June 2008 - Do It Easy With ScienceProg

Putting your electronics project in an enclosure

Projects that are probably finished and put in an enclosure always catch an eye rather than a PCB prototype with multiple wires showing up. Of course, a project that does its job is fine enough even without a nice shell. But what if you don’t want your board to be exposed. Then put your project in a box. From this point, you need to be an electronics engineer and designer in one. Probably everyone has their own way of putting projects in the boxes, but few tips can save time and nerves. Let’s go through things to keep in mind while looking for boxes and planning necessary tasks: If you have buttons that need to be accessed through the case, find a shallow enclosure or tall controls. If there is a display you want to read but don’t enjoy a big hole in the lid, look for an enclosure with a clear top. If environmental conditions may be a factor, find an enclosure rated for the needs you expect your product to experience. Take a look at these IP ratings. Many manufacturers follow the IP rating system for describing enclosures. Maybe your project has lots of switches or external ports;…

How to sprintf float numbers with AVR GCC

The float numbers are not recommended to use with smaller 8-bit AVR microcontrollers. The main reason is that the AVR core does not have a floating-point arithmetic unit built-in. The software library emulates the floating-point arithmetic operations. The software library simulates Floating-point arithmetic operations. However, in real-world applications, you may need to use numbers with floating-point. In some particular cases, you can get away without you declaring variables as float type. If operations are simple like division or multiplying by 2, 4, 8, they can be replaced by the byte shift operation (byte<<1)=byte*2 Of course, it depends on the different situations and data you are manipulating – sometimes using floats is inevitable. If your code fits into Program memory and execution speed is not critical, use floats or double number formats, as you like.

Show Your Talent by DIY a Sun Tracking Unit

Probably you saw the Sun tracking system before; however, do you have the urge to challenge yourself to make a Sun Tracking Unit? First of all, get a tiny .7″x1.4″ PC board using the LED3X sensor concept. This circuit uses power MOSFET drivers, which most any DC motor can be used without any modification. You might notice that the power drivers are good enough for delivering about 50 amps of peak current or even more. The current will increase accordingly to the transistor. This means the large power MOSFET, 72A, when operated in low power mode, will eliminate the transistor’s need for a heat sink. Cool, isn’t it?