Ham Spot Inc

Troubles with Arduino on the 'Tiny85

Details: Category: Shack Talk; Published on Thursday, 06 September 2012 03:57; Written by David L Norris, KG9AE

The attiny85 and family are excellent little microcontrollers fit for many simple uses like lamp dimmers and other simple automation tasks.

However, many folks including myself have been plagued by the following error:

avrdude: stk500_paged_write(): (a) protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x64
avrdude: stk500_cmd(): protocol error

Learn Why... Troubles with Arduino on the 'Tiny85

Radiometry: Detecting Light Levels

Details: Category: Shack Talk; Published on Wednesday, 05 September 2012 03:26; Written by David L Norris, KG9AE

The emissivity of a body is equal to its absorbance at the same temperature.

G.R. Kirchhoff, Kirchhoff's Law of Radiation.

This article describes a simple radiometer for the measurement of visible and invisible light.

According to "Meteorology: The Atmosphere and the Science of Weather, Fourth Edition", J Moran & M Morgan (isbn:0023833416), Meteorologists use a scale from 1-10 to describe the sky conditions. 1 being completely clear and 10 being completely overcast. Using a simple integrated analog to digital convertor, it should be possible to directly interface the sensor to a computer serial port.

Read The Rest...Radiometry: Detecting Light Levels

Homebrew Projects - Components

Details: Category: Shack Talk; Published on Tuesday, 28 August 2012 11:00; Written by David L Norris, KG9AE

Many seem to think that the "Maker" phenomena is a new trend but it's really just a resurgence of how things were before mass production moved out of the US. Most of the time since radio and electricity went mainstream in the late 19th century designing and building your own equipment was the attraction. Back then it was necessary because there was no store which sold such equipment. These days you can go buy anything you'd ever need. When I was a kid in the 1980s pretty much everyone interested in Ham Radio or electronics had built a Heath Kit or Conar or some other piece of gear and almost everyone had built their own antennas. Building something of your own design is a very valuable learning experience and I strongly encourage everyone, ham or not, to build something of their own.

Read The Rest...Homebrew Projects - Components