain clocks (the photograph shows the roam where the docks ore kept). With relative accuracies or between 5 and 10 x 10- = these devices are among the mosi accurate timepieces in the world. The PTB continues to develop the atomic fountain design, and so we can expect these figures to improve in Future. So-called optical atomic clacks are under development at the FIB. So far, the ac- curacy achieved has been comparable to thoi achievable using atomic fountain clocks, and several sources of error stand In the way of obtaining the theoreti- cally passible accuracy of 1CK S . According to Robert Wynands, who runs the time Sian darns team, we have to be careful that ihe chips do not distort with tempera- ture and cause changes in propagation delays'. These high-precision atomic clacks and modules such as frequency generators are developed in-house at the PT8. Individual components are usually bought In os ready-mede devices, although they tend to be tap- of- the -range products. 'The bill for o particularly taw-noise quartz crystal might run to four or five figures' says Wynands. The PTB runs a further three atomic clocks in Mainftingen near Frankfurt. These units, bought tram commercial suppliers, determine the time that is broadcast us- ing the DCF77 signal [10]. The signal can be received by radio-controlled docks within a radius of approximately 2QGG km of the transmitter, and is or course checked in Braunsch weig, If the time should depart From the true value, theMain- flingen docks are corrected using a telephone line. 172007 - elfkT&retetfrofiia 29 KNOW-HOW TIME MEASUREMENT Figure 4. In 1930 Rtfhdr and Sthwcm braughl IhEir 'portable' quart! crystal clock to matkel.fi weighed same £G kgl (Photograph; Rohde and Schwa n [4]] frequency generator u » frequency ^1 control Figures 5 and 6. Diagram and internets of a classical caesium atomic dctk* The frequency ol an adjustable quart* YCXO is set by the control loop shown. Caesium atoms, m gaseous turm, move towards a mug net [the polo riser). Tfiote atoms that are in one of the two hypertine structure transition stores (A) are deflected to a slightly different extent from those in state 8, and only the former are allowed la enter the resonator The atoms ore illuminated with microwave radiation at o frequency which is a known multiple of the quarfi crystal oscillator frequency When resonance occurs many ol the Cs atams are eicited from stole A to r tote 8, This con be detected by separating the atoms using the analyser magnets at the end of the resonator and measuring the intensity of the separated beams. [Photograph and graphic: FIB {61}, curacy of a few milliseconds per day. Only ihe very best quartz crystal clocks can beat this figure. Quartz accuracy The first quartz crystal based clock was developed in the 1920s, and the first reosonobly portable device was pro- duced in 1938 by instrument makers Rohde & Schwarz [see Figure 4} t If used a sliver of quartz crystal os Its fre- quency reference, made ro vibrate by applying an alter- nating voltage to if, using the piezoelectric effect [5], At a certain frequency the crystal resonates, and this phenom- enon can be detected. Dividers convert this Frequency to ihe desired time interval. In the 1930s a quartz crystal clack was used to determine that the speed of rotation of the Earth is not a constant. There is a general slowing down resulting from friction due to tides as well os unexpected variations thought to be due to movements of rock within the Earth. There are also seasonal variations with relative magnitudes of the order of 1 Q- s [1]* Inside the atom Over the last century remarkable progress has been mode in physics. Sophisticated theories now explain observa- tions over which generations of scientists had scratched their heads in puzzlement. If light is shone through a gas. ir is found that certain wavelengths are absorbed. It is also observed that the gas then re-emiis light of a certain wavelength in response to this stimulus. The atom (or mare precisely, the electron shells of the olomj can only take on certain defined energy levels. Consider the following analogy: the flats in a tower block are each on a definite floor, not in between floors (except in the famous John Malkovitch film). So if you throw a boll from the window of your flat, there ore only certain veloci- ties with which ihe ball con hit the ground. Depending on which floor the ball was thrown from, it might reach the ground travelling at ] 5, 30 or 55 km/h, but never □t 40 km/h. Conversely, if you wish to throw the ball back from the ground so that it just reaches the window, you will have to launch it at one of the three admissible speeds. In the case of the atom, we have fo provide light of a certain wavelength in order to move an electron from one energy level to another. Things are slightly more com- plicated in this cose, since the floors' are not all of the same height; furthermore, there is the occasional mezza- nine floor [and even mezzo-mezzanine floors! ): see the text box TJyperfine structure'. The complete collection of observed ond absorbed wavelengths (the 'spectrum') is thus rather complicated and varies from element to ele- ment, giving rise to o kind of element fingerprint. The best part of all this is that the difference between en- ergy levels is essentially independent of external influenc- es. Whereas quartz crystals suffer from the effects of tem psrature and long-term drift, the energy levels of atoms have ihelr origins in physical constants with essentially fixed values. This gave American physicists in the 1940s the following idea: in some atoms (tor example in the al- kali meial caesium) the energy levels are so dose together that rather than light waves, microwave radiation is emit- ted, having a frequency of a few GHz. We con thus il- luminate a caesium atom with microwave radiation of a frequency close to this atomic resonance frequency, and 30 eteklor electronics - 1/2007 then U is a 'simpie 7 matter of measuring our success at ex- citing the atoms and use this as part of a control loop to generate a highly accurate frequency. Resonance In practice the excitation frequency is produced using a voltage controlled crystal oscillator (VCXO) as a refer- ence, with a frequency of perhaps around 5 MHz. A 1 Hz signal can be derived from this as in an ordinary quartz crystal clock. The reference Frequency is control- led and regulated as described above. In the classical caesium atomic clock [see Figure 5 and Figure 6) a caesium sample is heated in a small evacuated oven to form a gas. A fine beam of caesium gas then escapes via a small opening and passes through a magnetic field. Atoms that are in hypemne structure state A are deflected by a slightly different amount than those in state B. Only the A atoms are allowed to enter the resonator cavity. The atomic resonance frequency is derived from the 5 MHz reference by Frequency multiplication; the micro- wave radiation at the relevant Frequency is coupled in using a cavity resonator through which ihe caesium aioms pass. When the resonant frequency is hit o large number of caesium atoms make the hyperfine structure transition from state A to state B. This can be detected by sepa- rating the caesium atoms using a further magnet at the end of the resonator and measuring the intensities of the separated beams. The caesium atoms are ionised using a heated wire and the resulting current can then be ampli- fied by several orders of magnitude using a secondary electron multiplier. All that remains is a little control theory to vary the frequency oF the VCXO to maximise the meas- ured current. Atomic standard Even a simple caesium atomic dock con achieve a rela- tive accuracy of 1 CH 1 , corresponding to an error of one second in 3000 years. It is something of an understatement to call this "high precision": if we could measure distances as accurately, we svould know the distance to the moon to the nearest millimetre! In 1967 lbs definition of the second was changed to use the caesium 'atomic' standard [see the Base units text box). The use of the 'atomic" tag can prob- ably be traced back to ihe more medla-sowy academics of the time, aware that the word atom" was naturally as- sociated with the white heat of the scientific and technical revolution. In indu stria lised countries atomic clocks allowed standardising bodies to provide a statutory framework for timekeeping. However, even atomic clocks drift slowly rela- tive to one another and so regular comparisons are made, even across national boundaries. An averaging process, involving some 50 institutions and 200 individual atomic clocks, is used to produce a world time standard colled In- ternational Atomic Time. Because of the {relatively!] erratic rotation of the Earth extra seconds ore sometimes added at the end of June or at the end of December. This ensures that astronomically-derived time never deviates far from Atomic Time [1 ] ( |7j. Ultra precision The best classical caesium atomic docks, such os those kept at the German Federal Institute for Physical Technol- ogy (PTB), achieve relative accuracies of up to 10- u , When comparing clocks of such high accuracy even ihe Hyperfine structure An atom consists oi a positively-charged nucleus and negatively- charged electron shells. For simplicity we can think of a number of electrons orbiting the nucleus. If an electron gets closer to the nucleus energy is released, and conversely, if on electron receives o stimulus of energy it can be moved into a higher orbit. Q' C-: 3S5' tt Observations and theoretical considerations lead us to believe ihat the electrons can only move in certain fixed or- bits. tF an electron moves from one of these orbits to a low- er one, a tiny packet of light (a 'light quantum'' Is released., with o wavelength proportional io the difference in energy levels. The relationships are simples* in the case of the hy- drogen atom, which consists of a very simple nucleus and a single electron isee drawing). Jf the electron moves be- tween energy levels, perhaps from the third or second orbit to the first or vice versa, light quanta of the corresponding wavelengths will he respectively emitted or absorbed. The spectrum of light emitted by □ stimulated mass of hydrogen atoms therefore consists of just a small number of distinct wavelengths, colled Tines'. Things get more complicated when more electrons are involved. Just as a current flowing in o coil creoles a mag- netic field, so oho do electrons circling a nucleus. The field affects the orbits with the result that a single energy level is split into two closely- spa cad energy levels. The 'spin" of on electron on electron con be imagined as spinning an iis axis) creates a further weak magnetic field which results m on obseved funner splitting of the energy levels; the resulting pattern o? energy levels s called 'fine structure’. Finally, the magnetic field due to the nucleus con also have a small effect on the energy levels. The lines of the so-called 'hyperfine srructure 1 are so closely 'Spaced that when o transition between them is made low-energy microwave quanta, rather than fight quanta, are emitted. In naturally- occurring caesium, the frequency of these mi- crowaves is 9 1 92 63 1 770 Hz. smallest local variation in gravity must be taken into ac- count, as Einstein's general theory of relativity tells us. These devices are therefore not the end of the story os for as accuracy is concerned. Inaccuracies in the type of clock described above can be traced back to (among other things) the fact that the cae- sium atoms are moving rapidly through the resonator. In a scxalled caesium fountain atomic clack the atoms are cooled (i e., slowed down) using a laser and then gently 1/2007 - debtors Eetirania 31 TIME MEASUREMENT Commercial applications The atomic docks used at national physical laboratories ore specialty mode and criteria such os price, size and current consump- tion are not particularly impef- iant. However, there are various manufacturers producing a range ot atomic clocks: for example, Symmetricom Inc. [ 1 1 j offers both caesium- and rubidium-based atomic docks which are easy to use and compact. The photo- graph shows such a unit, which is only a little larger than □ cigarette packet and .. hich can be used as c drop in replacement module for a quartz crystal oscillator* Symmetricom" s rubidium clocks start at under two thousand pounds and hove a relative accuracy of □ round lQ- to 10~ T Customers include telecommunications companies who use them in mobile telephony base stations. A caesium dock can be had for around twenty thousand pounds upwards ’while hydrogen maser docks come in at a hundred ihousand pounds* the latter exhibif a very high degree of short-term stability and good accuracy over periods of hours sc days* This makes (hern ideal for use in navigation satellites, where the lime cs measured by the on-board atomic docks con be adjusted from lime to time from the ground stations. The satellites of the EU Galileo system will include hydro- gen maser docks. The first-generaiion American GPS satellites contain souped-up rubidium clocks ■while the more recent models each contain fwo caesium and two rubidium docks [12J. The more accurately the satellites con keep time the more accurate the positioning system can be. The theory is explained in [13). am. Slewk diogfom of ihs dividers and o jjpui switch. Typical application circuit with enigma! crplaL 1/1007 - dcfci&r dsdronlB 35 FECHNOLOGY OSCILLATORS Circuil dEcnrom c! o programming erfnpfor for aHSiseciion fp a para!'] el part. I he- programming software alia offer* a (flip lay of the PC by* signal*. Fartorydefaufl sEtlingi cl the 1C. hqu\=s. nytamairc tokulafion of c‘ii irfer sortings. ^3V3 ing divider P2. All the output buffers ore connected to P2 and therefore produce identical signals. The other two PLL modules are also running, and iheir outputs are taken to dividers but not then connected to any outputs. This configuration is suitable for an initial test of ihe device, without the need for a PC to be connected. IF a 1 6 MHz crystal is used instead, the outputs will oil be oscillating at 1 6 MHz, Ws thus have a simple test that the power sup- ply and crystal oscillator circuit are operating correctly. We can now go on to program the device to generate al- most any desired frequency. In theory it is a simple matter of calculating: f = i / M * N / P but often a little experimentation can be helpful to Find suitable settings. The PLL frequency should lie within one of two bands, either from 80 MHz to 200 MHz or from 1 80 MHz to 300 MHz. The software should be used to set the VCO F ranx value to 200 MHz or 300 MHz accordingly. In practice it is found that in 200 MHz mode the Pll oscillator can operate at well below 80 MHz, although □t some detriment to the performance of the device. In particular, phase noise increases. The general rule here is that it possible !ne highest available comparison frequen- cy for the PLl should be chosen. This means that the M divider ratio should be set as low as possible. For exam- ple. suppose we wish to generate an output frequency of 1 7 MHz from on input frequency of 1 6 MHz. We first set M - 1 6, giving o comparison frequency of I MHz. We then set N = 170, giving a PLL frequency of 1 70 MHz, which is finally divided by P = 10 down to 17 MHz. Assistance When more obscure frequencies are wanted, say 10.245 MHz for example, a little more thought is called for to find ihe best settings. Help is provided in the form oF the Programming Assistant (Figure 8): you can select the desired output and frequency and the assistant calcu- lates the best settings. In this case the program suggests 16 MHz / 160 T 2049=204.9 MHz and 204.9 M^nz / 20 = 10.245 MHz. This would now make a suitable oscillator tor a dual-conversion superheterodyne receiver with a first IF at 10.7 MHz ond a second IF at 455 kHz, PLL 2 and PLL 3 con be switched off in the interests of producing an output signal with low noise and weak sidebands. Spread-spectrum clocking In these days of strict EMC regulation it C on often happen that □ piece of equipment produces radio interference at its clock frequency (or at a harmonic of it) and hence fails emissions testing. The best defence against this is good screening and decoupling of all signals that leave rhe enclosure. A backup technique is to use spread-spectrum docking. The spectrum of a signal can be "spread out us- ing a kind of frequency modulation; a receiver will then not see a sharp spectral peak but rather o noisy signal with lower peak power occupying a wider region of the spectrum. PLL 2 can be configured far frequency modula- tion around the specified centre frequency with a devia- tion Gt up to 0.4 or down from the specified frequency with a deviation of up to 3 %: see Fig ure 9. Centre modulation is a good choice far generating a microcon- troller clock since the overage frequency will be exactly the specified value, RF characteristics Although the frequencies of the VCOs in ihe internal Fils are determined by simple RC circuits, it is nevertheless 36 efeitor elytron its - i/2007 possible to use ihem to construct a clock generator with a law-noise output on a par with that achievable using a crystal oscillator. It is therefore possible to consider using this integrated clock generator in advanced fif applica- tions, For example in a triple-conversion superheterodyne receiver with an adjustable First oscillator and two fixed- frequency IF stages. In this cose any failure la decouple the PLL modules adequately From one another can reduce performance. If two FLLs are set to opera ie at closely- spaced frequencies, even a small amount of coupling can have a significant effect: as you can imagine, the two PL1 control loops will interfere with one another resulting in an output signal that is not clean. In critical applications [for example in a DRM receiver) it can be a good idea to use just one of the PLLs, How- ever, it will still be necessary to ensure that the device's supply is dean by providing good decoupling at the V cc pin 5 with very short connections to the bypass capacitors. A ground plane should also be used. Texas Instruments recommends using a four-loyer printed circuit board with both Vr c and ground planes. We took a simpler approach for testing, simply connect- ing a Sibalit ceramic capacitor directly across each pair of power pins. Setting two PLLs to two reasonably-separat- ed frequencies we were able to obtain two dean output signals simultaneously. With oil three PLLs operating at the same time it is harder to avoid a certain amount of phase noise on the outputs, :e:u£-!j Spresd-speCfjLiiTi SEttings. 