TKJ Electronics

I haven’t made any posts in a long time, and that’s because of school, homework and work.
But yesterday and today I have time off from school, so I thought it would be nice to follow a first semester class on Aarhus University in Herning; read more about AU-HIH here

 
I contacted one of the counselors there, Thomas, who was a very friendly man, and was fast to arrange this meeting. So yesterday I took the train from Holstebro to Birk Centerpark and walked with all the students to the school – pretty nice feeling to be “one of them”.
At the school I found the class I was supposed to follow this day, and found me a place to sit. All the teaching are done in English, so I looked forward to see how that would go.
The first two lessons was called “Basic Software Development”, and we worked with Eclipse and C++, where we made some functions, if-statements and for loops. Remember, this is only a first semester class – they will get more advanced over time!

The second two lessons to follow was called “Digital Design”, and I really liked those lessons. We learned about decimal to binary conversion, decimal to octal, decimal to hex and opposite – of course the mathematical way. Then we also learned to to add and substract in binary!
That was 4 hours, and then I had my lunch and went to the electronics lab as the class were going to experiment with AND, NOR and NAND gates on their breadboard. This was a great task, and I got to help some of the students too 🙂
As the last lesson this day, we was introduced to OrCAD, and how simulation works. We tried putting a schematic together with 4 resistors, and then OrCAD simulated the different voltages and power comsumption.

That was the day for the students, but not for me! I was going to meet Thomas, the EDE Counselor (EDE meens Electronics Design Engineer), and have a chat about the study enviroment, the lessons, and how it all works. But not least have a talk about FPGA’s and VHDL.
We sat in Electronics LAB from about 3PM till 10PM, chatting, discussing and playing with FPGA’s. I learned a lot, especially the VHDL language, which is used to program the FPGA chips.
I made a project with the 4 seven segments on my Basys2 board, so I could show numbers on that – but I’ll talk about that in another post in here.
So to end this day we drove to Mac Donals to have meal, and then I took the train back to Holstebro.

 
It was a very nice and interesting day, and I thanks the class, the teachers and Thomas, for letting me try this. I’m looking forward to join you all the time in a couple of years!
Thank you…

 
Thomas

Today I recieved my Digilent Basys2 FPGA board which has a Spartan-3E 100K BGA chip (XC3S100E CP132) on top.

The Basys2 board is a simple FPGA development board, and it is easy to start with, as it has an onboard USB programmer. It has also got a 2Mbit flash for FPGA configuration storage.
The great thing with development boards though, is that you have some kind of periphirals, and on this board you have 8 switches, 8 LED’s, 4 buttons, a switchable clock (25/50/100MHz), VGA output and 4 expansion ports. This makes it alot easier to get started, because you only have to focus on the software/programming part – not the hardware.

I’ve uploaded a short video to show you the board, and the demo program which comes pre-programmed with the board!

I’ve nearly finished first year out of three on HTX, which is a kind of Technical Highschool. On HTX you have a lesson called Technology where you have to find a problem, and then find a way to solve it!

Our last project this year was about the weather, and me and my friend found a problem on the harbours – they don’t know the correct weather where they are. So we chosed to make a weather station.

We ended up using an Arduino Duemilanove connected to a temperature sensor, pressure sensor, rain sensor and wind speed and direction sensor. All these data is shown on a 128×64 GLCD display! Please take a look at this video to see how it ended up working (the things on the display is in danish though)…

 

The shield which is on top of the Arduino is made in Eagle. You can see the schematic here…

Source code
The source code can be found on our Github:
https://github.com/TKJElectronics/ArduinoWeatherStation

Featured in the local newspaper
We were recently (7th March 2012) out placing this weather station on the roof of a local harbour.
In that occasion we were interviewed by the local newspaper and the article (OBS. in danish) can be found here: Weather Station article

IN DANISH
Vi skrev desuden en 40 siders rapport som kan downloades herunder. Desuden lavede vi en salgsbrochure som også kan downloades.
Download Rapport
Download Brochure

Efter den ovennævnte artikel blev bragt i Dagbladet blev vi desuden ogsÃå fremvist på skolens hjemmesides nyhedssektion: http://htx.ucholstebro.dk/pages/visNyhed.asp?NewsGuid=84579

Many has sent me mails or PM’s about the STM32 library for Eagle, so now I’ve uploaded it here.

stm32.lbr – ST Cortex-M3 STM32F101/103 processor family in LQFP100, 64, 48 and VFQPFN36
stm32_lqfp144.lbr – STM32F101Zx and STM32F103Zx. LQFP 144 package.

