Site Map

This page gives you easy access to all the information on the site.

Main Section Hubs

Arduino Projects: Use Amazing ICs to Enhance your Projects. Find out how to use many different chips from humidity sensors to accelerometers, DACs and much more.

Arduino IOT: Learn how to connect your Arduino to the web and create web servers and control pins remotely from a web page interface.

Arduino Hardware: Everything you wanted to know about the Uno but were afraid to ask! Did you know there are FIVE unused features in the Arduino Uno?

Arduino Interfaces: Learn how to interface push buttons or rotary encoders. Also includes Charliplexing (Save pins when driving LEDs)...and more.

Arduino Displays: How to display Text or Graphics with an Arduino. Should you use a text or a graphics display? Find out the best Ones to Use.

Arduino Port Expanders: How to Increase the Number of Pins using a serial interface such as I2C or SPI. Some chips are far more capable than others - find out which in the link.

An Arduino Reference: Your Essential Guide to Arduino functions. They don't always work the way you think. Find out the pitfalls, and exactly how these functions should be used, so you can avoid endless debugging and create your projects fast.

Arduino IDE: The Simplest Guide to using the IDE. How to Easily program the Arduino Uno. How to get the Bootloader into the Arduino Chip and how to program chips that are not included in the IDE.

ATtiny85: A Power Packed Arduino in a Tiny 8 Pin Chip. The smallest Arduino Chip! FOUR features you missed! Find How Good It is and how you can Easily program it over USB with no USB Hardware!

Arduino Temperature Sensors: Arduino Temperature Sensors For Simplified Measurement. How to use Arduino Temperature Sensors for Easy Temperature Measurement from standard room temperature to 1000's of Degrees Centigrade.

Arduino Current Sensors: Your Guide to Arduino Current Sensors for the Arduino. How to measure current from 100nA, to 3.2A, to 8.2A using three different types of sensor, simply by choosing the correct chip.

Arduino Voltage Sensors: The Easiest ADCs to use with Arduinos. ADCs are one of the most useful modules allowing you to easily read analogue voltages inside a digital system.

Specific IC Tutorials using Arduino

PCF8574: This may be the simplest (internal architecturally speaking) port expander - easy to program and works very well. There are no internal control registers yet it has full bi-directional capability (they call it quasi bi-directional - but still useful). How is this magic achieved?

Magnetometer Tilt Compensation - how to use a HMC5883L or QST5883L and an ADXL345 (accelerometer) to tilt compensate a digital compass.

HMC5883L - How to use this magnetometer as a compass (actually how to get any reading out of it at all!).

INA219 - A digital (I2C) Current meter; Measuring current and power used. This is for low volt systems <=26V but gives highly accurate current voltage and power measurements.

ACS712 - A Hall Effect medium current (±5A, ±20A,±30A) measuring device which It can also withstand 2100Vrms!

ACS758 - A Hall Effect High current (50A~200A) measuring chip with analogue output. It can also withstand 700Vrms!

MCP4725 - A digital (I2C) controlled DAC and a look at the related MCP4726.

MCP41010 - A digital Potentiometer (SPI) with 8bit resolution is actually a controlled resistance that you can place anywhere in your circuit.

MCP4728 - A 4 output digitally controlled DAC (I2C).

MCP4922 - A two output digitally controlled DAC (SPI). How fast does it go?

PCF8591 - A 4 input I2C ADC. This is an ADC with 8 bit resolution and has a differential input capability, and also includes a DAC.

TP4056 - How to use this Lithium ion/poly battery charger the right way.

DW01A - Lithium ion/poly battery protector. This is used in the TP4056 board.

ADXL345 - How to use the ADXL345 accelerometer to measure roll and pitch.

ADS1115 - How to use this 16 ADC to measure 7.8uV. This is a precision device that you can use to make accurate measurements. It can even measure a small range of negative voltage - useful for sink/source current measurements.

MCP3008 - Find out if this ADC is as good as it claims. Do you need a 10 bit; 8 channel ADC with a high sample rate? This could be the right one. Find out how to optimize it for the best sample rate here.

AD9833 - Make a signal generator using the DDS chip to 12.5MHz. Outputs sine, square and triangle waves with a resolution of 0.1Hz.

MAX7219 - How to drive 8x8 led displays using this chip.

DS18B20 - Use the one-wire thermometer to measure accurate temperature; multi drop and long distance.

DHT22 - Also DHT11 (lower spec) - Measure humidity and temperature.

TCS230 - Let your microcontroller see colour!

HD44780 - LCD display driving. Usually a 16 character by 2 line display but can be 20x4.