11] Burkhard Kainka, Serially Programmable Crystal Oscillator', Eiekior Electronics, March 2005. p. 66. [2] bttp:ATocu$-iixcrn docs/prod raider print ccke706.html |3] B Kainka and H.-j. BerndL "PC Interlaces Under '.'En- dows: Measurement and Control Using Standard Ports', Elektar Electronics Publishing, 2002. ■ 4ri 9 SP* kCJ I Lichfield Electronicsm* 6 LED \.L. Meier UJ LED V.L, Meier V I . 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The progres- sion of fhe Pentium M processors from the first genera- tion 'Sonias' which contained o 1 MB 12 cache through to the Dothan processor fabricated with the more recent 90 nm technology and offering a 2 MB L2 cache, DDR2 memory support and an FSB clock increased from 400 to 533 MHz.. The last two features are supported by the 9 I 5 series chipset family but not by the previous 855 series. More recently we have seen the introduction of dual-core processors supported by the 945 chipset but She 915 still has much to offer including low-cost and the abil- ity to be overclocked extremely easily. Wind up the clock Many of you probably take the view that overdocking is the domain of geeks with too much time on their hands, they start off with a perfectly reliable notebook and end up with something that is really only good for toasting sandwiches. In reality the risks involved with this modifica- tion are quite small, no soldering is necessary and most people with an average level of technical competence would be able to identify the correct processor socket pins and fit the necessary wire jumper. The entire process should not take longer than 15 minutes and best of all the modification is reversible! The most recent processors from Intel have a built-in (fixed) multiplier which derives the processor clock from the FSB (Front Side Bus) clock rate. These processors con therefore only be overdocked by increasing the FSB clock. The disadvantage of this modification is that it also increases the clock rate to the DDR RAM and the chipset cannot reliably handle the increased clock rate. Reports indicate that systems with this type of overclocking tend to become unstable when the acceleration approaches around 20 %. In contrast the Pentium M processors hove much more In reserve. In an effort to prevent owners From tampering with ihe dock speeds many notebook manufacturers define the FSB clock raie from values contained in the machines BIOS. It is usually uneconomical to attempt overdocking on these machines. Only connect Partly in response to competition from their rival AMD, Intel released (along with the existing Celeron processor) a low-cost variant of their Pentium M J Dothon J proces- sor with a reduced FSB speed oF 400 MHz and half the normal 12 cache space (1 MB instead of 2 MB). This chip marked the beginning of the entry-level Pentium based 3B elektor electronics - 1/2007 Controllers the technique of overdosing is not necessarily confined to the PC and Laptop world; microcontrollers ore also likely cand dote; tor this type of treatment including those contained in many Elekior Electronics prolects. The microcontrollers contained in commercial, equipment are be si left clone because the software source files are generally net avail a ale for modification and increasing the dock speed will cut short timing loops and may cause the device to malfunction or run erratically. Our experience with off-the-shelf microcontrollers indicate that most will run quite happily [at roam temperature.; with a dock ate of up to 50 % higher than the maximum frequency quoted in the data sheet. Despite these findings it is time far a reality check; any competent engineer would of course be asking for trouble if their latest production design relied on over- clocking or stressing any component beyond its guaranteed operational envelope. In most coses a controller can be tested by simply replacing rhe existing crystal with another of a higher frequency. -Vhen the circuit operates in correct iy .t .'.ill be necessary la make changes to the firmware, taking Into account the ne., dock speed. Routines using timing loops or timers and serial interface drivers will require madificahon. jn some coses if the original firmware is retained a 30 % increase In processor clock speed is likely to give a 30 % Increase In baud rate. Any timing constants in the communication routines will therefore reauire adaptation. | ,jr : r + -r Sildl-. J > Eventually she dock increase will impact on the l-C, SPI end other serial channels. Communications with peripheral equipment will not be possible until the firmware is modified. Unlike PCs and notebooks when a microcontroller Is overclocked it produces a proportional increase in current consumption and heat dissipation In the device. And If you push the clack too far it Is no surprise to find that, the controller will simply refuse to work. notebooks which would supersede the Celeron based machines. Intel uses o voltage level on a processor socket pin to indicate to the chipset whether the bus dock rote is either 400 or 533 MHz. The slower processor vari- ants numbered 715, 725, 735 etc. leave this processor pin B16 open-circuit while the faster types 720, 730, 740 etc. connect the pin to ground {see Figure 1). What happens if we fix this pin to ground anyway using a wire jumper? Well not much! At least nothing bad, according to reports on the Internet (try Googling with pinmod' and '735 or 725) it seems that the majority of pin madders who have tried this modification on their notebooks have been successful. The modification has no effect on the faster processors (numbers ending in zero) using □ 533 MHz FSB because they already have the pin grounded. Far example the mod gave no speed increase an a 1.6 GHz Pentium M 730 notebook while a 1 .6 GHz ‘economy' notebook us- ing a 725 chip reported a 335- increase with the proces- sor clock now at an unbelievable 2.1 3 GHz! Almost as fast as a mare expensive 770 based machine. Reports from overdockers on the Internet indicate that the vast ma- jority of overdocked 735 machines are completely stable. Making a jumper Figures 2 to 6 show the modifications carried out to the author's notebook which is Fitted with a 725 processor. Those or you who have machines from less v/ell known manufacturers may Find that the most difficult part of this mod is finding information on how to open the notebook. Once open it should be possible to locate the proces- sor within a few- minutes. Figure 2 shows the inside of the machine with the keyboard and processor heatsink removed. The chip in the upper centre half of the pic- ture is the processor, A turn of the large retaining screw Is enough to release the processor from the socket. One thing we noticed with this particular machine was that the protective Foil over the contact area (Figure 3] hod not been removed from the heatsink when She machine was first assembled! The wire jumper is made from o single 4 E ! i TT Ti I] EJ 15 " I ’1 *1 3 r: 12 u s L-i •=E *F 0 C C 0 o c “= “ “ V _ — — , ■ - cJjS iL • a tg. £ i t]° s-tltsi. £ £t£ £ £ * IP * * c • ~b“ o c 9 C 9 3 0 0 a ra? i-irvi a c — w Q D S'* wr c a US — « 0 0 mi 1 «§# O 3 'Dl 9 . ° o 0 a 9 o_ a _G Q a_ 9 XI O 9 O 9 O p 0 o_ I o o D * 0 :: Ik W C a ti M- D O XV ■ o til a »*■ XX o o mm mm 0 o O 9 a o - Hi c i 0 B a b Q o a c _g e * Q, 2 o m 9 9 O G m: a. 9 3 O 9 9 p 9 p Q p 9 p ODCogflOO a a p g a o 9 C a 9 O 9 q 9 C 9 OCOpQCBC- aoaflOOGOGOOG o o =r-*- u_ O G_ G * G O £ a a !■ O G = D ■=-T# U 9 p Z Z 2, • c 1 - .- £ I 9 O £ £. • 5. a e =-■- • o o jTW ■o- o U ELZ.B 3 9 9 O rm t- . G_ 9 G G " 1 9 G ■*» fev G 9 .. * " ' * 9 O 9 £ G =“Z* 9 M- o 9 £ 0 XJLr 1 Hi 5 a_ o_ 9 s G_ 9 O — - G — - 9 G tor G . . 9 Q mm G 9 mm o 1 » c : * a ** i ■ * m 2 « ■ r U AC AS At il I 0 1 4 0 U tt tl U H 1} H T? n T> 3S J1 XF 15 S4 IE H G figure 1, Pin Ed) out of Dothan protenar (from abavs). The ied line Indimlei the wi^ jumper position from Pin C!6 to Fin C15. Figure 2, The author's notebook. The large (hip in k he u p p = z pari at the pitltfre is the CPU Below is the ICH6-H saulhbridge. Ir 2037 - et4 lot dstfmnits 39 ECHNOLOGY PROCESSORS The bottlenecks The maximum dock frequency Is limited by a number of factors. The mast basic switching element in oil microcontrollers and processors Is I he transistor, It makes up all Ihe gates and logic functions inside the chip. Each transistor has a finite switching time which we cannot do much to improve once the chip hcs been fabricated. Each function block in the processor is designed to be able to complete its operation in the time between two dock pulses. When the dock frequency is increased beyond Its design maximum it becomes more likely that the logic element has insufficient time (due to the fixed propagation delay in the transistors] to complete its function end the output value will be sampled before it has time to stabilise. The resulting incorrect value wilt cause ihe software to malfunction and eventually crash. For the sake of reliability and to ensure correct operation over the entire operating range and between production batches Ihe manufacturers data sheet quotes a conservative figure for the maximum clock rate. Temperature is also a limiting factor, each time a CMOS transistor changes state if dissipates energy. As the dock speed increas- es the transistor energy dissipation increases which raises the chip temperature ana may lead to failure If it exceeds its rated maximum operating temperature. An additional limitation af the transistor structure and interconnects is parasitic capacitance which must be charged end dis- charged when the transistor switches. With foster switching speeds Ihe energy dissipation Increases correspondingly along with the chip temperolu/e. The final bottledieck is ihe propagation speed of electrical signals along signal paths. Propagation speed can vary typical- ly between 180 x 1 06 m/s and light speed J.300 x } 06 m/s) depending on the medium used. At first glance this would not seem to he too much of a problem but if we consider a modern CPU v.iih o dock frequency of 3 GHz, a propagation speed of 1 80 v 1 06 m/s will dictate that a single dock period is just 6 cm long. At these elevated speeds It becomes more Important to consider signal path length to ensure that data on the interna! bus system is transferred when It has reached a stable state. figure 3. Ihe heal sink still fitted with o protective Him. strand af multicore wire shown in Figure 4, Cul off a 6 to 7 mm length of wire and farm il Into a U shape [Fig- ure 5) producing □ leg length of around 2.5 mm. Fig- ure 6 shows ihe jumper fitted in the processor socket, the wire is fine enough so that it does not impede the proces- sor pins when il Is plugged back tola the socket. Before the processor is replaced i t is o good idea lo re- move any pads between the chip and heatsink □ place a thin layer of heat sink compound over the contact area. With ihe improved heal transfer properties fne over- clocked processor is likely to run coaler that the original configuration. The aluminium foil shown in Figure 3 is discarded. Supply Tweaking The bottlenecks outlined above ore a function of the chip design and the materials so there is Utile that can be done to circum- vent them. Researchers and chip designers ere however continually -working to Improve the technology. One avenue of research Involves the use of 'taster' materials (e*g. 'strained silicon ) to reduce signal delay 'while anolher area conceal rotes on optimising the transistor geometry to reduce switching times. The most obvious melhod of improving switching speed is to make the struc- ture os small os possible, this reduces ihe interconnect path length, the switching energy and parasitic cap defiances. All of these techniques are Inherent to the basic chip architecture and the process technology, the 'overdocker' again has no chance of making any Improvements here. The most usual Type of "tweaking used in conjunction with overdocking is to slightly raise the supply voltage to ihe chip (checking that the device does not become too hot). The basis for this technique is that a transistor with a higher control signal will switch more quickly. Overclocked DRAM modules respond well to increased supply voltage operation os do processors. In cases where excess dissipation in the chip is limiting the overdocklng frequency it Is possible to reduce ihe supply voltage slightly ana still squeeze an extra few megahertz out of chip. A tower supply voltage reduces the energy consumed fay the de- vice, lowering power dissipation and reducing chip temperature. It also helps diminish transistor leakage tosses which con form a not insignificant pari of the total power consumed by modem processors. Modem microcontrollers hove not yet achieved gigahertz clack capability so the phenomenon plays less of a role In overdo ek- ing ihese devices. An overclodced microcontroller which is unstable moy however benefit from an increase in the supply voltage by a few percent or oflemativeh with ihe above explanation In mind, a reduction of the supply voltage! 40 dektof “letfrofita - 1/2007 Once the modifications have been completed and the machine reassembled a software tool such as CPU-Z con bs used fo measure ihs processor characteristics [see Figure 7), The test reports that the CPU type remains the same but the bus and CPU clock frequency hove a new value. To err is human.,. Even though the modification suggested here should be relatively easy to perform there is undoubtedly room for error, if you are in the habit of making a sow's ear out of a silk purse then it's probably wise to keep the notebook well and truly buttoned up. Any intrepid reader planning to go ahead with the modification should ot least equip themselves with a decent set of cross-headed screwdrivers (hopefully of better quality than ones you sometimes get in Christmas crackers) and some tweezers. Reports from Internet based forums indicate that the Celeron M 350 to 380 and Pentium M715 to 735 are good candidates for overdocking. A 735 series can be docked to at least 2.26 GHz while 745 types can be per- suaded fo run at 2.4 GHz but not always reliably. Incidentally it is quite rare to find 400 MHz DDR2 RAM (specified os PC3200) fitted to notebooks, It is far more common to find the foster PC4200 memory which is suit- able for use with a 533 MHz dock. Overclackers should ensure that fheir RAM can handle the speed increase. All is not lost iF the processor in your machine does nol have □ 5 as its last digit; if hos been known for owners of /30 or 740 series notebooks to sell them and buy o lower spec 725 or 735 series replacement which they then proceed fo overdock. The result is a faster notebook and with any luck a small profit, A useful free program for the intrepid pin madder is 'Notebook Hardware Contra!'. The program allows control of the notebook hardware components including system power management. The voltage supply to most processors is typically 1 .3 V or above but it is often the case that they run reliably under full load with a supply of 1 ,2 V or less. The freeware program Prime95 is the oven dockers’ program of choice to test the stability of modi- fied machines. The program loads the processor at 100% and the mach ine Is assumed to be prime stable' if it runs the test For 24 hours without any errors. This is particularly good at detecting any instability caused by a modifica- tion to the processor supply voltage. Finally It should be noted that tinkering with the Insides of a Notebook is a good way of Invalidating the guaran- tee, ideally the machine will not be under warranty ond you must be prepared to accept full responsibility for any damage that may be caused by following any of the sug- gestions contained in this article. Web links Pirsmuds ond advice for Fujitsu-Slemsns Notebooks: vci v. omit o - to ru T.com The "Dothan" CPU datasheet Is available from: dcv-nloaaMntel.com 'design 'mobile aa!ash?s 3021 S 90 S,pdi The Notebook Hardware Control* program is available from: v-vv-v.pbusM67.com ihc nhc.bln Stability testing can be performed with Prjme95: w.w, me r$ e nn e . o r g Mr e e 5 oft. h i m Figure 4 P fine mu fo* to re wire. A ihtui itmrri is u-ed a; a [ump$£. Figure 5. The U shaped wire jumper approiimale!/ 2-5 mm long. Figure 6, The wire jumper fitted la ihs processor soilref, You need tweezers and a sled dy hand lor this. CHJ | Csche | MsrAre&rd | ktsmory | SPD | Afcau | -Rro£=£SGf Cede Name TecTootogy 3r>rsT Fenton M "25 Dothan Brood © 22 Socket 47§ mPGA SO nm vot&gs B v Specific blots 6 £4. 6 ratrurtJGi>5 f P f ,\tX, SSE a 5SE2 lrtsS(R) Pertkfitn(R) M processcr VitOGWz Mods' Ext . Model ^Ter-j: ~2 r Cedes Cere Speed lfcBip£ef Bus Speed Rsied FSB 2122 5 Vi; x 1SJ0 r I32 .fi K.-tz 520 7 i "tz Cdcne Lt Data '-■'-rr.r , LI Code -evj! 2 32 Kcyies 32 KStfes Kpytfts Verson 1 35 CPU-2 dr; figure 7. CPU-Z reports Ihttt the processor Es r,& 3 . much qulfbt 1/2E07 - ebktor Elttiroris 41 CLOCKS Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, was launched in 1957. It captured the attention of the entire world with the eerie beeps it transmitted, which could be received by radio amateurs everywhere in the world. Fifty years after this historic event, it seems fitting to build a clock in the shape of the Sputnik satellite that combines a nostalgic Nixie tube display with a modern microcontroller. Technology has changed a lot in recent decades. Launching a satellite that simply transmitted a beep signal was a major achievement in 1957, buL now we routinely put satellites into orbit that can transmit hundreds of televi- sion channels This design uses a combination of modern and old-fashioned technolo- gy. Tt !ie shape of the Sputnik and the Nixie tubes are elements of old-fash- ioned technology, while the low-loss switching regulators for the supply voltages and the mierocon trailer- based control logic are examples of modern tec I urology. Nixie tubes Nixie tubes were introduced commer- cially in 1954 to display numbers in electronic equipment. A Nixie tube is a cold -cathode valve, which means it does not have a heated filament. The ' ‘ r - 2T? ' ' ' ” ’ ' J • • - - * r ■ 1 - - " ' * valve thus remains quite cool during operation. The valve is also not evacuated, but instead filled with a gas mix- ture consisting primarily of neon. If a sufficiently high voltage is applied to the electrodes, the gas molecules around the cathode become ionized f. ~ r~ r -‘ T r ““ ~ : — - .