Pages

In a previous post I presented a revised version of my Minimalist Arduino Clone called the Hobbyduino Mini V3.0. Here a picture for reference.

Now, I would like to present a bootloader ISP shield that can be used to burn the Arduino bootloader onto blank ATMega328 or ATMega168 chips.  Here are a few pictures of what it looks like.

A little while ago ignoblegnome (IG) did a review for me on my version of a minimalist Arduino clone designed to be used for prototyping and finished projects. The board design allows the Hobbyduino Mini to be used on a breadboard by soldering pin headers to the I/O sockets or in a finished project by attaching wires. IG also passed along some great suggestions for future versions. I took the suggestions he made and modified the original design. Below is the 3rd revision of the Hobbyduino Mini.

16 May 2011

Today I made a slight modification to the toaster oven to see if I can improve the PID loop response.  I was having issues with oscillations no matter how much I adjusted the PID gains.  I suspected this was because I turned the oven on/off in response to the PID output.  This meant the internal oven fan pulled the temperature down below the setpoint a bit every time the oven was turned back on again.  Another side affect is the temperature would overshoot the setpoint a bit once the PID attempted to compensate for the undershoot.

15 May 2011 - Update

I have successfully reflow soldered a test PCB.  I got the PID routine tuned a bit and was itching to test out the reflow controller.  So, I applied some solder paster to a old relay controller board I developed and successfully soldered some components to the board.

Below are some pictures of solder paste and components applied to the PCB.

03 May 2011 - A quick update on the status of my reflow oven.

23 April 2011

Uploaded video of the calibration routine used to adjust for overshoot.

22 April 2011

7 April 2011:

Wow, it has been ages since I actually posted something although I visit the site pretty much every day.  I ain't (good slang term) making no excuses but, okay, I am making some excuses as I am in the military and I do work roughy 11 hours, 5 days a week (when I'm not traveling).