Monday, January 16, 2012

5V Regulated Breadboard Power Supply

     I recently got a PCB for this Breadboard module for 18-pin PIC16F microcontrollers from Raj and was looking through the tutorials on his website and thought it would be a great place to start learning about PICs. I have programmed PIC chips using PicBasic Pro, but I have never used C to program them. I knew having an easy to use power supply for prototyping would come in use, but I didn't have one. I know that Sparkfun and Adafruit each have their own solutions, but when I saw Raj's Regulated Power Supply for Your Breadboard, I knew I could easily make my own with parts I had in stock. Check after the break for how I did it.

Working product

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Homemade Variable Power Supply

     A while ago, I got two of these Graymark Model 803 variable power supplies. Unfortunately, they were sold as a kit and whoever assembled them before me did not do a very good job. To make matters worse, I could find no information online about this particular kit so I couldn't figure out how the circuit was supposed to be connected. It also had a mystery voltage regulator chip that I could never find any information about online. I decided that I would just go ahead and start over, using only the layout with new electronics for a new power supply.

Finished project

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Making LadyAda's MiniPOV3

     A while ago I was struck with the idea of making a persistence of vision device. I have seen various contraptions all over the internet that would write out text or make images and I wanted to see what all the hoopla was about. I settled on a MiniPOV3 designed by LadyAda because it seemed very simple and I had nearly all the parts necessary to assemble it in my stockpile.

That's right. I'm a tinkerer.