*3; TS=&4 and emit light ranging in colour from reddish-orange to purplish. The valve contains a separate cathode in the form of a numeral for each digit to be displayed. + Nixie 4 is a trademark name given to these valves by the Burroughs Corpo- ration, which incidentally didn't actual- ly develop them but instead purchased the company that developed them, Haydu Brothers Laboratories. Schematic diagram The clock is controlled by a small mi- crocontroller — an Atmel 89C2051, which has 2 KB of flash memory. The digit cathodes of the Nixie lubes are driven by type 74141 driver IQs. Al- though these ICs may appear to be standard TTL devices, they are spe^ dally designed to handle the high voltage level of Nixie tubes. Like the Nixie tubes, they are readily available through 'regular' commercial channels. We thus strongly advise readers who want to build this clock to first see whether they can find these parts be- fore they invest in the rest of the hard- ware, The first digit of the display, i The draril of Ihe Sputnik dock consiiti of a mkrosonTrdlEt four Hiiio tube* cmd Jhsfi drivers, and two supply voltage regulators. which shows tens of hours, is driven by two discrete transistors instead of a driver IC - since only the numerals J T and '2 T are necessary. The power supply section consists of two independent switching regula- tors, each of which is built around an MC34063 general-purpose PWM regu- lator IC. ICS operates as a step-down converter and provides -f- 5 V for the low- volt age portion of the circuit. IC6 operates as a step-up converter and provides the high voltage for the Nixie tubes. FET T1 is included in the circuit because the MC34063 is not rated for operation above 40 V One of the ad- vantages of not using conventional voltage regulators is that the circuit is not choosy about the raw input volt- age, so an AC mains adapter with, an output voltage in the range of 14-25 V can be used, in addition, this power supply arrangement generates rela- tively little heat. This is important be- cause the circuit is fitted in a closed housing and would otherwise become quite warm. Software The software is written in assem- bly language. This yields a very com- pact program that implements a 24- hour clock, the user interface, display brightness control, and smooth display transitions in just 568 bytes of code. The clock operates on the usual princi- ple of dividing down the interrupt rate of the timer interrupts. Tne information to be displayed in hours and minutes is output in BCD format via I/O ports to the Wbde drivers. The tens of hours digit forms an exception here. As only the ‘V and ; 2' have to be driven here, only two output lines are necessary. There is only one user control, consist- ing of a pushbutton that can be used to set the time, adjust the brightness, and display the software version number. Refer to the inset for the details of the operator interface. The brightness of the Nixie tubes is controlled by varying the duty cycle of the drive signals instead of vary- ing the anode current. Every time the minutes display changes, the clock makes a smooth transition from the one number to the next. Tills is also implemented using the variable duty cycle. The duty cycle of the old number decreases gradually while the duty cy- 1:2007 - ekbot electrodes 43 CLOCKS Figure 1 The double-sided PCS has a round outline so il ton be fiKe4 in a plastic boll. cle of ths new number increases gradually. The brightness set- ting of the display is also maintained during this transition. Construction Building the circuit should not present any particular difficul- ties. Only standard' components are used (no SMDs)* Start by fitting all the parts on the component side of the board. Operating instructions ! Setting Ihe time 1 \ Press and hold the button until the hours display starts blinking After ihh, the will be advanced by 1 hour each hme you press the button briefly, ■ 2) Press and hold the button until the minutes display starts blinking. | After this, the lime will be advanced by 1 minute each time you press I th& button briefly, I 3) Press ana hold the button until Ihe display returns to non-blinking * made. The second? ore set to 0 or this time. Setting Ihe brightness Press the button briefly. The current brightness setting will be dls- t ployed- The brightness setting Is Increased by 1 each time the button \ i= pressed briefly, from 01 [minimum) to 09 i maximum i, The clack l returns to the time display mode if the button is na« pressed tor sev- I eral seconds. t Displaying Ihe version number V/rlh the AC mains adapter unplugged, press and hold the button ■ while plugging In the adapter. The version number of the software | will then be displayed (such as ' 1 . 07 '). After releasing the button, ( you can set ihe time as described above. 1 Use sockets for all of the ICs. Then turn the board over and solder the Nixie tubes on the copper side of the board. It is a good idea to trim the leads of the Nixie tubes stepwise and then insert them in the holes in pairs starting with rhe longest ones, since it is rather difficult to get all the leads into the holes if they all have the same length. Align each Nixie tube exactly perpendicular to be board before solder- ing the leads. Initial checkout Start by fitting only the voltage regulator ICs {1C 5 and ICS) in the sockets, and check the polarity of C8 before plugging in the AC mains adapter. Then use a meter to check the sup- ply voltages. The voltage for the low-voltage portion must be ^5 V + and the voltage on G8 (for rhe Nixie tubes) must be approximately -rl80 V. if everything's OK. you can unplug the AC adapter. Be sure to give CB enough time to discharge before proceeding further (Caution; high voltage!) Alter this you can fit the remaining ICs. After being powered up or after a voltage dropout, the display shows a blinking value of '0.00 T The default brightness value is set to 7‘. The rime is shown in the European 24 -hour format. A zero in the first digit is not displayed, so this digit remains dark every morning until 10 o'clock Mechanical construrtkMi^-^. — We know that electronics hobbyists often find it difficult to do a nice job of fitting a circuit in a rectangular enclosure, so how can we expect them to manage with a spherical enclosure? The answer is that it rakes a certain amount of skill and patience. Transparent plastic balls are available in hobby shops. For this project, we used one with a diameter of 10 cm, consist- ing of two hemispheres. In one of these hemispheres, we drilled holes for the three legs (along the upper rim), the control pushbutton (lower middle), and power supply con- nector (diagonally to the rear). You must drill carefully The best results can be obtained using a drill press, but if neces- sary you can manage with a battery-powered drill. Drill the holes from the inside with the material supported on a firm surface, since otherwise the plastic can crack. The legs are made from alu m i n ium rods, which you can buy in a DIY shop by the metre. Cut three lengths of 15 cm and bend one end of each rod in a vice (depth of bend approximately 2 cm) to give them the right shape* Tile angle of the bend should be approximately 100 degrees. The sharper the bend, the closer the legs will be together in the assembled clock. The legs must all have the same shape (as close as you can manage), since otherwise the finished clock will stand crooked. After bending the ends of the legs to the right angle, cut a 4 -mm thread on the short end of each leg. Cut a round cover plate for the circuit board from a sheet of plastic Make a hole for the fastening screw in the middle and four larger holes for the display. Before assembling the clock, paint the bottom hemisphere and (if you wish) the cover plate. Spray-paint canisters avail- able in DIY model shops are quite suitable for this. After painting the ball black, you can use silver paint to give it a "starry sky' effect by pressing the spray button very lightly. You can also use an airbrush ro create attractive effects. Here you can give your creativity free rein, hut; make sure the paint 44 dekt&r efstf ranio - 1/2007 you is com- patible with the plastic of the ball — otherwise you may end up with an unattractive, spotty surface. You can also use a transparent cov- er coat to protect the paint against scratching. Another option is to paint the inner surface of the bail. Ai though the colours may not be as bright with this option, the paint coating is abso- lutely scratch-resistant. After the painting is finished, you can assemble the clock Thread an M4 nut onto each of the three legs and then fit the ends of the legs through the holes in the ball. Secure each of them with a second M4 nut on the inside. Before tightening the inner nut T nt a length of copper wire with a loop formed on one end. Later on T you can solder the circuit board to these three wires to secure it in the enclosure. Next, fit the power supply socket and the pushbutton and connect them to Figure 3, fop end bfitlon sidci of the trembled circuit beard, the circuit board with flexible wire leads. Finally, align the circuit board so it is level and solder it in place on the three copper wires, and then fit the covet board. After checking to ensure that every- thing works properly, you can fit the top half of the ball. .L-j-X'iS-l, COMPONENTS LIST Resistors FJ,R2;E3,R4 - 15kQ R5 = IQOkQ R6 = 750kn R7 = 5kQ6 RB = 1500 RIO = 68kQ R1 i = 22kQ SI 2 “ IQ R13.R14.R15 = HM3 Capacitors Cl = IGQQur 25V C2 = 470pF C3 - tOOnF C4 — 470uF 16V C5 = 470pF C 6 = lOOnF C7 = lOGnF CB - 4.7uF 400V C9 = lOOnF C10 r Cl 1 - 33pF Cl 2 = lOuF Web links Mike's Gallery — a collection of several types of Nixie docks www. el ectr \ csi u ff. cc . u k ■ n i* \ eg ol I e ry. ht m 1 A recording of the original Sputnik beeps wv-w. mue nsl s r.de/ — d ambergj/ Spufn i k. htm Inductors I 11,12 — 330pH I Semiconductors | D 1,02,03 ,04 = 1 MOO 3 J D5 — 1N5819 | D6 = 8YV26C | II - IRP82Q T2 J3 - MPSA42 ( [Cl = B9C2051, programmed, order code 050018-41 IC2,IC3,IC4 - 74141 . IC5,IC6 = MC34063 > Miscellaneous Q1 =? 12.000MHz quo rtz crystal AN1 ,AN2,AN3,AN4 = ZM1332 [ 1C sockets: 2 off DfL 8-pin; 3 off D1L 16- pin; 1 off DIL 20-pin PCB r ref. 05001 8-1 from ThePCBShop ^ Source and hex code files, free download # 05001 8-1 i .zip from pro[ed page or v Avw r etektor- electron ics xo.uk Drilling templates, free download # 0500 1 8-W.zip, from project page at vAvw.e I e kto r- el ectro n ics . co. u k I ___________ _ — 1,2007 - deleter elytron rs 45 on nil C for AVP mi croc on! rollers single assr £ E-biocits AVF; murtiprogmmjTiijSr £ E-blocks LED board £ B-biocks LCD board £ ©blocks Switch board £ To t3l value : /•; *v»v ■ \ £ Hoivsode Professional E-biocks LED board E-biscfcs LCD board t-fctocks USB Mutfipfogmitimer E-blocks Switch board E-blaeks Internet board P1C16F877 Ethernet crossover cable Total value: {0T. £ 1 1 8.00 £ 14;65 £ 13. 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Secure Online Ordering Facilities * Full Product Listing, Descriptions & Photos * Kit Documentation & Software Downloads IANDS-ON TIMEPIECES Prof. Dr, Bernd vom Berg and Dipl.-Jng, Peter Groppe (Georg Agricola University of Applied Sciences, Germany) In the world of unusual timepieces one example stands out: the Berlin dock/ which has been showing the time since 1975 using an ever-changing pattern of lights. Our version imitates the original using an LED display controlled over an SPI bus. The original Berlin clock [1] was de- signed by local engineer and inven- tor Dieter Binninger as a mathematics teaching aid and was installed in 1975 in an upmarket shopping area in the city. The construction, seven metres high, shows the time using a number of lamps, mostly arranged in groups of four. At the time new mathematics teaching methods were being int re- duce d, giving rise to heated discus- sions: perhaps not coincidentally the clock rapidly became famous. By the end of the 1970s a desktop version had become available, using a Texas Instruments TMS1GG0 4-bit processor (the first mass-produced microcontroller); models are still for sale with almost identical external appearance [2|. A quick trawl of the Internet for ‘Berlin clock’ turns up not only photographs and information T but also a number of PC -based programs to emulate the clock [31. We published a variation on the Ber- lin clock in the Summer Circuits issue of 1998 [4), using a DCF-77 module and a PIC16C54. In a furuie issue we will also describe another variation: a binary clock. Thai example, designed by Profes- sor Beutelsbacher for the 'Mathema- tikurn', an interactive mathematics exhibition centre in Giessen, Germa- I' ' r - * The fop lamp of Ihs Berlin dock flashes af t Hi, ami lire remaining lamps show ifre time. 48 sldtor eletti&njB - 1 y 2007 ■ u & 1 1 o III ■ 1 f * | 1 2M m % 1 1 •j * ■%' • ® * *© • A 9 I p o ify ^jr< ® 9 * 1 o O Figure 2 The display of cur version uses IfDs instead ol lamps. ny, was inspired by rhe Berlin clock. Finding the base -five system em- ployed a little unnatural, however, he opted for a binary display. Sign of the times However, it is not so difficult to inter- pret the display of the Berlin clock, as Figure 1 shows. The time is shown using a series of rows of lights where each lamp is assigned a ‘weight '. From the top row to the bottom row each lamp represents one second. 5 hours, 1 hour, 5 minutes and 1 minute, in the version described in this article we use 24 LEDs rather than lamps, but still an ranged according to the original layout (Figure 2). At the top centre is a green LED which flashes at 1 Hz. The second row consists of red LEDs and the third row yellow LEDs. So that it is easier to read the quarter hours from rhe LEDs in the third row, every third one is red rather than yellow. Components There are two main parts to the design: the example clock software, written in C for an SQ51 microcontroller, and the clock display. Figure 3 shows the block diagram of die system. Almost any microcontroller system could be used, as long as it has three or four spare digital I/O port pins and either a real-time clock circuit or a ra- dio timecode receiver. Alternatively* a real-time clock could be implemented purely in software. The authors used a board that they de- veloped themselves* featuring an At- mei AT89C51CC03 microcontroller from the popular 8051 family. The board also sports a 72421 real-time clock IC. al- though it would also be possible to re- ceive and process DCF-77 signals. The software reads the time from the real-time clock and generates the necessary control signals on the SPI bus, which connects to the clock dis- play board, The display board carries an SPI -com- patible LED driver IC type MAX7219. Driving this device over a standard SPI bus gives the advantage that al- most any microcontroller system can be used as the master, whether based on 8051, R8C, ATMega or PIC. The only point to bear in mind is that it must be possible to create die LOAD, CLK and DIN control signals of the SPI bus us- ing the hardware, or that the selected microcontroller must already provide an on-chip SPI bus interface. In the lat- ter case the communications software required is extremely straightforward. MAX7219 This device is capable of driving up to 64 individual 20 mA LEDs using a mul- tiplexing scheme. The most importanE uC system with RTC optionally with DCF77 receiver +5V LOAD i 1 CLK DIN — T GND I | SPI BUS + 5V 2 R S2t MAX7219 > display with 24 LEDs buzzer 050335-12 Tiguie 3 Jlotk diagram aj 1 he flock. Ihe micnMOflJroltei system drives Ihe display using no SPJ bus. 1:2007 - efriter ekdrem’rs 49 CSLGiB l-Lt. eh x T XZIX Fiauie L Timing diagram of c PC4|£DG4SDA| FDe*AlN0? PCS(Aac&SCU PDT(A.