MCP23017 - A 16 bit port expander (I2C) with comprehensive interrupt system.

MCP23017 Interrupts - Using multiple MCP23017 with interrupts.

BMP280 - Barometric pressure measurement.

Battery Charger - How to charge standard AA batteries.

Pulse Rate - Measurement See your pulse rate using infrared sensors.

Rotary Encoder - How to use them and make even noisy ones behave!

Arduino Joystick - Making the joystick easy to use with a useful library.

MAX6675 - How to measure temperature from 0ºC to 1024ºC

Logic level converter - How to convert logic levels using a MOSFET Trick!

SSD1306 - How to write text and graphics to this 1" display.

Fading RGB LED Arduino - How to fade an RGB LED while keeping the same colour during the fading.

ESP32 CAM - How to set it up, How to access the TF card, and how to Free up I/O!

Programming raw Arduino ICs

How to install and use the Digispark Attiny85

ATtiny Programmer - How to program ATtiny series chips using an Arduino Uno (or other Uno) as an ISP programmer.

How to unbrick an ATtiny chip - Includes turning the ATtiny programmer into an High Volt Programmer (HVP) with 4 components and a power supply as well as a program to set fuse values from the serial command line.

Arduino Nano ISP - How to burn a bare-board Arduino using an Arduino Nano. You end up with about 4 components - just use a USB to serial adapter and a 5V power supply.

ATtiny Ultra Low Power - If you are looking to get maximum use out of a battery then you need to know how to lower the power usage of an ATtiny chip. Here you can see the effects of clock speed and supply voltage and how to use Burst mode effectively.

Arduino Hardware Tutorials

Find out Why is switch bounce bad. what causes switch bounce and how to cure it!

Three switch debouncing methods on Arduino : One is amazing and not to be missed!

Arduino Capacitive Sensor Sense objects using only a wire and an ADC input.

Arduino ADC - How it works; Find out its resolution and more.
Should you should divide by 1023 or 1024 in ADC calculations?

Arduino voltage reference - The internal voltage reference is often overlooked. Find out how to use it and make it accurate and reliable.

Arduino Analog Output - How to smooth PWM signals and create sine waves.

Arduino EEPROM - How to read and write EEPROM.
EEPROM has a lifetime - make sure you don't use it up all at once!

Arduino simulated toggle switch - How to create a toggle switch operation using a standard single push button switch.

Arduino physical toggle switch - How to wire one up in two different ways and use them on Arduino.

Arduino PWM pins - The eight things you need to know about Arduino PWM pins.

Arduino Code Specific Tutorials

What language does Arduino Use - It's probably different to what you thought!

Arduino Hello World - What's really going on when you create the "hello World" text?

Arduino Print To Serial - What functions do you need and how does it work?

Arduino Serial Begin - Why do you need it? What does it do? Find out here!

Arduino Serial Available - What happens to serial input when the processor is overloaded?

Arduino Serial Read - it works but underneath there's a lot going on.

Arduino Absolute Value - is abs() simple - it should be! - there are pitfalls!

Arduino delay() - How to delay the processor so a human can see events!

Arduino digitalWrite() - How to write a binary signal to the 0-5V output pin.

digitalWrite is a very useful generic function but you can operate 17 times faster using direct write macros - all explained in the link above.

Arduino for loop - How it works and how to avoid a simple mistake in using it.

Arduino if else - How to use If and else for maximum effectiveness in your programs.

Arduino int to string - How to convert an integer into a string using itoa. Plus a subtle problem when coding it youself - full code included that shows you how to code it from first principles.

Arduino string to int - How to convert a string into an integer using atoi. full code included that shows you how to code it from first principles. Also a fully coded version for converting hexadecimal and binary strings to an integer.

Arduino float to string - Find out how to do it Easily. Is there a simple function that does this for you? What is the one thing you must do to ensure your program is reliable?: Find out here.

Arduino map() - Why it does not always do what you want.

Arduino millis() - Time events using milliseconds without stopping the processor.

Its a useful timer but there's a little bit of interesting code in its operation that makes it skip a beat sometimes? Should you worry about this?

Arduino pinMode() - It's use is simple but there's lots going on under the hood. Find out exactly how it works here.

Arduino pulseIn() and pulseInLong() - How to measure pulse inputs.

One of these MUST be used with interrupts turned ON.
One of these should be used with interrupts turned OFF.
Do you know which?

Arduino switch case - How to use the C switch and case construct the right way.

Arduino strtok() - How to tokenize a string and avoid some pitfalls.

Arduino while loop - How to use it and how it is different to the for loop.