I hope you guys can use them… Please keep me updated with your projects 🙂

NOTE: Please add yourself to our new maling-list. In there you will get exclusive information about this project, beta-testing, pre-releases and much more – http://elec.tkjweb.dk/matrix/

In March is designed a USB LED Matrix board which I afterwards got manufactured at BatchPCB.

After about a month I recieved the board, but unfortunately it had some manufacturing defects. I contacted BatchPCB and got a full refund.
You can read more about the defects in one of my other posts. But now I’ve fixed the defects using a razor blade and some wire.

Here is some assembly pictures…

After a couple of hours programming I’m able to control the display using a nice GUI on the computer (made in Visual Basic 6). The programming is done in PicBasic Pro, and the flashing of the PIC18F2550 is easily done via USB, as I’ve installed Microchip’s PICDEM FS USB Bootloader on the chip.

A couple of weeks ago I recieved an SSD1963 evaluation board and a 7″ display.

The SSD1963 chip makes it possible to control a 7″ display with a regular microcontroller or microprocessor, which haven’t got enough memory and power to control it itself, as it’s a normal display with vSync and hSync and so on.
So after a couple of hours I got it running with my STM32 board and a touch screen controller.

Please take a look at the video below to see some of the things I can show/do.

Edit, 11. October 2014:
Another updated version of the SSD1963 library, with transparent fonts, support for larger fonts and drawing routines for Bitmap images from SD card, was used in the IOT Football Table Project whose code is published here: https://github.com/TKJElectronics/IoT_Football/tree/master/LCD/src

Edit, 21. February 2011:
I’ve now uploaded the source code for the driver of SSD1963, using the STM32.
You can download the “library” here: SSD1963_STM32_Driver.zip

Hi.
Today I finally recieved the PCB I ordered from BatchPCB about 1�½ month ago.
Unfortunately PCB isn’t going to work as there is alot of planes being mistakenly ‘poured’ onto a trace!

EDIT
Today I got the full amount returned from Batch-PCB, including the shipping. Nice guys over there!

Here is some images about the problems…

Before you start reading this review, please have my current setup in your mind:

• Intel i5 750 – 3.1GHz
• ATI Readeon HD 4890 – two DVI outputs
• 4gb RAM
• Samsung P2450 60Hz LCD – with VGA and DVI input

EDIT
Today I got the full amount returned, but that was after I shipped the glasses back to them, and waited in 14 days… I kept calling them, and they just told me that I should write a mail to them, and wait for a response. They always told me: “I asure you that it will be done tomorrow!”

When I bought the glasses I got an email telling me that the software in the package that I was going to receive was outdated, and then there was a download link to a zip file. That zip file included the TriDef Experience setup file, and eDimensionals own 3D shutter glass executable.

So while waiting on the package to arrive, I installed the TriDef Experience. That’s a very neat piece of software, as it did support Anaglyph 3D, and it has a picture and video 2D to 3D converter included. So I was able to watch my 2D movies in 3D, and see my pictures taken with a normal digital camera in 3D!

After 3 business days I received the package, and what was found inside was:

• The 3D Shutter glasses
• A VGA dongle, which the screen and glasses plugs into
• An outdated CD with drivers and software

But the DVI to VGA adapter that I was told was included was missing! 1. bad experience!
Anyways, I had a DVI to VGA adapter laying around so I connected the things quickly and started eDimensionals Shutter Glass program (E-D.exe) as told in the instructions. First I choosed, LCD Mode, then I choosed, Stereo – Normal. Now the shutter glasses started to flicker, and it was heavy flickering. On the screen some darker lines (pixel separation) has appeared, and it didn’t look to well.