[Jn| ATmegaB PBOftCPI FB^UOEiOC-Sf PB1{OCtAJ PB41«J$Q) pa2isaacisi FS5,SCK> GHQ XTAL1 XTAL2 AGIiD Z7f> t i iciUHi 27p Tt 12 IB 22 "CH 329 ii H 330 H H 520 i: “Lii£i£ ~j 330.. ■ j S3 g a - j BIQ LL IB O 19 u 1 -T\- K1 89 RIO Fill HI 2 813 R14 R15 Hie 1 02 Job Jd4 \m Io5 Idt I M*3P rll i a, fii €> 83 ©. €). S €) €) €) © f JB €> 8x BC54S oe^ui4’ i i The dirifil comprises fundnm^nraJly Jurl ait AYE controller linked to a Hall tensor (IC3) ihol switches the eight LEDsh two resonating capacitors (C4 and G5). Voltage regular or is the trustworthy oid 7805 (1 02) As the microcontroller cannot source enough currenr for pulsing the hefty LEDs, a follower stage comprising transistors T1 to T8 is provided. The eight rotating LEDs ‘write’ an image built up from eight lines of light (not from left to right of course but in con- tinuous 360-degree rotation) and for this reason the microcontroller needs to be synchronised with what in TV or computer displays we would call a frame pulse , a signal indicating the start of a new image. This task is han- dled by the Hall switch (IC3), which alters its output level when it detects a magnetic held (in the vicinity of a magnet in other words). Its nor- mal state produces a 'high' output that goes low' on approaching a magnet. This change of level sets in motion the process of building up the image, which the software in the micro controller looks after. Software The ATmegaS is an AVR controller by Atmel P belonging to the family of RISC controllers {with reduced control set). The program For the rolling text is not written in Assembler, however, but in the well-known BAS- GGM AVR- BASIC Language. This software, along with extreme- ly very detailed annotations, can be downloaded freely from the Ele- I 1 I I 1 1 I I 1 I r i E. What does AVIR stand for? V/e wondered tod. Apparently AimeJ says AVR 1= a name and stand's for nothing in particular. Another opinion states It's a play on the designers' names, an acronym for Alf {Egil Bagen) and Ve- gard [V/oflanj's RISC processor. The a I legatfon that it stands for Advanced Vi dual RISC sounds unlikely but you con take your choke! •t I I I i i i i i i t i i ktor Electronics website (data file 060014-11. zip). The program produces small image elements representing text fragments relating to character strings stored in the controller. These text fragments are 1 * 2007 - e’dJe: e la) rc mss 55 IANDS-ON LED TEXT DISPLAY Vtew oi I he rolufing arm with the tojifroikf dffuft board. g ■ re Conh’pration of ihe eight i£Df d 3he end of the rolot then re-written as col umns and fed out to the LEDs in a defined time frame. The rotation of the motor creates the impression of text written around the periphery of a cylinder The controller can accept a maxi- mum of 255 characters for the scroll- ing text. These characters are stored in t he IN STRING array, which con- tains three elements (three segments of text) that axe read out and displayed sequentially. Readout of these characters is synchro- nised by the Hah switch already men- tioned, which also provides the infor- mation whether the motor is in opera- tion (when the motor is static the LEDs all remain unlit). The length of the roll- ing text in rhe ‘display' depends on the radius of the circle created by the rotat- ing LEDs, hence on the length of the rotor arm. The set-up illustrated in the photos operates with a text length of 30 characters. The program operates as an endless loop that is synchronised by the Hall switch and delivers 30 charac- ters continuously The software produces the following characters; capital loners from A to Z (including the accented letters A, O and U), a null or space symbol, ques- tion mark, exclamation mark, full stop, comma and hyphen. A subroutine is programmed for each character, making it straightforward to substitute or alter these symbols. A subroutine consists simply of multiple write commands to Port D r which con- trols the LEDs Each write command is followed by a brief pause created by a Wait loop. Each Write command creates one col- umn of the relevant character, which is composed of several of these columns each having eight pixels vertically- This makes it easy to design a character on squared paper and transpose the col- umns from left to right into Bytes. If you visualise the Wait loop (subroutine l Wa') in the source code, it is easy to work out how a character will actually. For example: Sub A Portd = &B1 1000000 Por-td - &B00110000 Portd = &300101110 Portd = &B00 100001 Portd = &B00101110 Portd = 6B00110000 Portd = &B1IQ 00000 Portd = &B0OG000QO tfa Wa End Sub is selected (variable + Strz). At the end of the third text segment the display reverts to the first segment of text and begins again. If you significantly vary parameters such as rotarional speed and diameter of the rotating LEDs, then a few altera- tions need to be made to the program: Using a different radius (rotor arm length) the number of characters vis- ible in the display r (diverging from 30) must be adjusted (at two locations in the program). Alteration to rhe number of revolutions per minute requires adjustment of the pixel length (subroutine s Wa'). The text readout speed (the rate at which the text scrolls) can be varied. The number of text segments can be in- creased (tills requires a controller with greater memory storage, however). Circuit consUudion The last write command always has a zero value in order to extinguish the LEDs. The wait duration of the subrou- tine 'Wa f must be configured accord- ing to the rotational speed of the motor (just test out various values to deter- mine the best oue for you). Playout begins with die first 30 char- acters of the first text segment held in INSTRENG. After four revolutions of the motor (monitored by the variable ‘Lanier 1'} the text is incremented and displaced by one character (the start position of the text is monitored in 'Laufer'). Once the end of the first text segment is reached, the next segment The circuitry Ls relatively easy to con- struct by following the circuit diagram. As the DIL version of the ATmegaB is used ( ATmegaB- 16PU) t there are no surface -mounted defaces or other prob- lematic issues to contend with. Resis- tors R9 to R16 must be selected accord- ing to the nominal current of the LEDs used. They can be calculated simply as series resistors for b V The sample set- up used a value of 56 LL To assist construction yon can down- load the author's circuit board layout and component plan together with the component list from the Elsktor Elec- 56 tlthof dedroniis - 1/2007 h 3 ■ ■ : A dip ring pmridei lbs power supply lo ihe rolEifionnf tinustrf. cronies website {January 2007 items). You do t however, need to note that the designations used on the component plan may either vary from those shown in tiie circuit diagram (Figure 1) or else may not be shown at all. However, the circuit board does correspond with the diagram electrically and can always be cross-checked in case of doubt, A rectangular format was selected for the circuit board, matching the dimen- sions of the rotor aim, with a separate smaller board provided at the end. of the arm for the LEDs mounted one above the other (see photos). To make the 5- mm LEDs align with the hole spacing of normal 2.54 mm-spaced pen-board, the LED bodies need to be flattened a little with a file on two opposite sides (don't overdo this). The LED board is connected to the oilier board using a length of 9 -conductor fiat ribbon ca- ble, The anodes of the LEDs are con- nected with one another and to — 5 V. whilst the cathodes are wired to the series resistors provided (R9 to RIG). D2 (linked to Rl) is the uppermost LED on the board and D9 (linked to R8) is the bottom LED. If the LED array is wired the wrong way round (D9 on top, D2 below), the text will appear upside down! Programming The tree download 060014-11 -zip con- tains .bas f .hex and bin files. The .has hie holds the source code in ‘Bascom' format. The .hex or bin data can be hashed direct into the ATMegaB and is then ready to mn. The data supplied will produce scrolling text of the dem- onstration message programmed by the author. If you would like to program your own text you will need Bascom. For this open the file Schrift.bas and change the contents of the array INSTRING. All that remains to do is press F7 to compile the new source code. After connecting the operating volt- age (9 to 12 V) the controller can be programmed. To do this you link the programming connections (K1 on the circuit diagram) via a suitable pro- grammer (Pony Prog for example) with the PC and hash the file Schrift.bin or Schrift.hex into the chip (set fusebits externally to 16 MHz), If you would like to try compiling with the free BASCOM-AVR DEMO 1.11.8.3 software you will need to restrict the length of your text and avoid fillin g the INSTRING array with three texts, since the demonstration version will not compile more than 4 kB of code. Mechanical mailers For the ‘rotor 1 an arm made of sheet aluminium about 50 cm long was used. At the centre of the arm you need to fix a small bush that needs to be connect- ed with good elecmcal conducdvity to the drive shaft of the motor. The return wire is screwed or otherwise clamped to the casing of the motor. A slip ring of clean printed circuit board materi- al (not the sort chat is pre- coated with photosensitive lacquer) is fixed to the upper surface of the motor and wired up to the positive (plus) side of the voltage source. Above the slip ring a small carbon brush is fixed on the rotor arm in an insulated mounting to avoid contact with the aluminium sheet. Fi- nally a magnet is fixed to the motor casing in such a position that the Hail sensor mounted on the rotor arm pass- es through its magnetic field at each revolution and is thus activated. The circuit board is now fixed to the ro- tor aim (ideally without putting it out of balance). Power supply arrangements involve wiring the return (ground) connection on the circuit board to the bush on the drive shaft and the posi- tive connection to the carbon brush. If the arm remains unbalanced this can be corrected by using compensating weights. The power source (a 9 to 12 V plug-in power supply) can now be connected up to die slip ring (positive connection) and the motor casing (ground return). The current drawn by the circuit is set mainly by the total draw of the LEDs, to which you must add that of the mo- tor if the same power supply is used for both. As soon as die power is connected and the arm rotates scrolling text should be visible on the ‘display' — just like in the photo at the beginning of the article... DEDUC'D ps lbs nvlhor wa successf ul nut fust »i th ffcfs spsuot a$si§nmnl but die tilth hh finof £t o erJ k t\w $fv£ f lng itetttenki on £ Iniousofian hthnokgf cl the IVfcrf tdflif fedumjJ Cclkgs if Held*, OntRnny* 1/20*07 - dehor etaf ranks 57 he Vinculum family of USB Host Controller not only handles the USB Host interface and data transfer functions but owing to the inbuilt processor core and embedded Flash memory. Vinculum encapsulates the USB device classes as well. When interfacing to mass storage devices such as USB Flash drive, digital camera, or PDA, Vinculum also transparently handles the FAT File structure communicating via UART, SPI or parallel FtFO interfaces via a simple to implement command set. Vinculum provides a new cost effective solution for providing USB Host capability into products that previously did not have the hardware resources available. CONNECTS WITH 0 'JSE Un & FDA USB PORT 1 USB PORT 2 CRYSTAL USB HOST/ SLAVE SIE 1 64k x 8 FLASH MEMORY USB HOST/ SLAVE SIE 2 12 MHz osc PLL FILTER J c ONTROLLER 4 k x 8 l SRAM UART AD BUS fl-7 | /F 4 > FIFO AC BUS 0-7 l/F < ► BDBUS 0-7 4 ! > to PORTS BCBUS 0-3 < ► tint iiiii MCU Serial Pm US8 K hi K'e- jia Future Technology Devices International Umited 373 Scotland Street, Glasgow, G5 8QB, United Kingdom Tel: ++44 (0) 141 429 2777 Fax: +44 (0) 141 429 2758 Email: vinculum.sales@ftdichip.com Vinculum Evaluation Modules & Application Areas The module is an MCU to USB Host Controller development module for the VNC1L device and is ideal for rapid prototyping and development ofVNCILdesigns. • Jumper selectable UART. SPI or FIFO MCU Interfaces • USB "A ' type sockeiio interface with USB peripherals • 2nd USB Interface available via module pins if required • Single 5V supply input • Auxiliary 3.3V/200mA power output to power external logic • Traffic Indicator LEDs VDRIVE1 is possibly the easiest solution for adding a USB Flash Drive interface to existing products, Only four signal lines plus 5V/GND are required to be connected. 0 One USB ’A’ socket to connect to USB Flash Drive * Link Selectable UART or SPI interface * Only 4 signals to connect excluding PWR/GND * Single 5V supply required « Easy to implement command set is a product that not only lets you add USB Flash Drive interfacing to your product but allows you to play back MP3 and other popular digital music formats direct from a USB Flash Drive. ■ One USB A" socket to connect to USB Flash Drive • Stereo 3.5mm headphone jack socket and audio line-out connector for audio playback. • Link Selectable UART or SPI interface • Only 4 signals to connect excluding PWR/GND • Single 5V supply required • Easy to implement command set VINCULUM - - — * ■ % V * j \\ y / w http://www.vinculum.com fECHNOLOGY ENGINE TUNING Engine tuning for scooters (and mopeds) has always been popular. In the past this could only be done mechanically and required a certain level of know-how. In the present electronics age there are other ways of boosting the engine power of scooters. The number of ways in which scooters can be tuned is still relatively small compared to those for cars. There are some very Innova live concepts, however. Bui whaf is practical and what do you need to do? To answer that we first take a look at ihe basics of tuning. Tuning There are two types of tuning: increasing ihe engine pow- er, or limiting it. Lets start with a look at the latter. There are many different ways of mechanically iimiling the engine power, such as limiting the amount of fuel mix- ture fed to ihe engine or reducing the size of ihe exhaust port. But ihere are also electronic solutions. Many modern scooters come with electronic rev limiters. With contempo- rary scooters you often find they have a combination of mechanical and electronic limiters. One way in which to limit the revs is fo interrupt the igni- tion. Once a certain speed (and hence □ certain number of revs) has been reached the ignition is interrupted for one or more cycles of the engine. This stops the scooter from speeding up any more. This type of limiting can be implemented with a specially designed CDI unit [see inset). But there are also other con- trol circuits that take care of the limiting. These are fitted between the normal CDI unit and the ignition coik If you want to remove the limiting you II either need to remove the control circuit or change the CDI unit. It may of course also be possible to adapt the GDI unit or control circuit via dedicated hardware and/or software. Where a control circuit is used it is of course very easy to bypass it, A simple switch can be used to make the scooter work with or without the limiter. However, bypass- ing the limiter like this is of course illegal. Apart from Ihe electronic limiter there is often a mechani- cal limiter as well, in the form of a disc fhot stops ihe Vorl- omalit [see inset) from going into its top gear . This disc should also be removed when the rev limiter is bypassed, otherwise the engine may be damaged at high revs. These days there are better limiters available which con- tinuously adjust the ignition rather than interrupt if for □ longer period. These reduce the production of harmful gasses and oil residues in the exhaust. How to get started First of all, we have to make dear that all tuning activities that change (increase) the power and maximum speed have to be approved and noted by the relevant authori- ties. Otherwise the scooter will be uninsured and can't be used an public roads. In practice ihere is hardly any difference between the electronic tuning of scooters and chip tuning of cars. In both cases we make use of the inherent tolerances de- signed into the engine by the manufacturer, in order to improve the engine performance and increase its power. As an example, the Ignition table is modlFled, with the that you'll only use the proper fuel and top- assumption grade oil. 60 dcl.tiir dstfroniB - 1/2007 Scooter tuning without getting your hands dirty There aren't really that many parameters that can be ad- justed for scooters, and certainly not as many as Far cars. The mast important, and often the only ones, are the pre- viously mentioned ignition table, a few control parameters and the maximum number of revs. Electronic tuning with the aim to increase the power is therefore mainly used in sccoters when mechanical changes are made at the same time. The CDI can then be adapted far these changes, to obtain the best performance from the engine. GameBoy As you will have gathered From several post Eiektor Elec- tronics projects, the Nintendo GameBoy console is not limited for use as o gomes computer It is also perfectly suitable for many other applications. Taking this one step further the German firm AlphaTechnik [2] has designed a dedicated hardware/soFtware add-on far this games com- puter. The result is the SpeedConiroller, a complete tuning and diagnostic instrument for scooter workshops. It can be used to adjust both the maximum speed as well as the power [either Increasing or decreasing them]. Limiting the maximum speed doesn I automatically mean that there has to be a reduction in posver. If you take a look at the graph for the power output of a Peugeot Ludix city scooter (Figure 1 j you'll see that a {legal) speed limit of 25 km/h doesn't stop you increasing the number of HRs. The increase In power is possible because the manu- facturers have designed large tolerances into the engine. A big advantage of this type of tuning is that everyday riding in traffic becomes a lot easier and the fuel con- sumption becomes better. After all, the throttle no long- er has to be turned all the way just to get the scooter moving. With the use of the SpssdController it is also possible to remove the speed restriction completely. This is done us- ing o PIN number, but this can only be used one it/ne. This means that once the restriction has been removed It is no longer possible to enable it again ot a later date. This stops people from temporarily putting back the speed lim- iter for the MOT or police patrol or and removing It again afterwards, this is the result of a strict EU directive, which came into being to reduce the tampering with the limiting systems, or even make it impossible to make changes. Summary These days there are several tuning methods for scoot- ers that are relatively easy to install and which can either increase or limit the power. You should keep in mind that bypassing, or tampering with, the limiters is illegal In some countries it Is permissible to Increase the power within reason [up to about 4.5 kW or 6 HP). One advan- tage of this Is that the fuel consumption improves which leads to Fewer harmful exhaust gas emissions. You'll also find that the riding experience is more fun, which [if we re honest) is what it s all about. Rgme I. This graph for the povref output deoily ihvm what dfc-'l ihs fun mg hat. Groan h bofaro and blua Is aflar tuning. Web links: [ 1 ] a n . w i ki □ ad 1 a . o r g/ wl k i /Tw o - s t ro ke _ en g i ne [2] wvAv alphoteHchnik.de [3) en r vvikipedio.org v/iki/Voriomatic See also: vwAv.pmtuning.co.uk j cdI : CD! stands for Capacitor DIschargE Ignition. The CDI unit calculates the optimal Ignition timing far the current revs. To obtain the maximum power the ignition shou'd take place when the piston is just before the fop of its stroke. Because the piston moves foster with : no easing revs and the gas mixture always requires the same amount of time to fulh . burn, the ignition has to fire earlier with Increasing revs. i Variomafic ! The Variomcrtic is a stepless full;, automatic transmission developed in the early 1960s by