Thermostats are handy devices around the house. They can be used in various places like for keeping constant room temperature. Phil suggests one that was specially designed to keep storage room temperature around 6 degrees of Celsius above zero.

This is an AVR Attiny2313 project that interfaces 1-wire temperature sensor DS18B20. Controller is controlled by two buttons while seeing information on three 7-segment LED display. Temperature heater is switched by using relay. Thermostat is designed to be a stand alone device that takes power from mains. So there is a power transformer used and linear regulators to get needed voltages. Overall this is really simple but handy project.

Probably one of most common projects among embedded starters is Larson scanner. It is basically a row of LEDs that runs lights with fading effect like Cylons eyes from Battlestar Galactica or KITT Knight Rider movies. If your next project is gonna be Larson scanner you may want to check out this thorough tutorial that may save you some time.

Tutorial is based on AVR Atmega168 microcontroller. Circuit is really simple for this 8 LEDs with current limiting resistors and ISP header for programming. In particular case you can program Arduino board directly for this. Program is written in C and all parts of it is well commented. Basically there is no wonder – only PWM play.

CRT TV tubes are almost gone leaving place for more modern TVs like LCD. But don’t rush to throw old school TV in to waste as it may still be useful or at least good material for fun projects.

Niklas Roy played around with one of these and came up with fun project called Lumenoise. Read more »

Burning candle is relaxing and gives warm feeling. No romantic moment passes without a candle. João took a challenge to simulate candle light with a LED and small microcontroller.

The task isn’t so easy as it may look. Random flickering of LEDs won’t work here. First of all candle light is warm and waves slowly that gives a feeling of oscillating air around. This work is a second version of previous where he used single LED and MCU. This time he decided to go with two LEDs to get effect more close to candle. Program is based on PWM with random bit. Circuit isn’t hard to rebuild so be first to check out if this is close enough to candle light. Can you do better?