When I took the glasses on, the first thing I noticed was that I was being dizzy. My LCD is running 60Hz, so the flickering must be 30Hz, anyways, it was pretty annoying. 2. bad experience, as I was told in the telephone before I bought it, that it would run fine on a 60Hz LCD!

Then I started the TriDef Experience software, and a screen with 4 options came up:

• Play 3D games
• Experience Google Earth in 3D
• View movies and photos in 3D
• Get 3D movies online

The points (like the black dots here) were small images that should be 3D, but only the bottom one (the fourth) was. The other images were blurry, as both eyes could see both images, after some research I found out that this is called Ghosting. But this wasn’t a normal ghosting thing, as both right and left eyes images were completely visible in each eye, not only slightly visible, like the left eye should see the left eye image clearly, and the right eye image might slightly visible if Ghosting occurs. Therefore there wasn’t any 3D! 3. bad experience!

I thought it might be a problem with the Experience application, so I tried the 2D to 3D application. The same problem occurred there, the top half of the LCD screen wasn’t 3D, while the bottom half was 3D.
Last but not least I tried running Counter-Strike: Source, which is one of the many games supported. In there the same thing occurred, and it wasn’t even playable, as you saw everything double!

I was able to minimize the flickering by messing around with the ATI Catalyst center, but it was a pain in the neck to get the refresh rate changed, especially when the computer recognizes the screen and sets the maximum refresh rate to 60Hz, even when the screen can do 75Hz. But finally I could set the refresh rate to 75Hz, but only at 1600×1200, and then the flickering was only slightly noticeable. The 3D still didn’t work, but now it was the middle part of the screen which didn’t work (the two middle buttons as I told about earlier), and the 25% of the top and 25% of the bottom was working.

Here is four pictures showing what I mean with the 3D not working and the buttons:

As you can see in the first image, which is the screen without the glasses infront, then you are able to see both left and right eyes images. Then when you put the glasses infront, you are only able to see the corrosponding image.

But then if you take a look at the middle button, then you can see both images (right and left eye) without glasses but also with glasses, which is a problem!

The problem with this kind of ghosting (both images seen clearly in both eyes) sounds much like a syncing problem, and I can’t play with seeing everything double. So if you think about buying this product, I would mind you to be aware of these problems, as they can occur. But there are also people having great success with this product, but that’s mostly people with CRT screens.
So be aware, this kind of shutter-glass technology is not well developed for LCD’s yet!

Here is some pictures of the glasses:

Hi again.
Today I’m going to talk about my mini computer I started making with the STM32.
It’s powered by the STM32F103RET6 stamp board from Futurlec, and it is clocked at 72MHz. Right now there isn’t any “real” applications or games in it, but theese are under development.

You can see some pictures about it here, but I’ve also made a video where you can see it in use.

The buttons on the right side of the menu is from Microchip’s Graphics Library, which I ported to the STM32.

httphd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3PYSW7yE4k

Edit, 29. September 2010:
I’ve now uploaded this source with some extra things like viewing images or playing MIDI or MP3 files (requires VS1053 chip) from SD card.
You can download the project here

Hi everybody.
Last week I started making a ILI9320 library for the Arduino Mega, as I was hoping it would work with my 2.8″ Display (with a ILI9320 controller of course).
After a couple of hours I’ve made the code doing the timings correctly, and then I made a simple PutPixel routine. It worked, so I continued to make a Text function, and afterwards different polygons commands.
When I had made all these commands I began to optimise everything, as the Arduino isn’t running fast enough, so a complete screen clear takes about 2-3 second. After a couple of days optimizing, I got it down to 1 second, and other commands such as rectangle was alot faster. I had also made a function so I could “scroll” the screen – which is descriped in the ILI9320 datasheet!

Here you can see some pictures of the final version, and download the code here: Arduino Mega and ILI9320 code

And here is a user posted video of the library in action on an ATMEGA16A.
Thank you to ‘Maarten van ingen’ for showing us this video.