the Dutch cor manufao- ■ turer DAP It works os follows: the drive belt sits between ■ rwo con: cal drums. With increasing revs the distance be- . tween the two drums changes due to centrifugal weights, t which results in a stepless change in the transmission ratio ■ {refer to f3[ for more details). One side effect of this type or transmission is that vehicles I with this 'gear box' can travel just as fast backwards as I l they can forwards, which is funny to see and much used in ■ amateur car races. I I I I Nowadays this type of transmission is usee mainly in scoot- ers, quads, snowmobiles and piltar drills. A further develop - I meat of inis is the so- called CVT system, which is used by * Audi under the nome "Multitronic in several of Its cars, l» — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — I ,'2007 - efdtf&rstearorutS 61 TECHNOLOGY ENGINE TUNING W® u p S p Modern car enginec Henk Dijkstra In the world of engine tuning, spanners and screwdrivers have been replaced by palmtops or PCs and flash programming routines. These days even the bonnet can remain down and the ECU need not be opened. Via OBD a quiet runabout can be transformed into a roaring sports car. It is well-known that a modem car is filled to ihe brim with electronics. In I 990 there were only a couple of ECUs per vehicle. Thai number hos now increased to 10 or 50 or even more ECUs per car. In addition to the engine con- troller and ASS controller we now also see dashboard-, network- air conditioning-controllers etc. emerge. Further- more, the computing power is ever increasing as well (see Figure I], The necessity of more computing power is driven mostly 1996 2001 2003 2005 Figure I - Ave/oge number of MIPS of rmcjofon frolics usd In ECUs. by the increased emission requirements and diagnostic abilities. Direct injection engines in particular, require a lot of computing power because of their multiphase Fuel injection. An example of the tasks and processes that a modern ECU deals with are aullined in Figure 2. Some of the ICs that we ore likely to find in an ECU are: o q voltage regulator and processor watchdog; © a driver 1C with 5PI diagnostic interface / SPI or PWM input; © a CAN-bus interface 1C; © 2 MHz 8-bit microcontroller with 8 kilobyte flash memory on board; © and a 40-MHz, 32-bit microcontroller with 2 MB flash memory on board. ECU reprogramming To improve the performance of the engine you can inter- fere electronically with the engine controller. Profession- als with a lot of expertise can change the parameters and 62 clskror sl=nronit5 - 1, i- 2007 ! J2534 standard i | The J2^34 standard came about to enable garages that ore not part of a brand franchise to carry out programming operations ( on ECUs .v it bout having to invest in expensive, proprietory equipment. Et is easily possible that a software update is required to ensure that c ear conforms again to the emission requirements. This ^ standard makes that easier. Unfortunately, not all manufacturers participate in this (yptj« | The J2534 standard is sometimes also called the pass-thru standard. To be able to program an ECU, software horn the mcnu- | taclurer is required, as well as hardware that complies with the J2534 standard. The number of manufacturers that support the j J2534 standard grows every year. To buy the programming software a visit to the manufacturer website often suffices, Hondo j | for example: http://techmfohonda,c€sm/rjanhis/RJAAl00}_iooh2,asp^hom£-Y \ Analog Signals Battery Voltage Engine Temperature Intake Air Temp. Air Quantity Throttle Position Oxygen Sensor ■ '■■■■ a | m m m m i ■ ■ ■ ■. ■ ifi ■ Digital Signals Ignition Qn/OEf Camshaft Position Vehicle Speed Gear selection ri a -fc a * a i i ■ i ill ■ i i da .a ■9 # m * 9 ■■ ■ * ¥ ¥ » B« * + * ■» ■ Bl ■ B B B B B> ■ ■ B' B B ■ II B B B 0633E3- 11 ADC MCi RAM > Flash- EPROM EEPROP4 jjC2 ] Spark Plugs Injector Coils Fuel Pump Relay Secondary Air Pump Relay Start relay Climate control Relay Alternator Engine Speed Output Diagnosis lamp Cooling Fan Relay Canister Purge Valve Idle Speed Control Lambda Healing Camshaft Control Figure- 2, The Hardware Engine Controller Ibis keeps an eye on an ever increasing number ol sensors. Legislation The car manufacturer Is legally required lo take various precautionary measures so that unauthorised programming of Ins vari- ous controllers Is not possible. This is mostly to prevent an increase In exhaust emissions. However, if there Is o change in the aspiration of ihe engine, perhaps because of a change in exhaust system, It is often desirable to change the ECU calibration so that ihe emission requirements are again complied with. It may not be formally permitted to change Ihe program, but it is actually desirable to return the air/fuel ratio back to the correct value. It for example, -veil -known that a Subaru Impreza is adjusted quite rich (here is where the manufacturer slightly overshot the concept of safe engine adjustment" or perhaps the shareholders of the oil sheiks/ and a little bll of electronic meddling" can re- sult in not only mare engine power, but also - at partial load - lower fuel consumption ond therefore a lower emission of CO-i Whatever changes are made to □ car engine, in the 'UK, MOT approval will determine whether or not a vehicle is allowed to \ go on Ihe road. 1/2007 - efeVtor ekdroma 63 rECHNOLOGY ENGINE TUNING 3. Example of a fuel table. Boied on this lobEs the ECU bob up what |h& ratio between tad and air ntedi la he tar a certain engine load, temperature ond engine spe-ed. figure 4. Su bora-prog ramming with Ihe handheld pra^rammer from * cr*taifdifpjd tables that are stored In the ECU. These changes make it necessary to recalibrate the controller, A change in the exhaust and/or intake system changes ihe aspiration of the engine to such an extent that it will no longer comply with ihe emission standards that are legally defined. The factory settings (calibration) are, offer all, based an a standard intake and exhaust system. Now that mare air is sucked into the engine — ai least that is the intention if more performance is required — more fuel needs to be injected os well The amount of fuel supplied is typically looked up from a table by the ECU based on the fallowing main parameters (see Figure 3): 0 engine load; 9 engine speed; 0 engine temperature. Along the Y-axis we find the engine speed and along ihe X-axis the engine load. The engine temperature is looked- up from another table. As an example we take 6000 rpm (revolutions per minute) and 3.96 grams of air per cylinder. We can then see that the AFR-value is 10.01 , In this case therefore : \ part fuel to every 10 parts of air. If, far example, v/e enter ihe value 9,0 in ihe fable, then the effective injection time will increase to get more fuel into the cylinder. Obviously the correct values have to be entered to pre- vent expensive engine damage and maintain conform- ance to emission requirements. Programming vici OSD A lot is involved in order to program new table values info ihe ECU, In the past if was a case of desolder log the (E]PROM and replacing \t with a version with the new code. These days all ECUs are provided with flash memory, which may or may not be a separate chip. Ac- cess to the ECU memory is always possible via OSD, This requires that the ECU is first placed into a special security mode. To put the ECU in security mode you need to ask for a 'seed'. This needs to be answered by the program- mer with the correct key \ There are often multiple levels of security. Far some cars a ready-made solution is avail- able in the form of a handheld programmer Hard and software The hardware provides for proper communication be- tween the software and the ECU while programming. Consequently, the hardware has to have the right kind of interface, such as ISO CAN, etc. and support non-stand- ard baud rales such os 10,400 or 15 625 baud (bits/s). In same cases a programming voltage is also required. But in most cases standard OBD-hardv/are will suffice. If the car manufacturer supports the J2534 standard, then it is enough to buy a J2534 hardware interface. See |1], for example. Software is often available from the manu- facturer of the car. See also the inset J2534-standard< Programming software often makes use of the service modes, as described in the $AE J2190 standard En- hanced E/E Diagnostic Test Modes, see [2] . The most common J2 190 service modes for re-program- ming are: $10 start diagnostic service 520 stop diagnostic service 527 ask far security access (seed, key) 64 elector detlranin - 1/2007 $34 osk for upload to controller $35 ask for download from controller $36 data transmission ta/from controller $37 ask transmission exit $3D write to memory Although the service modes are described in the SEA J2190 standard Enhanced E/E Diagnostic Jest Modes, the parameter identifiers (PIDs) are manufacturer specific. The manufacturer determines the programming order and security access according to their requirements. In this way the security key could be 32 bits long, but it just as well be i 28 bits long. Reverse engineering When the manufacturer is not prepared to supply the nec- essary information and also does not make available any programming software then the only option that remains is reverse engineering of the controller software Fortunately there are ever more manufacturers who are prepared to supply programming software to allow their ECUs to be updated. To discover the correct program ming order and to obtain security access the processor code will have to be unrav- elled, This requires a processor dependent disassembler and interface. Because it Is necessary to work at the level of assembly language, this tends to be quite a llme-con- suming process. Depending on the way the programming operation is implemented by the manufacturer, it may also be necessary to write a kerne! and/or flash programming routines just io be able to program the flash at all. This is 1 Glossary AFR Air rue! Rolio, ratio between tael and air. CAN-b us Controller Area Network; asynchronous, serial | bus system developed for ihe use in cars. ECU Electronic Control Unit; the "board computer , which controls all the electronics. MIPS Million Instructions Per Second; Number at in- structions that a cant-aHer can process per unit of time for example, adding two numbers is one instruction). PWM Pulse Width Modulation; a standard for signal transmission In which the duty cycle of a rec- tangular wove contains the information of the signal. QBD On-Board Diagnostic; electronic diagnostic system far vehides. SPI Serial Peripheral interface; standard for a se- rial interface for a digital signal network. g The holy cow will not disappear from our driveway any time soon while ihe electronics becomes over more so- phisticated. In all likelihood, IT will place an increasing role in the garage of the future. That's quite a promise I . . 1 Web links; [1 j www, po s si h njxs.co m 12 J www.sae.org [3j wvAv.fasIchip.nl The dqp that o roedinnk got dirty hands wh&n tuning cn engine ore gon?,,. therefore not o job for the novice. Car versus computer? The present-day tuning of cars looks more like hacking than if looks like working in a garage. Because of the far-reaching integration of electronics in ihe car at today, an increasing number of adjustments can only be carried out electronically. To make things safe and to comply with various legal requirements, the manufacturers lock up the software as much as is possible. Subsequently, several tuning companies such as Fastchip are busy decoding the software in order to be able to make 'adjustments themselves. This sounds a little like what happens in the pc software arena: hackers who circumvent the protection mechanisms to enable them to moke a backup of their be- loved Xbox game... 1 2007 - ebkterrkdroniB Paul Goossens and Andreas Voggeneder In this instalment of the course We're going to pu together our own USB microcontroller. In terms of technical features, it _ can certainly hold its own against commercial USB controllers such as the Cypress 1C. Hie specifications of our home-grown USB controller embedded inlo an FPGA are certainly nolhing to be ashamed of: USB core occupies 256 addresses Figure 1 shows the block diagram of ihe overall system, while Figure 2 deplete Ihe memory organisation. • 8052 processor running at 48 MHz with single dock cycle per byte Fetch • full-speed USB controller with Five endpoints • 8 K8 of ROM • 4 KB of RAM Registers The USB core has a endpoint: • EP[CM]_Contra! • EP 0-4 Status • EP 0-4 _Tronstype_Stotus • EP 0-4’_NAK_Transtype_Siatus We built the USB controller by extending the familiar 8052 care with a USB controller core, which is also freely available from OpenCores (www. open cores .corn)* This is not the place to delve into the details of how ihe USB core works or its internal structure. What matters here is how if is linked to the 8052 core and haw to use if in prod ice. The USB core ts the USBHostSfove core from OpenCores ( www. o pen cores, or g/p r o \ec\s . eg i /web/us b host s la ve/ove r- view}. It was designed by Steve Fielding, and it has the following properties: • register-configurable low-speed / high speed mode (1 .5 Mbps or 1 2 Mbps) • 4 Freely available endpoints, each with a 64-byfe FIFO • support for control, bulk, interrupt, and isochronous transfers • host mode • 8-bit Wishbone bus interface The EndpomLConlrol registers can be used to control or drive endpoints For purposes such as sending data, setting or clearing stall states, or setting ihe operating mode af an endpoint (isochronous or bulk). The Endpatni_5ialus registers provide information about the current status of the endpoints — for instance, whether data has been re- ceived or an error has occurred. The EndpoinLTranstype Status register contains rnFof motion about the last successful transfer between the PC and the USB core, such as whether o setup package was received. The Endpoint_NAK Tronstype_Status register displays any errors that may have occurred during the data transfer. Besides these four primary control registers, each end point has an Rx FIFO buFferand a Tx FIFO buffer, eacl with a depth of 64 bytes. These two FIFOs can be con trailed using an additional set oF six registers for each The USBHostSlave core is couplt trailer via the Wishbone bus. As the USB core appear in the XRAj words, they are addressed as ex deklijr eMmniu ■ 1/2007 E P[0-4]_Rx_Fi fo_Dato EP 0-4 _R>:_Fifo_Dalo_CoLFnr_MSB EP 0-4 _Rx_FiFo_Dafa_CounH_5B EP 0-4 _Rx_Fjfo_Contfol EP[0-4 _Tx_Fifa_Dala E P [0-4 j _T x_f i fo_Co n f ro I Among other things, these registers are used to read data received via the endpoint from the associated Rx FIFO ond check the fill level of ihe FIFO, to write data to a Tx FIFO, and to empty (flush) the FIFOs. There are also several general Slave Control (SC) regis- ters, including: • SC^Confrol • 5C_Line_Stotus • SC_Ad dress • 5C_[nternjpf_$tolus / Mask The SC_Control register can be used to enable or disable the USB slave portion and configure if in either full-speed mods [12 Mbps) or low-speed mode (1.5 Mbps). The SCJi ne_5taius register can be used to check the line sta- tus (link to the PC) to determine whether a link actually ex- ists [plug connected) or the link is interrupted somewhere. The SC_Ad dress register is used to set the slave address assigned by the PC during the enumeration process. The 5C_ nterrupt_Mask register specifies which interrupts are allowed (which means they can generate an 8051 inter- rupt] and which ones ore not allowed. The microcontroller con use the SCJnterrupt_5tatus register to determine ihe source of on interrupt. Besides these slave-specific registers, there is also a large set of registers for the USB host portion, but they are not described here. As described later on in this article the FPGA board cannot act as a host. Hardware The pull-up resistance that defines the connect condition can decontrolled by the microcontroller via port line P3,7. P3.7 is high after o reset MOSFcT T6 (which con- nects the pull-up resistor to D+) is cut off under this condi- tion, so the PC does not see any connected device. When the software has initialised ihe USB core and is ready to communicate with the PC, it pulls P3.7 low. This causes Vne to be connected to +3.3 V via the 1 ,5-kQ resistor. As a result, ihe PC sees that a full-speed device [1 2 Mbps) is connected and initiates communication with the FPGA board. The USBHosfSIave core needs a 48-MHz dock. This is stipulated by the USB specification. A dock signal at this frequency is derived from the 50-MMz clock signal by a PLL In the FPGA. The USB core ond the T8052 core are both driven by the 48AAHz dock signal. As theT8Q52 core can execute all instructions in 1 to 4 dock cycles (ex- cept the divide Instruction, which tokes 1 2 dock cycles), this provides a considerable amount of computing power (at least for an 805 1 ]. J he USB core in the FPGA handles all the tasks necessary for USB communication with the PC. All that remains to be provided is the USB physical interface (USB Phy). Its job is to provide the electrical interface (level adjustment). This task Is also handled by the FPGA. Mixed Language Besides VHDL, there are several other ways to design o digital circuit. One of them Is to use o graphic drawing package. We described this option in earlier instalments of this course. Other entry methods include Verilog, AHDL, System C, and so on. Fortunately, the Guarius compiler con also handle some oF these languages. Using two or more different lan- guages is called 'mixed-language design'. The U5B core used in this instalment was designed In Vent eg. Some of the other components were designed in VHDL, Our design con thus be regarded os o mixed-lan- guage design (port Veritog ond port VHDL). I he main advantage of this Is shot you are not limited to using only VHDL cores or only Veritog cores. You con use them in combination in your designs without any prob- lems. However, you do need to know the Veritog equiva- lents of some VHDL terms, such os 5TD LOG1C signals. 1 he link between ihe VHDL part and the Veritog part is located in the USB.vhd 'Je. This tile is who! is colled a ‘wrapper', and its purpose is to export Verilaa signets as VHDL signals. Ihs USBHwfifova tore In ihe T£0S2 qrlsm. QxFFFF CODE OxFFFF XRAM USB HaetSiave OxFFOQ 0x1 FFF OxGFFF 0x0000 Ox Q 000 6k RO?.! 4k XRAM Figure 2. TEQS2 memory &rgo nifation. 