Traffic warning system or so called TDDY(Traffic Data Display ) is a vehicle-mounted, receive-only traffic warning system designed by Dubravko Gacina. System may be used to minimize the risk of vehicle like like public buses, emergency response vehicles, cabs, delivery vehicles accidents. An ATmega128 microcontroller and a matrix of 512 bi-color LEDs organized as a map of the Los Angeles freeways comprise the system.

Collisions between emergency vehicles and other vehicles are common events. Many of these collisions occur at inter-sections. Public vehicles approaching at 90 degrees to the direction of travel of emergency vehicles are very difficult to see. Sensors mounted on the vehicle could alert emergency vehicle drivers of approaching cross traffic. In such a scenario, sensors sends information to some sort of dispatching center which process incoming data and, in return, sends data to interested parties in form of positional information to traffic warning devices mounted in vehicles.

This design presents an early implementation of traffic warning device. Conventionally, it uses server software hosted on PC and pager which serves as client to display position of vehicles on city map. You can download project files here .

Want to learn how to generate sound effect or simply play melodies on your microcontroller project? You should read nice series of articles in uchobby where is deep analysis made on how sound can be generated by using limited resources.

This time he describes Bit-Banging Sound generating technique with source code example. Bit-bang is simple output toggling at desired frequency. To play a musical note, specific frequencies are needed that are played for a specific amount of time. About other sound generating techniques and comparison read here. Further you can find simple experiments that leads to nice sound wave generation with Arduino board.

SparkFun team have made a huge interactive Tetris game. This is really impressive piece of art made of 16 Atmega8 microcontrollers, 720 LEDs and 240 buttons. Game can be controlled by touching buttons directly on frame(similar to touch screen).

The Tetris board is 10×20 cells and each cell lights up 1 of 7 different block colors. Separate button pads are 4×4 and there are 15 of them, so total array is of 12×20 buttons. There is RGB LED placed behind each button so it is possible to light any button with any color. Can imagine what processing power is needed to update all picture and read all button state. This is why whole project was break up in pieces of 4×4 button pads with separate microcontrollers accessed via SPI interface. Project is really challenging but satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. They provide all schematics and firmwares if somebody wants to give a try.

This nice LCD2USB device is an open source and open hardware project. The mani idea was to make cheap solution of LCD connection to various PC’s via USB port. The total cost of LCD2USB is up to 10 Euros, while applications can be run under various operation systems like Windows, Linux, MacOS. This may be a nice addition to your PC to display various system information or simply for showing MP3 song titles.

Information which is sent to LCD can be configured and transferred with various well known applications like lcd4linux, LCD Smartie (requires a seperate driver), and LCDProc.

USB interface is software implementation on AVR Atmega8 microcontroller, so no expensive special micros are needed. Project is very well documented and constantly updated. Download the latest version here.

KapteinKUK have modified his wall clock by adding 12 LEDs controlled by ATtiny2313 microcontroller. LEDs are flashing randomly driven patterns with some variable intensity driven by PWM channel.

Download asm code and circuit here. Dont forget to set internal clock to 1MHz. Nice toy for Christmas rush.