Arduino External Interrupts - External Interrupts: How to use them and how to get MORE, many more!!

Arduino Timer Interrupts - How to generate an exact repeating time interrupt using the internal timers of the Arduino. It is a bit more involved but a very useful thing to be able to do.

Arduino shiftOut - Find out how to control serial chips with this function.

Arduino shiftIn - Find out how to read serial data from chips.

Arduino String - How to decode serial port data into commands.
What is the difference in using a String object and using c strings?
Should you use String at all? Memory fragmentation can occur.
Find out about these issues in the link above.

Arduino IOT

What is the difference between the two most popular IOT microcontollers: ESP32 vs ESP8266?

ESP32

Arduino web server: How to serve pages from an ESP32. Is this all you need or is there a problem?

ESP32 Web CAM: How to use an AI Thinker Web cam board to steam video to a web page.

What is a WebSocket: Simply put it is the most useful protoco that allows instantaneous communication between a web page and your Arduino.

Full ESP32 WebSocket Server tutorial: Learn exactly how to implement WebSockets on an ESP32 for fully bi-directional data flow.

ESP8266: Lolin nodeMCU ESP8266 ESP-12E

ESP8266 Arduino IDE - Learn how to program an ESP8266 using the Arduno IDE.

NodeMCU Firmware - Return the LUA scripting language back into an ESP8266.

ESPLorer - How to use ESPLorer to upload lua scripts to an ESP module.

NodeMCU Examples - from simple LED blink to wifi use.

ESP8266 Webserver - How to make a nodeMCU webeserver to control anything.

ESP-01

ESP-01 and ESP-01S: Confused about these variants? Which one is right for you? Find out the exact differences between the ESP-01 and ESP-01S here and choose the right one.

Sections

Microcontroller Blog - Site news and updates

PIC Introduction - An introduction to PIC Microcontrollers.

PIC Programmer - A parallel port ICSP programmer.

PIC Programming - All about programmers, ICSP and ICPROG

PIC Compilers - Find out why you should use a PIC compiler.

Basic compiler - learn about a free PICBSIC compiler.

C Course - A new course showing you how to use C.

PIC Basic - Find out about the different types of PIC Basic.

PIC Projects - A selection of fully designed PIC project examples.

PIC Tutorials - More formal tutorial information on microcontrollers and protocols.

Tips and Techniques - Various design techniques and information.

Schematic tool -A useful tool for drawing, netlisting electronic schematic diagrams.

Books - Some useful books.

Free Ezine - A unique and useful ezine which also happens to be free!

Articles

PIC Projects

16F877 : 50MHz LCD frequencycounter.

16F877 : 50MHz 7 segment frequencycounter.

16F877 : 0-5V LCD volt meter.

16F877 : LCD and Keypad using one 8 bit port (noglue logic).

Direct jump to locked page (needs unlock code)

16F877 : Driving an RGB LED.

16F877 : Serial LCD module.

16F88 : Ultrasonic range finding project.

16F88 : A Real Time Clock (DS1307) using I2C.

16F88 : Driving an LED dot matrix.

16F88 : Universal Infrared Receiver (UIR).

16F88 : Binary Clock

12F675 : Tutorial 12F675 : RS232 Serial transmitter

PIC Parallel Port Programmer.

12F675 : Serial Temperature Logger

12F675 : EEPROM Temperature logger

12F675 : Servo motor driver

12F675 : Servo motor - serial control

Tips and Techniques

General	Resources
ICSP	PIC device comparison
ICSP programming
RS232	RS232 pinout
Debugging Techniques	Using PIC I/O : TRIS, PORT
PIC Timer overview	Crystal ppm calculations
I/O Expansion techniques	Interactive Timer 0 calculator
PIC Programmers	Interactive Timer 1 calculator
	Interactive Timer 2 calculator

Hardware specific
Switch debouncing	Setting up RS232
12F675 : Setting OSCCAL in C	12F675 :Recovering lost calibration
	Use the voltage reference module as a DAC
Software specific
Hexadecimal conversions
Soft USART (TX) (TX details)	Soft USART (RX/TX) (RX details)
Using fixed point maths
Other
Reading schematics	Multitasking
Prototyping	Electronic schematic symbols
Using an oscilloscope	PWM

PIC Tutorial

Devices
12F675	16F84
Hardware
PIC Introduction	ICSP	Interrupts
Software
MikroC compiler
Protocols
I2C	RS232	Setting up RS232
SPI
Techniques
Frequency counting	Ultrasonic range finding	Software Tri PWM
Multiplexing	CCP (capture)	Soft PWM
Timer 1 (polled)