1-2007 - ebto&r slecfroiiks 67 HANDS-ON FPGA Figure 3 Stock diagram of Ih* USB core The USB core also supports host mode, which means it can act as a PC far functions such as enumerating and driving a US8 mouse or other type of USB device. How- ever host mode cannot be used with the FPGA prototyp- ing board because it Sacks the necessary hardware [ex- terna] to the FPGA). Here the USB core can only be used in slave mode v/ith Sow-speed (1*5 Mbps) or full-speed [1 2 Mbps) data transfer. Sample application Our demo application here (ex22j involves connecting an HID keyboard. It identifies itself to the PC as a keyboard, which causes the PC to use the Human Interface Device (HID) protocol defined in the USB standard. The main pur- pose of the HID protocol is controlling input devices such as keyboards, mice and joysticks. The principal advan- tage of Inis protocol is that all major operating systems (Window, Linux and MacOS) incorporate drivers for it, so they do not hove to be written for individual devices. Endpoints 0 and 1 are used for communication with the PC* Endpoint 0 is a control endpoint, which must be present in every USB device. It is used For basic communi- cation with the PC (enumeration). Enumeration is a proc- ess that takes place immediately after a USB device is connected to a host (PC), Each new device is recognised by the 1 -5-kQ resistor connected to the D+ or D- line in every U5S device. If the resistor is connected to the D-r line the device is a full-speed device [12 Mbps); other- wise it is a low-speed device (1.5 Mbps). The FPGA pro- totyping board has a switchable resistor for eoch of these lines, so you con configure it as desired as a full-speed or low-speed device. The PC detects the type of device during enumeration and assigns a slave address to the device. The appropriate driver is ihen loaded based on the Device_Descriptor data sent by the device. After this has been completed, on application can communicate with the device. In this cose, the driver is the HID driver provided by the operating system. Other endpoints are not enabled until after the driver has been loaded. In the case oF the HID keyboard, this is endpoint 1 , which octs as on interrupt endpoint (IN = device to PC) and is used for transmitting keystrokes. On the Efek/or Electronics FPGA protohyping board, push- buttons S2-S4 and the eight DIP switches in S5 are used as keys', with 54 serving as a Shift key. 51 acts as the re- set button for resetting the 8052 and the USB core. LED 7 acts as the indicator For the Number Lock function, while LED 6 acts os the Caps Lack indicator and LED 5 as the Scroll Lock indicator. Bonus application Our second sample application [ex23] is a PS/2 to USB adopter. You can use this adapter to connect □ keyboard with o PS/2 connector to a USB port of a PC. The PC will see the keyboard as a USB keyboard. The FPGA causes the keystrokes of the PS/2 keyboard to be transferred via the USB interface just as though they originated from a real USB keyboard* Naturally, this example uses the PS/2 interface as well as the USB interface. This means the associated firmware is more extensive, bul if you read the PS/2 Instalment you should be able to understand how this application works As usual, the software for the examples described in this instalment is available on the Elehtor Electronics v.ebsite under item number 060025-8-1 1 [go to Magazine -* January 2007 — * FPGA Course Port 8). i Andreas Voggeneder Andreas Voggeneder studied Hardware So f tv. ‘a re Systems Engineering (HSSE- at the University ot Applied Sciences, in Hogenherg, Austria h ttp://hsse«fh~hq ge n berg, at/ he present, , still gives occasional 'ecru re? As an enthusiastic electronics speciallsi. he deletes pari oF his time to designing digital circuits with the help ot VHDL and Venfog. He is a ! so o me deroior at OpenCores (http://www »o pencores.com/h a forum dedicated to the Freely available T5 1 8051 orccesso 4 " core used in several instalments of this course. 63 eleklor a [crania - 1/2007 DESIGN TIPS HANDS-ON Blinking C ristmas decoration Dieter FoSger Have your already set up a Chr istmas tree in your house and decorated it %vith trad I- tional lights? Build a couple of these blinking Christmas decora- tions to enhance the Christmas mood. The coloured LEDs blink in □ seemingly random sequence and rate and create a Festive appearance. The circuit For the blinking Christmas decoration has a very simple design. If is based on a type 4060 digital counter jlCi). This 1C has a built-in os- cillator with a frequency set by the combination of resistor R1 and capacitor Cl. The oscilla- tor frequency is approximately 5 kHz with the component val- ues shown here. The oscillator signal is divided by various fac- tors by the internal digital cir- cuitry of the 1C. The division Factors are designated by CT in the 1C drawing symbol. For instance, the signal on the CT3 9V 7_ 5_ 4_ S_ u V3 _15 1 2_ 3 051CD3 U output (pin 7) is a square wave with a Frequency equal to 5 kHz divided by which mean [5 kHz -s- 8) - 625 Hz. The os- cillator signal is divided by 2*' (16) on the CT4 output, by 2^ (32) on the CT5 output, and so on. The signals on each of the outputs thus change at differ- ent rates. Eleven LEDs are con- nected In three groups between sis of the counter outputs, with the result that the group of LEDs flash in an apparently random pattern. To assemble the circuit, first sol- der the 1C socket (mind the polar- ity), the two resistors, the capac- itor and the borlery dip to the triangular circuit board. Then fit the eleven LEDs. Pay attention to the polarity of the leads: the shor! lead is the cathode lead. After a final inspection, you can connect a 9-V bafiery to your Christmas blinker. It should pro- duce a festive blinking pa item I Test beeper for your stereo Ton Giesberts The test beeper generates a si- nusoidal signal with o frequen- cy of 1 ,000 Hz, a common tesi frequency far audio amplifiers. It consists of a classical Wien- Bridge oscillator (also known os o Wien-Robinson oscillator). The network that determines the frequency consisTS here of a se- nes connection of a resistor and capacitor (Rl/Cl) and a paral- lel connection (R2/C2), where the values of the resistors and capacitors ore equal to each other. This network behoves, at the oscillator frequency [I kHz in this case), as two pure resis- tors. The opamp (1C 1 ) ensures that the attenuation of the net- work |3 times) is compensat- ed for. In principle a gain of 3 times should have been suf- ficient to sustain the oscillation, but that is In theory. Because of tolerances in the values, the amplification needs to be (auto- matically) adjusted. Instead of on Intelligent ampli- tude controller we chose for a somewhat simpler solution, With PI, R3 and R4 you can adjust the gain to the point that oscilla- tion takes place. The range of PI [± 1 0%) is large enough the cov- er the tolerance range. To sustain the oscillation a gain of slightly more than 3 times is required, which would, however, cause the amplifier to clip (the round- trip signal becomes increasingly larger, after all). To prevent this from happening a resistor in se- ries with two anti-parallel diodes (Dl and D2) are connected in parallel with the feedback (PI and R3). If the voltage increas- es to the point that the threshold voltage of the diodes Is exceed- ed, then these will slowly start to canduci. The consequence of this is that the total resistance of the feedback is reduced and with that also the amplitude of the signal So Dl and D2 provide a stabilising function. The distortion ol this simple oscil- lator, after adjustment of Pi and an output voltage of 1 00 mV [P2 to maximum] is around 0,1%. You can adjust the amplitude of the output signal with P2 as re- quired for the application. The circuit is powered from □ 9-V bat- tery Because of the law current consumption of only 2 mA the circuit will provide many hours of service, . J_1S5 1/2HJ7 - elekier efecfronits 69 HANDS-ON LABTALK ten picofarads c re worth five centimetres Jan Buffing The devil's in the details, in this case, the dielectric constant of our printed circuit board material. Don't be put off! In this month's LabTalk we show how half an hour of measuring, thinking aloud and tweaking one capacitor value was rewarded by a five-fold increase in detection distance for the Elektor RFID Reader. Having been In RF electronics for about 30 years 1 must have de- veloped a special awareness for stray (that is, invisible) capaci- tance and inductance lurking In all kinds of circuits. Recently, when I saw my colleagues in the Elektor lab struggling to get RFID cards decoded using the September 2006 Elekiar RFID Reeder unit, I could not help noticing that the card distance at which the number decoding started to work. was very small indeed at just ] cm or so. Thai's disappointing compared to the MiFore Light specifica- tions which claim a for more praclical distance of 5 to 7 cm. Comparative measurements A few facts were quickly established. 1 . samples of the Elektor RFID Reader worked Fine as for as the number decoding is concerned; 2. typical cord distance for decoding was 1 cm but exceptions of 0.5 cm and 2 cm were observed; 3. a reader board from a Philips Mi Fa re development system easily achieved 5 cm using the same RFID cards. From these we can list some starting points for the investigation! 1* no problems in ihe digital circuitry on the Elektor RFID Read- er board; 2. the RFID cards are not suspect; 3. a problem may exist in the antenna and 13.56-MHz RF sec- tions of the Elektor RFID reader. Trial and error Surmising a problem with the resonance frequency of the on-board wire loop antenna, I initially got out o grid dip meter. Although a good dip was produced by the on-board antenna the measure- ment was inaccurate in that the resonance frequency appeared fa be dependent on the degree of coupling. So I hooked up an adjustable RF signal generator and on oscilloscope as illustrated in Figure T . The 1 3.56-MHz test signal of 1 \C p or so was fed inductively into the RFID Reader via a coupling antenna made from 20 turns of wire shaped to give a diameter of about 5 cm, A distance of about 5 cm was set up ; the RFID Reader was switched on, and the oscilloscope connected to the hot' end of R6 (simply because the RF-3N pin of the MFRC522 chip is hard lo get in touch with..,). Once synchronised, the scope screen loid me I had made a silly mistake in forgetting that the MFRC522 is no! just receiving a signal at 13.56 MHz, but also generating one! As a result, the signal from the RF generator was swamped by ihe carrier supplied by the TX section of the MFRC chip. Now, disabling the transmitter part of the MFRC is tricky so I decided to remove the supply volt- age altogether, making the measurement passive in essence. Super results this time — the inductively coupled signal from the RF generator showed up at R6 and I was able to make the cou pling very light by increasing the vertical distance between the beard and the coupling loop lo about 5 ems. Then the moment of truth; cheerfully turning the frequency control on the vintage HR8640B RF signal generator, the signal on the 'scope peaked at a selling of about 12.4 MHz. That's more than 1 MHz off the mark, confirm- ing my suspicion. The resonance itsslFwas nicely pronounced sug- gesting a reasonable G factor of the balanced, parallel t-C circuit Formed by the loop antenna, the tuning capacitors and (he com- ponents for impedance matching to the MFRC chip. Up with the resonance frequency Delving into the interesting part of the RFID Reader schematics (reproduced hers in Figure 2), the solution was looked obvi- 70 cktetpr cl&cl ranks - 1/2007 ous — i thought! From your textbooks you'll no doubt remember that making a parallel i-C circuit resonate at a higher frequency requires lowering the inductance (!) and/or the capacitance tQ- I did not want to mess with the etched bop antenna on the board so capacitor positions C25-C28 were given a serious review , whilst noticing that asterisked ports C26 and C28 ore not fitted. Unfortunately, in this case of □ too low resonance frequency, iess capaciiance was needed, not more, so the 'pad- ding positions C26 and C28 were useless. Apparently, the an- tenna circuit hod been designed, prototyped and tested using PC board material different from that actually used for volume production of the RFID Reader by the assembly company. In scholarly terms: the real e r value, or dielectric constant was insufficiently observed. A quick test with two 33-pF SMD Cs for C25 and C27 gave resonance at about 14.8 MHz but the next attempt with 47 pF caps was almost spot-on. in the end, it turned out that 56 pF was the value that gave resonance as dose as possible to the target frequency of 13.56 MHz, The SMD C drawer Mr. Murphy states that 10 IF 56 pF = required 20 THEN 27/33/47/68 pF = available in large quantities in rhe drawer So, 27-pF caps were fitted in positions C25/C27 and two more piggy-hocked on top of these io give a theoretical 54 pF. Good resonance -vas obtained once again, and hey presto the distance at which our RFID cards were reliably read was sud- denly a good 5 cm well within the MiFare Light specifications. Mission completed. Do it yourself Fig ure 3 shows a close-up of the PCB area in which you need to work if your RFID Reader is rather insensitive |card recogni- tion range <2 cm] and you wish to replicate the modification. Be sure to refer to the PCB component layout printed in the orig- inal article []] to positively identify the two 68-pF SMD capaci- tors C25 and C27 you need to replace. RFID Readers supplied through the Elektor SHOP now come with 56-pF SMD capaci- tors fitted instead of 68 pF Finally it appears that the antenna on the RFID Reader boord h subject to slight detuning if batteries are fitted behind it. In prac- tice, the metal surface formed by the battery pock will cause a slightly reduced sensitivity — simply compare with fhe card distance obtained with the batteries removed and powering the RFlD Reader from USB, If necessary, do the capacitor tweak- ing trick as outlined in this article to get the best possible card detection range. ~ 5 1-! C-I Reference [1] RFID Reader Elektor Electronics September 2006. Oscilloscope Elektor FID Reader approx. 5 cm reriicratJ Wir& leap ( 2 D turns) RF signal generator 075010 - 11 Figure t. Tsrl setup to find the eiod resononte frequency of theqnteneo circuitry on Ihe RFJD Reeder beard. Figure 3, Showing the two copcilots involved and the pickup poinl lor unboiamed RE Figure 3. Close-up of the FCfl area where the antenna molrhlng and tuning capacitor* are fitted. Good ejerighl and a steady hand required! 1, 2007 - 4eklor deerrorm 71 HANDS-ON MODDING & TWEAKING Display Recycling Am el-cliecap© LCB conifiroller Jeroen Domburg & Thijs Beckers LCDs are in. Just about everything these days has a display somewhere. That's nice, since the displays can always be used for something else. Of course, it's a bit difficult if the LCD doesn't have a built-in controller. The controller chips are either much too small for D1Y work (SMDs with way too many leads) or simply unavailable. But with a bit of ingenuity, it's always possible to devise a solution. If you work with LCDs and microcontrollers o lot, you cer- tainly know the feeling: you see o nifty LCD in something like o photocopier or game computer that you'd like to use in your own project You go looking For the pin layout so you can link it to your own PC or microcontroller, but it turns out that the interface consists of an Hsync line, a Vsync line, and four or eight data lines. That means the LCD is naked (no controller). To get-something on the display in this situation., you have to send the entire image af least 50 times a second. That's not such a disaster for industrial applications, since LCD controllers are inexpensive and reasonably available from distributors, but it can be o real problem for electronics hobbyists. The controller ICs are usually only available in tiny SMD packages - if they're available at all. Fortu- nately, you can use modern technology to build your own rudimentary LCD controller using parts that are easier to come by. How it works Here the idea is to operate the display In serial mode. You need several things for this: a video memory to store the image, a means to send the image to the LCD several dozen times per second (including driving Hsync, Vsync, and the other signal lines), and some way to update the data in the video memory. Discrete logic Is normally used for ihe latter two functions, but as regular readers of this topic know, a lot of problems can be solved using an AVR. In this project, we managed to 'compact' a whole lot of electronics that would normally be implemented in discrete logic info software running in an ATTiny231 3. The Tiny231 3 is nice device, but the downside is that it has only 1 5 I/O pins. This is nowhere near enough if you want to use SRAM For the video memory. It takes a 16-kS RAM chip just to feed a display svlth 320 x 240 pixels, which means 14 lines for the address data alone, and then you still need data lines, memory control lines, and control lines for the LCD. This would make a larger AVR necessary but thal's not what you want. Fortunately there's another way to tackle this problem by using another type of RAM that is used much less often by the average hobbyist: DRAM. The drawback of this sort of RAM is that it must be refreshed continually In addi- tion, it can t be connecled to a standard address bus. In this application, neither of these drawbacks presents a problem. If the DRAM is used as a video memory it will be read out (and thus refreshed] every 200 ms, and you aren't using a standard address bus here anyhow. (See the inset 'How DRAM works' for a general explanation of DRAM operation.) intelligent use With a DRAM, you have to drive a total of eight address lines plus a set data lines (four lines in this arrangement]. Th e two ad dress bytes are latched on the falling edges of RAS and CAS. This should mea n tha t t he a ddress lines can have any desired value when WE or OE goes low. It's thus possible to use the address lines for data which means you can omit the data lines. This reduces the Iota! number of multiplexed lines io eight (plus four control lines}. That's not bad if you consider that you're driving 64 kB with just 12 lines! Naturally, the Idea is to link all this to an LCD. A lype that con be used with this sort of circuit has at most eight data lines, plus a line that marks the start of a frame (FLM), a line that marks the start of a line (IP), a line for the sam- pling clock (XSCL), and possibly some other stuff such as a display-enable line or a line that has to be toggled after each frame. With a bit of luck, there will only be three control lines, and even then it's possible to combine one of the signals with one of the RAM lines. This means you need only ] 4 lines in total. If you use the last available line os a serial part to write data to the RAM, you use all the available ports of the ATTiny, Bad tuck We needed only 14 lines and two quite common ICs for the first prototype of the display controller and the first dis- play. That's not bod for something that normally requires dedicated hardware. Unfortunately things aren't always so easy No matter 72 elskinr e'sdFbiia - 1/2007 About the author how careFul you ore, o single wrong connection can be the kiss of death for your hardware and displays are no exception io the rule. To make a long story short: our first display landed in the rubbish bin along with a set of vaporised line drivers. The replacement display turned out to need an extra fine Naturally, this could be solved by using a large microcontroller, but this would probably mean that the firmware would have to be revised From the ground up. We thus had to come up with a different solu^ non. We augmented the already highly multifunctional ad* dress/data lines for the RAM with a latch to provide eight more outputs. This brought the iaial number of ICs in final version of the circuit to three, which is siill a respectably law number. Hardware We've already more or fess revealed the overall archi- tecture, so the schematic diagram in Figure 1 shouldn't contain any surprises. Input buffer R1/R2/T1 converts the R5232 signal to a TTL level, and it con be omitted if the circuit is connected directly to another microcontroller. 