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So I finally got my next shipment of PCB boards from BatchPCB.com. The boards were perfect, not one mfg issue (I suspect this is mostly thanks to what I learned from SparkFun.com). It’s fantastically rewarding to see your ideas come to life, I posted here originally about the Arduino controlled dog stairs I had built but I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to free up the Arduino, it’s not what a development board is for anyhow. I have since crossed the hurdle of building my own code in C using AVRStudio. I decided upon the ATTINY13A chip because it was small and really had just enough functionality to make this project work as I had wanted it to. The Arduino was overkill; an ATMEGA328 is WAY overkill for this project. I’ve learned so much about AVR programming I can’t even believe how far I’ve come. I’ve posted the AVR source code, high resolution pictures and the eagle files so you can build your own. I figure I’ve got no more than $10 invested in this not including the stairs!
And here are the boards I got from BatchPCB.com the other day.
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Title: AVRDogStairsSmall (948 clicks)
Caption: Images and AVR Code
Filename: avrdogstairssmall.zip
Size: 220 KB
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Title: AVRDogStairsSmall (948 clicks)
Caption: Images and AVR Code
Filename: avrdogstairssmall.zip
Size: 220 KB
October 1, 2009 at 10:37 am
Those PCBs look great! I can’t wait to find an excuse to give BatchPCB a try 🙂
Do you get as frustrated as I do with the “snappable” female headers? I just found these on allelectronics (this is where I got a load of solar light innards):
http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/SIP-30/SNAPPABLE-30-PIN-SIP-SOCKET-.1-CENTERS/-/1.html
These actually look like they *are* snappable!
October 1, 2009 at 10:59 am
Well, I’ve had no luck with any of the female headers. I always lose a pin when I “snap” them. I did read where one guy had decided to cut them with a mini-hacksaw…too much trouble for me. I just ordered a large lot of them from http://www.taydaelectronics.com. I’d love to hear if there is a better way than my way and not having to break out a hacksaw or dremel tool…BTW, I’ve got a PCB version of your LED Camp fire design ready to send off to BatchPCB. I’ve added code to support a photocell and lowered the FClk to try to squeeze out more battery life… Once I get them in, I can send you one if you want?
October 6, 2009 at 8:12 pm
I’d love to see the PCB version. Thanks, Jay!
I haven’t bought any of the machined female headers. The one comment for those was that they don’t accept the square pins from the more standard headers (but they do accept the flat IC style pins).
October 8, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Well, heck! I caught an error with my AVR controlled dog stairs board. I didn’t put a 10K resistor between RST and VCC which why I can’t use the ICSPI to program it. Dang! Well, I’ve updated the design and files which I’ll make available here later.