Atmega8 Usb To Serial
Welcome to garydion. The Wifi Radio Project. Introduction. Im one who often has the radio playing when Im working on a project or unwinding at the end of the day. And while there are a few good radio stations still around, there are times Id like to listen to a genre that a local station just doesnt cover. Ever since stations started simulcasting on the internet, Ive been a big fan. Atmega8 Usb To Serial' title='Atmega8 Usb To Serial' />You name it, and someone probably has a station dedicated to it. This page outlines my project to home brew a dedicated box for tuning in these online stations. Sure, I could have bought one for 1. Ive often done, and still do, but I wanted to make something to match the other stereo hardware I have. I also like that I can personalize every aspect of the design, and put to use some of the hardware Ive collected over the years. Background Information. Inspiration for this project came in no small part from Jeff Keyzer over at mighty. Ohm. com. If you havent seen his site yet, do be sure to visit it and see what hes done. Ill reference it later when I speak of modifying the firmware in the wireless router. I also collect horde a lot of hardware. One obsession seems to be displays, especially vacuum fluorescent. This project had to have one. It made matching my stereo and cd player easier since they employ them too. Atmega8 Usb To Serial' title='Atmega8 Usb To Serial' />
Official Atmel AVR development tools and evaluation kits contain a number of starter kits and debugging tools with support for most AVR devices. USB AVR Programmer for Atmel AVR microcontrollers. USB AVR Programmer is made of an Atmega8 and few components. The programmer uses a firmware driver that makes this. ODAwWDgwMA==/z/TxoAAOSw65FXupVG/$_1.JPG?set_id=8800005007' alt='Atmega8 Usb To Serial' title='Atmega8 Usb To Serial' />I also collect knobs, buttons, dials, switches, etc. And so I was able to match the look and feel of the equipment on my dresser. Hardware Components. First things first, I had to collect all the parts I wanted to fit into the radio. There would be the Asus WL 5. USB audio adapter, the vacuum fluorescent display VFD I recently found on ebay, various knobsbuttons, and some sort of processor board to pull everything together. For small projects like this, my trusty ATmega. I felt it was up to the task. Shown below is a board Id designed for an LCD serial backpack, but repurposed for this project. I dont have a formal schematic for it handy, but its pretty simple and Ill explain gritty details of the electrical design further below. The board itself hosts the microprocessor, a Maxim MAX2. I will mention now that I probably didnt need the level converter, as its only there to talk to the VFD. If you look closely, I clipped some of the leads and a voltage divider for talking to the router is hidden underneath. The display is made by IEE and is the 0. X3 1. 00 0. 54. I discovered it accepts RS 2. C voltages as well as the 1. I added the MAX2. Atmel perhaps not being able to drive the serial line of the display properly. F1 06 Pc Game on this page. USB Audio Adapter. As Jeff mentioned on his site, a number of USB audio adapters work. And, well, a number dont. I have used the board out of a computer headset Radio Shack used to sell. Sorry I cant be much more specific about it, as its no longer sold. For more on what is and isnt supported, be sure to check out the Mighty. Ohm Wi. Fi Radio Forum. A Case, Knob, and Button. Its at this point, I really wish Id taken a picture of the original device which lived in the case it so valiantly donated. It was an old school composite video fader made for easing scene changes in home edited videos. I think I found it in a junk box at a hamfest for 5. Anyhow, it was collecting dust and just barely fit the components, so it was destined for a new life. After cutting, drilling, sanding, priming and painting, and some mounting this was the result. I made the opening for the display using a Dremel and its cutoff wheel. And I opened the back for the Ethernet jacks on the router using a sheet metal nibbler. The audio output sockets were the composite video inout ports in their previous life. The 18 inch jack over the input label is the infrared signal input line from the Onkyo receiver more on that later. The Display Filter. You can see in the above photo that its pretty obvious where the character cells are in the VFD. I never gave much thought to the acrylic placed in front of fluorescent displays until I ran across Mark Hennessys preamp project. I used to work in technical theater, and had a few books of sample gels, which are the plastic filters placed in front of stage lights to create different colors. I spent half an hour holding pages of that book in front of the display. And boy, the filter used makes a huge difference I never knew you could really make a VFD red, but I believe it now. That said, the pages werent big enough for me to rip out and use, so I had to find a cheap filter for myself. Instead of going to a theatrical supply store, I found some vinyl baskets at the Dollar tree in blue and green. I couldnt decide which color to go with, but as it turns out I needed both. After cutting two rectangles out of the baskets, I sandwiched them in between the case body and the case cover. The green is on the outside. Makes a big different, doesnt it Makes an even bigger difference to the contrast of the display. Mounting The Boards. Lets continue the picture laden story with even moreFirst up is a shot showing the router on bottom and display on the left. Only one bracket bolts directly to the display and anchors it to the bottom of the box. This keeps it from sliding around. I hold it against the front of the box with a piece of foam and pressure from the white block bolted in the middle. The bolt comes up from the bottom of the box and is also supporting one side the router board. On the left, you can see the back of the rotary encoder. On the right, the power button and wireless activity LED which used to be mounted on the router. Using long bolts makes stacking boards easy. Game Diablo 2 Full. It just makes removing boards quite the process when they are on the bottom of the stackHere is the USB audio board out of the headset, the one solid mount for the display, and the threaded bolt with boards stacked. I ran wires directly to the USB connector on the bottom of the router. And finally, the connectors leaving the ATmega board running all over. The perforated board in the bottom left holds a solid state relay module. I added it to power down the display when the power is off since the hot cathodes draw a lot of power even when nothing is shown on the display. Yes, the relay is overkill, but I scrounged it from a trash bin. The integrated circuit on the board is just a ULN2. Darlington array to buffer the output of the microprocessor to drive the input of the relay. Its overkill as well, as the microprocessor could probably sink the necessary current to drive the internal LED. Router Software. For the most part, I followed along with Jeff on his blog as he replaced the firmware in his router to Open. WRT, installed additional software, and talked to mpc through the serial port. I recommend that you also set up your router just like Jeff did, at least at first. I made a few changes to my install by the time I was done, and they are primarily in the interface. I run a higher serial speed, load an initial playlist file using mpc load, and added one more status line to get playlist choice and elapsed playing time. Also, My Atmel code directly generates shell commands, so I did not modify etcinittab like Jeff did in part 8 on his site. This also allows me one more back door to log in with in case I screw something up. Sure, the Atmel gets a bunch of 9. Regarding the commands that the Atmel sends to the router, I stuck with shell commands that a user would type. I start and stop playback with mpc play and mpc stop, respectively. Its pretty dull stuff, really.