1C 1 drives the rest of the chips and transfers the data on Jeroen Domburg is a student at the Saxicn Technicai University in Enschede, ihe Net- herlands, Jeroen is an enthusiastic hobbyist, with interests in microcontrollers, elec- tronics and compute's. In this column he displays his personal handiwork, modifications and other i ntE ree- fing circuit s, which do not necessarily hove to be useful. In most coses they are not likely to win a beauty contest and safety is generally taken with a grain of salt. But that doesn't concern the author at alt. As tong as the circuit does v^hat it was inten- ded for then all is well. You have been warned! r __ S2&A i 1 TTTT? AJtftfcfc&hbfc _ ■ ' ■: ■ r-"- . 1 1 it '■ llr The mjifl eomposent if the PRAM. Of come, you ran buy it as*, but you cm isli/isc it front old PC rsnary modules. Mike sure you pull off jhs fi$M chip: for instance, if there are three chips on j 30-pin SIMM, each one of them provides only I bit. Figure I.Ths sthemotk diagram conslsls primarily ol ICs end data lines. You can count the other parts on the fingers of one hand. 1/2007 - debtor eletiionks - 73 WNDS-ON MODDING & TWEAKING Tbs fifil fart i?f the I iff of the idea. This prototype was put f o |e- Iher with a lot of flying bads 3rd a nifty 320 x 240 backlit dir pf af. The circuit wit built 01 a circuit board far the second (and Hail] miloa a described in the teal* And hf the way, you don't peceijari/y hire to etch 3 special circuit board to use SMO parti. the serial interface port to the video memory. 1C 2 is a latch. In principle, a 74HC373 could be used just as well here if ihe different pin layout makes things easier. Finally, IC3 is the DRAM - in this case a HY5 14400, which was salvaged from an EDO RAM module from an old PC. In principle, any RAM with a capacity of at least 64 k wards and a 4-bit daia bus could be used here. The interface lines of the LCD used here are labelled LP, FLM, FR and XSCL but other labels such as HSYNC, VSYNC, and M or CPI , CP2 and S are often used. Find the data sheei of the LCD you want to use ana see which signals it uses. Also check to see how they have to be connected. Software The software in the microcontroller uses a couple of tricks to make everything go o bit smoother The program spends most of Its time feeding data to the LCD. The line number to be sent out is set in the RAM by the foiling edge of R AS. The actual line content is address using only CA5 edges. This saves a lot of extra decision loops, which makes ir possible to maintain a high frame rate. This means it's not possible to interrupt the transfer of o line to the LCD to write a byte from the serial port to the DRAM, so data received on the serial port is first stored in a buffer in ihe AVR. When the AVR is finished sending bits to the display, the bits in the buffer ore then written to the RAM in a single go. This minimises the visible effect on display refreshing. Du? to I tele of space, the latch id4ed later on ii fitted or. the bet tan of the bird. This it lent keeps everything aka and compact - the whole fhifia is r$ 1 much larger than 1 matchbox. The schematic diagram also includes an extension: two ad- dress lines of the RAM (AS and A9) are connected to the latch. This makes it passible to select a page in memory. If the address bits on these lines are changed, the display receives data from a completely different memory area. You may be wondering what this is good for. Well, if ihe firmware is configured so that It always displays two frames from page 0 and then a frame from page 1 , you con generate grey rones. If a pixel is set in both pages, it will have an overage on time af 100% in the display. If it is only set in page 0, its average on time will be only 66 %, and the J on time drops to 33% if it Is only set in page 1 . Thanks to the nigh frame rate, your eye will hardly notice that the pixels are being switched on or off constantly, with the result that it sees a nice grey tone. The only disadvantage is that twice os much data has to be transferred to the controller. For the 160 x 160 display used here, the transfer takes almost a full second. As o test, we also incorporated modes with three and four pages, which give pixel depths of 3 and 4 bits per pixel (bppj. This produces surprisingly good results. At 4 bpp with dithering enabled, the steps between the grey levels are hardly visible and each image Is displayed like a black and white photo. There ore also disadvantages to this technique - in par- ticular, the frame rote is reduced by 50% for each extra page. As a result, the lightest and darkest tones appear to flicker a lot more. For this reason, the number of bits per pixel is configurable in the final version of the software, so you can decide for each application or even for each A lest with 2 bpp, Haforluiiatety, one of the Ike driver aulpuli af Ihe display it d*id # which explains ths ve rtfeil whits \m in the Ifnaga. Oh walk then ire stiff 159 left. 74 elrfctorfifetfranlG - tf2G07 Transferred image what balance you want to have be- tween the number oF grey tones and ihe Frame rate and transfer time. The serial interface to the PC is quite simple. Use a termi- nal emulator program such as HyperTerminal for Win- dows or vTerm For Linux, Set the communication param- eters to 1 15,200 baud, 8 bits, no parity, and 1 stop bit. The data is transferred in binary form one line at a time. The first byte is a synchronisation byte with the value GxA5, which is fallowed by a byte that specifies the page where the tine Is to be stared. This is fallowed in turn by a byte with the Y coordinate of the tine of pixels to be trans- ferred, and then by ihe pixel data. You can configure ihe number of bits per pixel by insert- ing an extra set if bytes after the synchronisation byte. The first byte has a value of 0xF£, and the next one states the number of bits per pixel in binary notation, if youVe a bit uncertain about all this, have a look at the sample code af [1 ] and [2]. The firmware can also be download- ed from these sources. Extensions Although the circuit and the firmware are based on q 4- bit LCD and 4-bit RAM, there are no hardsvore obstacles fa extending the design to 8 bits. If you use a RAM with an S-bif data bus, the concept will still work with a few modifications to the software. An 8-bii RAM can also be formed using two 4-bit chips. In this case, tie together all the signals except the data lines and use the two 4-bit 3 bpp. data busses as a single 8-bit bus to create an 8-bii mem- ory. Incidentally, you can use the same principle to make a 4-bit DRAM from 1-bit chips, but in this case you will naturally need four JCs. The firmware will also have to be modified in this cose. Web links [1] sprite. student. urwente.nl —jerosn 'proieds Icdc-ovr [2J www. el ski or com How DRAM works DRAM has several contra! lines RA5 CAS, OE and V/Ej in addition io the address lines. And of course, h also bos a set of data lines. The address lines of DRAM chips ore multiplexed, so a chip with 64 k .Yards hos only eight ad- dress lines. Tne address s set by first placing the first el ghr bits of trie address on the lines and putting RA5 low, 2 nd then placing the second eight bits on the lines and pulling CAS low. Tne data cor then be read by pulling OS tow. To write data, you place she date on the data lines and then Dull Y r E low. 4 bpp. 1/2007 - tbkto: E-'edronkj RETRONICS NFOTAINMENT Luc Lemmens V/rtol do you do wilh □ large pile of electromechanical counter? from the scrap parts bin? Ex- actly the same as with other dis- play deuces from the past: you torn them inlo o clock, just like the Nixie-tube dock elsewhere in this issue. Such components from the old parts box ore emi- nently suitable for all kinds of designer timepieces, the combi- nation of old and new technol- ogy has a certain appeal. The picture of the clock that we are describing here immediately re- veals the origin or the courtiers, that is, an old electromechani- cal pinball machine. The dock is huill inio the so-called backgtass. The five iarge relays underneath the counters are the control lease tup for the number v heels, the PCS at baiiarn left provides the dock ticks and is with its CATOS- tech- nology on anachronism. But with E'vT technology a pulse generator is Indispensable. In i he case of a doc*: you need o pulse every minute i start of a new event) fol- lowed by a few quick ones after that to get all the number wheels in the correct position ■ process- ing the event). In on EM-pinbalt machine She "start 1 Is caused by a forget lhat nos been hit by the ball, which then starts a score- motor which in turn gen- erates the required pulses and - depending on the slate of vari- ous relays - ensures the correct processing of the points scored and then finally stops again. Electro- i mechanical calculators existed long before the creation of semiconductor electronics. Bui while the development of mod- ern calculators and computers hove long included tubes, tran- sistors and even ICs, it would take until ohout the mid seven- ties before fhe gaming machine industry finally embraced the microcontroller. After all, relay technology was reasonably ro- bust and over many years had proved itself as a control system for pinball machines and other gaming machines, tn the spirit of 'never change a winning team", this technology was held oma for many years. But In fhe end the power and flexibility of dig- ital electronics was recognised, and the new possibilities that it offered, In particular the increase in processing speed. That is be- cause the combination of relays and score -motor is very slow: every counter required a certain amount of time to change one step, every relay in the circuit caused a delay ana the speed of the score-motor could not he in- creased with impunity. A glance at the second picture shows how this was a very com- plex assembly of relays, switching contacts, so-called stepper units, motors ond of course the wiring. The 'programming' of a pinball machine was fixed entirely tn hardware and it must have been an immense liberation far the designers when the reprogram- ming of a design became a mat- ter of just plugging In a couple of new EPROMs. Far the players the disappearance of all the rat- tling and ticking was something to get used to, but time moves fast: the first electronic pinball machine e are now already part of nosTolgiai Arifoniu it o numbly column tearing vintage electronic! including legendary Elektor designs. Contributions;, suggeitioiu and request! are welcomed; please send on email la edilaris etuklar.com, lubjorl; Rolronlts EE, 76 dektoi sl«?nanitt - 1/20Q7 PUZZLE INFOTAINMENT Hexadoku PuzzUe wifliii on electronic touch Hexadoku has proved very successful so we cheerfully continue producing and publishing the puzzle instalments in the new year. Some of you may need a day to solve Hexadoku, others less than half an hour (they say). Ho matter as long as you're having fun. Participate! Pfeose send your lofutton the numbers in the grey boxes? by email, jqx or past to: Elektor Electronics Hexadoku Regus Brentford 1 000 Great West Road Brentford TW8 9HH United Kingdom, Fax (+44){0)208 2614447 Email: editor@eIektor-eleclronks.co.ijk Subject; hexadoku 1-2007. The closing dote h 1 February 2006. The compeTrrifWi h, c-ps-n fa of jrgTr^ 1 b ■ “ b-_'inEi5 panned C~ ^i=vr p;-b =- -g The insiruclions for this puzzle ore straightforward. In the di- agram composed of 16 x 16 boxes, enter numbers such that all hexadecimal numbers G Through F (that's 0-9 and A-Fj occur once only in each row, once in each column and in each of the 4x4 boxes (marked by the thicker black lines). A number of dues are given in the puzzle and these determine the start situation. All correct entries received for each month s puzzle go into a draw for a moin prize and three lesser prizes. All you need to do is send us the numbers in the grey boxes. The puzzle is also available as a free download from our website Magazine ■ 2007 — January), Prize winners The solution of the November 2006 Hexadoku is: 1AC70* The E-blocks Starter Kit Professional goes to: Paul Keers (He worth). An Eleklor SHOP voucher worth £35,00 goes to: Greg Eaton tfcioria, Canada}; Franz Klein BishcpE Gesve, ux ; Guy Savage iWe^vfalton, UK;. Congratulations everybody! F 7 E 8 2 5 D 1 3 E B A C 2 D 3 7 9 8 5 B 9 5 C 0 D 1 4 E 8 3 7 8 A 0 C 2 3 D 5 2 E B 7 9 8 4 C 3 7 9 3 2 B F 6 0 8 D C 1 B 2 0 2 F 7 D B 3 C E 5 A B 7 5 C D 0 F E , 3 : 1 a] F 6 0 1 9 E 1 B 7 8 0 A D E 9 0 3 8 B 1 7 E 8 5 0 F 3 c 7 5 6 F 8 D 0 (c) PZZLCofn Solve !; Hexadoku and win! Correct solutions received enter a prize draw for an E-blocks Starter Kit Professional worth £248.55 and three Eleklor Electronics SHOP Vouchers worth £35.00 each. We believe these prizes should encourage all our readers to participate! 1/2007 - dehor ebtftwiics 77 ELEKTOR SHOWCAS To book your showcase space contact Huson International Media Tel. 23 44 (0) 1 932 564999 Fax 0044 (0) 1 932 564998 [ ATC SEMITIC LTD mvmatc sem fee .ca.uk Thermal and current-sensitive components for temperature control and circuit protection; * NTC Thermistors * Current Diodes * Thermostats * Re-settable Fuses * Ttiermai Fuses * Temperature Sensors Call today for free samples and pricing Tel: 1 606 871 600 Fax: 1 606 872338 AVIT RESEARCH Vi vAv.evfifeseorch G0.uk USB has never been so simple,,, with our USB to Microcontroller Interface cable. Appears just like a serial port to both PC and Microcontroller, for really easy USB connection io your projects, or replacement of existing RS232 interfaces. See cur webpage for more details. Onfy £29.99 inc vat. BAEC http; baec. tripod. com The British Amateur Electronics Club Archive Website. Archiving extracts from 1 40-r Newsletters from 1 966- 2002. Currently have interesting and useful selected articles from 12 Newsletters. Also a section about built electronics projects 'with schematics and photos. Plus useful info., downloads and links. NO ADVERTS!" BETA LAYOUT wwy/.pcb-pooUom Seta layout Ltd Award- winning site in both English and German offers prototype PCBs at a fraction of the cost of the usual manufacturers prices. ■ 00MPUL0GIC LTD /.comouf oaic.co.uk ■ i . ijnij 4 1 M * Internet Remote Control Starter Kit £139,99 Create a simple web based remote control interface for many applications * Miniature Web Server Module * Anatogue/Digital Moduie * PSU ■ Manuals, software, example HTML code CONFORD ELECTRONICS http ; Svwwc on fordelec CD. uk lightweight portable batiery/mains audio units offering the highest technical performance. Microphone, Phantom Power and Headphone Amplifiers, Balanced unbalanced signal lines with extensive RFI protection. DANBURY ELECTRONICS htio:/ v, w -wDanburyEiedronics.cc.UK Transformer manufacturers since 1983. Visit our new site! Also fink directly to Mike Holme's Valve/- Tube DIY amplifier she. featuring our standard Audio Transformers (Mains, Output. Chokes, PR SE. etc). EASYSYNC http: ■ Avwvv.e asyaync.co. u, k EasySync Ltd sells a wide range of single and mutti- port USB to RS232/RS422 and RS485 converters at competitive prices. EL NEC wwwelnec.com ■ device programmer manufacturer * selling through contracted distributors all over the world ■ universal and dedicated device programmers * excellent support and after sale support * free SW updates • reliable HW • once a months new SW release • three years warranty for most programmers First Technology Transfer Lid. FIRST TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER LTD. http'/Avww. fttco.u k/PIC ProTrng. html Microchip Professional C and Assembly Programming Courses. The future is embedded. 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Call Lee on 07946 846159 for details. Prompt service. ROBOT ELECTRONICS http:* www. rob QLetactronfcs.cn.uk Advanced Sensors and Electronics for Robotics • Ultrasonic Range Finders • Compass modules • Infra-Red Thermal sensors • Motor Controllers • Vision Systems • Wireless Telemetry' Links • Embedded Controllers SHOWCASE YOU Elektor Ele*: ironies has a feature iu help customers promote thfk business, Showcase * a pe rming nr feature of the magazine where vou will be able io ■*— -r your produels and services, * For ]u si £210 + VAT (£20 per issue for el even issues^ Elekior will publish your compares niime, website adress and a 39* word description ■ For £3 30 4- VAT fer ihe year ( £30 per issue for eleven issues) w e wTU publish the above plus run a 3cm deep full colour image - e g. a product shoe, a screen shot from your sue. a company logo - your choice Places are limned and spaces will go on a strictly first come, first served basis. 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Elektor Electronics (Publishing) Regus Brentford 1000 Great West Road Telephone +44 208 261 4509 Brentford TW8 9HH Fax +44 208 261 4447 United Kingdom Emai!: saSes@elektor-electronics.rx3.uk More information on www.eiektor-eleGtroniesxo.uk Microcontroller Basics CD-ROM BESTSELLERS USB TOOLBOX This CD-ROM contains tech- nical data about the USB interface. It also includes a large collection of data sheets for specific USB components from a wide range of manu- facturers, There are two ways to incorporate a USB interface in a microcontroller circuit: add a USB controller to an existing circuit, or use a microcontroller w ith an integrated USB inter- face. Included on this CD-ROM are USB Basic Facts, several useful design tools for hardware and software, and all Elektor Electronics articles on the subject of USB. £18.95 (USS 34.95) Home Automation This CD-ROM provides an overview of what manufactu- rers offer today in the field of Home Networking, both wired and wireless. The CD-ROM contains specifications, stan- dards end protocols of com- mercially available bus and network systems. For develo- pers, there are datasheets of specific components and various items with application data. End-users and hobbyists will find ready-made applications that can be used immediately. £12.95 (USS 22.90) ECD Edition 3 El 6 ktor's Components Data- base gives you easy access io design data for over 5,000 ICs r more than 35.000 transis- tors, FETs, thyristors and triacs, just under 25,000 dio- des and 1 ,800 optocouplers. All databank applications are fully interactive, allowing the user to add, edit and com- plete component data. £14.95 (USS 26.50) Visual Basic for Electronics Engineering Applications Microcontrollers have become an indispensable pari of modem electronics. They make things possible that vastly exceed what could be done previously. Innumerable applications show that almost nothing is impossible. Theres thus every reason to learn more about them. This book offers more than just a basic introduction. It clearly explains the technology using various microcontroller circuits and programs written in several different programming languages. In the course of the book, the reader gradually develops increased competence in converting his or her ideas into microcontroller circuitry. ISBN 0-905705-67-X 230 Pages £18.70 (USS 33.70) This book ts targeted towards those people that want to control existing or home made hardware from their computer. After familiarizing yourself with Visual Basic, its development environment and the toolset it offers are discussed in detail. Each topic is accompanied by clear, ready to run code, and where necessary, schematics are provided that will get your projects up to speed in no time. ISBN 0-905705-68-8 476 Pages £27.50 {USS 51.50) — BESTSELLING BOOKS Tfop-S (T) Visual Basic for Electronics Engineering Applications ISBN 0-905705-68-8 £27.50 (USS 51.50) Microcontroller Basics ISBN 0-905705-67-X £18.70 (USS 33.70) 3 ) FC-lnterfaces under Windows ISBN 0-905705-65-3 £25.95 (US$ 52.00) 4) Modem High-end Valve Amplifiers ISBN 0-905705-63-7 £25.95 (USS 52.00) 308 Circuits ISBN 0-905705-66-1 E1B.20 (USS 37.00) 2 Order now using the Order Form in the Headers Services section in this issue . www.elektor-ei USB-stick with ARM and RS232 (November 2006) Assembled and tested board 060006-91 £79.90/ $149.95 PIC In-Circuit Debugger/Programmer (October 2006) Kit of pails including PGB, programmed controller and all components. 050348-71 £ 34.50 / $ 64.95 GameBoy ElectroCardioGraph (October 2006) PGB, ready buifi and tested 050280-91 £55.20/$ 103.95 RC Servo Tester / Exerciser (July/August 2006) Kit of parts including PCB, programmed controller and all components. 040253-71 £ 22.70 / $ 42.85 50,00 1025 MORE READY-BUILT PROJECTS CleriTy 30G-W Class-T Amplifier 030217-91 Amptdtef bcani with SMDs [re+ffttgd; cores ftv LI & L2 Electrosmog Tester 05TOO5-91 PCS. ready txM and tested 050005-71 MaScr r.g s-KiDSure Hash Microcontroller Starter Kit 010200*91 Ready-asaTfcted PCS ind cafe, adapter & related sticks 69.00 Gameboy Digital Sampling Oscilloscope {GBDSO} 990082-91 Reedy-assemhted bGSfd, ind. the PC software and related smetes 1 03.00 LPC210x ARMee Development System 049444-91 Process^ board, raaay-maite and t&s:ed 25.59 Micro Webserver with MSC1210 Board 030060-91 V preprocessor Board ready-assenbted JSM 944025-91 McftvDtk Extension Board, ready-assentbted 44.50 044920-92 Combined package (030060-91 £ 944025-91 A rckJad articles] 1 17.58 34.50 55.70 94.25 193 112,50 103.00 48.05 142.95 63.95 220,95 NO. 362 JANUARY 2007 Sputnik Time Machine 050018-1 PCB v.v, w.rn^3cbshcp,com 050918-11 CD-ROM, prcje:t scft.va.-E - ixd. sol.tq cede) 520 9,75 9500 1 8-41 AT 55225:51 , p 'c-aramfiwd 3.40 6.45 Very Simple Clock 060353-1 PCB VA\YL Lh epc bshop.CDm 060350- 11 CD-ROM prejset sc ft, 1 . £'9 • - ; ■ source cods 520 9.75 050350-4 1 F . C 1 £ " 52 8-2 C p r ~ d 5.50 10.35 FPGA Course (8) 050025-8-1 ft a are r-: r: e c : :e 520 9.75 NO. 361 DECEMBER 2006 1 030417-1 PCS, bare (receiver board; 030417-2 PCB. bflB» (control & itisp^y tsoards) 03041 7 - 4 1 AT 9 2-5 55 1 5 ■ 6 PC , p 'oz rarr reed vaw thepcbsTopxom ww,th^5C5ShQp^om MM 21,45 NO. 360 NOVEMBER 2006 USB Stick with ARM and RS232 GtOOG6-i PCB. to 060006-41 ATB1SAM7364, pcgrammed 060006-91 ss^iribisd & tested board 050006-01 CD-ROM, al project NO. 359 OCTOBER 2006 PIC In-Circuit Debugger/Programmer 050340-1 PCB 050340-41 PtCI 6f 877, programmed 050348-71 Kit ind. PCB. rantreasr, all parts GBECG - Gameboy ElectroCardioGraph 050200-91 PC-3 . ready bisft and tested EGG using a Sound Card 040479-1 PC3 040479-81 CD-ROM, ail project software Elektor RFID Readei 060 132-91 PCB, ready assemb^sd & tested, with USB cable 03043 1-72 Sia^p srd fc & >; - h L C : e : i , 0531 32-7 1 Matching enclosure 000 1 32-61 CD- FI 1 / a p.T EcftiY&re Experimental RFID Reader 05(1221-11 D £■ a t^usset set:;varc 060221-41 ATrnea&16 prcc-rerrrr^ DrSEqC Monitor 040398-11 D&k, Pic source S hex code 04039841 PiC16F62aA-2&?.pfOgBninted USB/DMX512 Converter 0600 12-11 D :=> , £ pn>. set software 060012-41 F.C1EC745. progra^r-eu 11.00 £0 75 27.90 5195 79.9-3 149,95 520 9,75 520 9,75 17.90 33.75 34,50 64.95 55.20 103.95 5 20 520 5 20 3.90 5.20 5.5-0 5.20 6.90 NO. 356/357 JULY/AUGUST 2006 RC Servo Tester/Exerciser O40172-11 Draft, project software 975 9.75 41,50 77.95 7.25 13.65 B.9Q ic.B5 5.20 9,75 9.75 16.85 9.75 10,35 9,75 12.95 5.20 9,75 inline at lectronics.co.uk Due to practice! constraints, final illustrations and specifications rtiay differ from published designs. Prices subject to cltange, See wvAv.efektor-eioctrcHnics oo ok for up to date information . Elektor RFID-reader (September 2006) Ready-built and tested PCB with USB port for connection to the PC. Including USB cable; not including display and enclosure. - Read and write 13*56 MHz RFID cards - MIFARE and ISO 1444 3- A compatible - Programmable 060132-91 £ 41 . 50 / $ 77.95 LC-display 030451-72 £ 7.25 /$ 13.65 Matching enclosure 060132-71 £ 8 . 90 / 816.85 CD-ROM (all project software) 060132-81 £ 5 . 20 / $ 9.75 Elektor Electronics (Publishing) Regus Brentford 1 000 Great West Road Brentford TW8 9HH United Kingdom Tel.: +44 (0) 208 261 4509 Fax: +44 (0) 208 261 4447 Email; saies@elektor~electronics.co.uk Kits & Modules GameBoy Programmable Logic Controller {July/August 2006) GBPLC Module Ready-assembled and tested GBPLC Module and Programming Interface 05019091 £ 84.95 /$ 159.95 7 i r* ls % i * ■ 1 to : ■3d GBPLC PC I/O Box Ready assembled and tested board 060 09 8 -91 £ 84 . 95 / 8159.95 Combined package GBPLC Module and I/O Extension £ 149 . 80 /$ 279.00 040172-41 FsClEfB-t'A (xc^ammsd 10.35 1940 040172-71 KL r,sL PCS ccriln; &. s parts 22.70 4285 LED Thermometer 030190-1 1 Dis* pro--:! software 3.75 030190-41 P C15FS73-2C 3? fVJ'srr.tz 16.50 31.00 Toothbrush Timer 050146-11 D^k, i sefo. £ r “ 5.20 9.75 050146-41 AT90S2313-1CPC, program T—i 6£0 12-95 Easy Home Control 050213 - 11 C s k . p^CjS- : t £ c4i w e'e 520 9.75 050233-4 1 p £ 1 € F 54 , c- cc ‘ 10-30 19.40 Universal LCD Module 055259-1 1 0 : • project software 520 9.75 050259-4 1 AT I- 1-3 23':] t ■ i= r e t/t e.j 6.90 1Z35 1-Wire Thermometer with LCD D60090- 1 1 0 : sk . pro] +c t sc-fi * s - e 520 9,75 D60G9CM1 P.C16R4A-04CR ro;r^r 10.30 19.40 GBPLC - Gameboy PLC 050190*1+2 FCBs. bare. SBFeC VwL Program^ 1 -g interiscr 11.70 22.00 050T 50-51 PAL EEPkGM zr-i Ffeah C U.00 20.75 0501 90-9 T Readj -tsu L srd tssfed GBPLC Vod^anel PTjgrfcHWL'a ntsrisce 8435 1 59.95 GBPLC - I2C I/O Box 060098-1 PCB. bare 17.9*3 33.75 060096-9 1 u zzz y-t. ’ srva te sf ed t std 64.95 159.95 Binary Clock 0203 90-1 1 c s *... pf ect so ft w e-e 528 9.75 020 390*4 1 F C6C54 4)4. ■ P, pr og / sm 'r-sd 8.05 15.10 No. 355 JUNE 2006 FM Stereo Test Transmitter 050263-1 FC6 11.76 22.00 Network Cable Analyser 050302-1 PCE 820 15-55 050302- 1 1 D =- P » C sc ura c 520 3.75 050302-41 PiG1GFfl74-2C* P 1&9Q 31.8a NO. 354 MAY 2006 Onboard OBD-2 Analyser 050 1 7€ -72 rCl Aperts ' " •: 0301 ‘6-1. G5S1 T 6*2. 553 T T 6 -42 5 com pen enjg i'C LCD snri Gass 24.8^3 45.70 050175-73 ICC 4 >20 ; "iL ? 5Lisrs v « An tz:- qz: 28-80 54.50 050176-74 Case. Sep = Urrmas .vtn r=rsDe< caver ^ _ = o ale 15,85 29.90 050 1 7 6*42 47 rragsl £ pro z ra maned 1030 19,45 B50Q92-71 030*2 Analyser Kit of parts without cable 5Z50 96,95 05CG92-72 0BD-2 Ara >=cr DE3 ic 3 ED sd£pt“f :id = 27,85 SI .95 Mini AT Mega Board 050176-1 PCE ncJutfsa eeieIe- PCs C5Ci 76-2 3.95 16,85 I NO, 353 APRIL 2006 Simple recharable A Cell Analyser 050394-1 PGB. bs-e 4.£0 9,04 050394-11 l hsk PC Sr:, ee 5,18 9.75 Universal SPf Box 05013641 AT69C2051-24PC Pfogrerrm-d 72z 13.65 No. 352 MARCH 2006 Application Board for R8C/13 C 501 79-92 Rsady-ass&T S b. J *d tsard 48J27 90.94 050179-1 PC3 13.77 25.94 03O451-72 LCD v, :n £e> - T": 725 13.65 030451-73 POLLED GEp-Ey 25,50 48.05 FPGA-Prototyplng board 050370-9 1 RsEi. sssem b sd fc : i rd Pc f siifcsrfars 181.80 33350 For norhsubscribefa 216.30 33E50 Telephone Eavesdropper 030379-1 PCB 9.05 17.05 Versatile FPGA Module G4 54 77-31 P -Ed , e?ee m bled p ug -cn rr,M u :f For subsenbers 181 ,60 333,50 Products for older projects (if available) may be found on our website www. elektor- elec Ironies. co.uk home construction = fun and added value SNEAK PREVIEW Wireless USB transceiver Thonks to Wifeless USB technology developed by Cypress ifs now possible Id set up over-fhe air links between computer devices using low cost, type-approved and license free RF modules. However, the system boson even larger potential! In the February 2007 issue we turn to an iDwafiF-1 68 module capable of communication vnlh olher devices or sensors. We've pul together a 2.44JHI Wireless USB Transceiver, on Atmef ATmegal6B mkracantraller and some more hardware, also comprising a duplexer for separate receive and transmit antenna working. The protocol software is compact enough to he stared in ihe microprocessors memory, leaving enough space to add your own Application programs. Explorer- 16 (part 2) With ihe publication of ihe February 2007 issue Elektor readers will be able lo purchase ihe exclusive Explorer-1 6 Value Pock consisting ol on Explocer-1 6 development board, a PICkil 2 debugger & programmer, o PICtoil plug-in daughterboard and a discount voucher Cor the mighty GO compiler. In the second instalment ol our artide series we'll discuss the Explorer-1 6 hardware and present a step-by-step guide to audio signal processing and audio tile conversion using the PIC24F microcontroller. All backed up by examples, hands-on C programming and Proteus VSM for some really powerful simulation so keep that free Explore r-1 6 CD-ROM within reach. Microphone Preamplifier for MP3 Players Many sound hobbyists have a requirement for recording concerts, interviews, radio broadcasts or natural sounds. V/ilh the cassette recorder well and truly a thing of the post, other more contemporary recording equipment is called for. The analogue input found on many of ihe latest MP3 players enables users to moke recordings in MP3 or WMA formal. Unfortunately, it's not usually possible lo conned a micro- phone directly to Ihis input, and that's where our project comes to your rescue Also 4 o* Very Simple (lock. Telemetry for Rockets; Software Defined Radio (SDR); High Per- formance Sweep Generator/Wobhulator; FPGA Course (9); Hexadoku. RESERVE YOUR COPY HOW! UK maintain! wtbsmbefs viftl tU nssasimi beUwsn 18 orta 20 Dumber 2Mfi. The Feferuory 2007 issue .goes hi iota on Thursday 25 iaimy 2007 (UK distribution tr i ' ' r fa- [hang* pta-as* cb;* NEWSAGENTS ORDER FORM SHOP SAVE / HOME DELIVERY Please save / deliver one copy of Sfektor Electronics magoilne ior me eoclt month Nome* Address: Post code: . . Telephone: Date: ***4., Signature: % * ii 4 A .1- ektor lectronics Ussidioo i£ \hi w p * 4- a m * * * n Please cut out or photocopy this Form, complete details and hand to your newsagent. Elektor Electronics Is published on the third Thursday of each month except in July. Iektor-electronks.co.uk www.elektor-electronics.co.uk www.elektor-electronics. Elektor Electronics on the web All magazine articles back to volume 2000 are available online in pdf format. The article summary and parts list (if applicable) can be instantly viewed to help you positively identify an article. Artide related Items are also shown, including software down- loads, circuit boards, programmed ICs and corrections and updates if applicable. Complete magazine Issues may also be downloaded. In the Elektor Electronics Shop you'll find all other products sold by the publishers, like CD-ROMs, kits and books. A powerful search function allows you to search for items and references across the entire website. Also on the Elektor Electronics website: a Electronics news and Elektor announcements • Readers Forum • PCB, software and e-magazine downloads • Surveys and polls efAQ, Author Guidelines and Contact 84 Please- supply the following. For PCBs. front panel foils. EPROMs. PALs, GALs. microcontrollers and diskettes, stale the part number and description: for books, slate the full title;, for photocopies of articles state full name of article arc month and yem of duoI cat PLEASE USE BLOCK CAPITALS Description Price each Oly. Total Order Code CD-ROM USB Toolbox £ 18.95 CD-ROM Home Automation £ 12.95 Visual Basic for Electronics Engineering Applications £ 27.50 Elektor RFID Reader £ 41.50 Matching enclosure £ s.go Sub-total Fries ajirt i!fm rt^ripfinris submit* rr-nnr Tfrapubli^^rcsikfe ihs rightto change prices pap ^rithoEii pricr nOiffeatiaa Prices item descriptions ™ r bare 5tif3:?^de thc-55 fn dte» : us E u 0L Total paid Name METHOD OF PAYMENT (See reverse be -ore i: ng - = egcron? ala □ Bank transfer □ Cheque (UK-iesideni customers DPiLTi Giro transfer □ Expiry date: Verification cade: SWITCH ONLY Start dufe. ■,.■■■, .....i.... issue number Pie ass send this order form ro * '585 :-5. 8'58 fOT C~r J ■ Ofl^J Elektor Electronics (Publishing? 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Showcase mwyJscj^m 1 79 Microchip MYW.mictuchfo.camn&^t .... ...... 27 MQP Bectfffiics, Showcase w v, . ntgpslt : troriCE. co.l k ... 75 ? te*v Wave Gcricep-s. 5r-DA -case a -a ** \ ncA ■ -a a/e-E once&s. t on 1 79 Kewdury Efedromcs M\v/newlWY&tttmi£s-CQ. uk ... ..... .11 riiitidjer One Systems . . m\yv. mmhemne- com 7 Padroni* a-aw. pai&BKi: com . , 33 PC3 WflddJ ShoittKESe . . a*av, pj±Abrki.om uk ... . . ... .79 F«co .’i'AVW-PtCBiEch com .... .7 Gueezf Feejde.is AVjwqimsat&ezUunics+uim . . Rot) at Bectromc-s , She a case a~a w. robni-s, sziiumcs. 00. uk , ScantfiGi mm.En*S££ifo.cmi f clEii&ir . Showcase . . Sources : : si J=c '"p Showcase n wiv ssmtzboasLc . sr, Syireti ' : la e ho gy Ud. S r o ci « . . . vn \v m2—=£ rr.ztiy com U ttral eds , S howt as e w v/*v. co. l ; U55 instruTuerTts Showcass . AAWM^-fnsmimECM.cnm . /jtIhis T schnolngy ShmvEass wav/.. rims-COfn . . 79 c - lb .73, 79 ,79 ...... .79 79 7 R - — • - i. 1 * 79 Advertising space for Ihe issue of 19 February 2007 may be reserved net later than 23 January 2007 with Huson International Media - Cambridge House - Gogmore Lane — Cbertsey, Surrey KT16 9AP - England - Telephone 01932 S64 999 - Fax 01932 564998- e-maii: a er rvb @hus oumedia. c om to whom all correanondencr. copy tnskucbans anti artwork should be aadress^ti 1/2007 -alsklof tlKircnits 87 LETIOIM A powerful capture package tailored for todays engineer and designed, to allow rapid entry of complex schematics for simulation and PCB Layout. A customised implementation of the industry standard Berkeley SPICE 3F5 engine with extensive optimisations and enhancements for true mixed mode simulation and circuit animation. V5M V The worlds first and best schematic based microcontroller co Proteus VSM allows you to simulate the interaction between s Proteus VSM allows you to simulate the interaction between software running on a microcontroller and any analog or digital electronics connected to it- This streamlines the project lifecycle and obviates the need for expensive hardware analysis toots. A modern and professional layout pacxage wntcn seamiessiy w capture software. Features such as autoplacement and autorouting, interactive DRC and an Intuitive interface all serve to maximise productivity and reduce time to marl CONTACT CIS NOW to discuss requirements or request a FREE evaluation copy SURD A technology pioneer in the EPA industry since 1988. Technical support direct from the program authors. Flexible packages and pricing tailored to customer requirements % 3 _HF jT HP j I I a 1 71k Worth