Dilshan R Jayakody’s Web Log

In the last couple of years, I tried several powered USB hubs to drive some development boards and USB peripherals. Most of the USB hubs which we can find in the local market are unreliable or not designed to drive more than 500mA of a load. After having a few bad experiences with powered USB hubs, I decided to build a USB hub by myself. I specifically design this hub to drive USB powered development boards and experimental peripherals. The core element of this USB hub is the " FE1.1s " USB 2.0 hub controller. " FE1.1s " is a low cost, 4-port, high-speed USB hub controller, and this chip can easily order by eBay or AliExpress . A prototype version of the USB hub. Apart from FE1.1s features, this USB hub has the following additional features: Switches to on/off and reset individual USB ports. Capability to provide a maximum of 3A of current from each USB port. Power using 9V to 15V DC voltage source. This USB hub uses PIC16F630 MCU and four units...

When purchasing SLT ( Sri Lanka Telecom ) PeoTV connection, we are getting a  preconfigured ADSL router and STB. Generally, the router they provided is a 4-port, low-cost ADSL router. The unit which I received with my PeoTV connection is " PROLiNK H5004NK ", and it is a decent quality 4-port ADSL router with a WiFi transceiver. I used this router for one year, and the main issues I noticed with this router are its unnecessary resets during heavy network traffic and limit configuration options. Due to the recent upgrade of my network, I replaced this router with the TP-Link W8961ND router. TP-Link W8961ND bundles with ADSL 2/2+ Modem, 300Mbps WiFi access point, and 4-port router. TP-Link W8961ND Router I purchased this router from a computer component seller and NOT from SLT. As usual, this router arrives with the default configuration, and I managed to configure it for SLT ADSL and PeoTV without any problems. The firmware version of this router is version 3.0...

This tuner circuit is a quick prototype which I build to test the RDA5807M FM radio tuner IC. RDA5807M is a single-chip tuner IC with RDS and MPX decoder, and it equipped with I 2 C interface for control. The main reason to build this prototype is to understand the behavior of this chip. The prototype version of the RDA5807M receiver. At the time of this design, the website of the RDA microelectronics is not accessible from my location. Because of this reason, I download different versions of RDA5807M datasheets from the internet. While going-through those datasheets, I observed that it comes with limited information. Finally, I decided to build this receiver to verify some of those parameters and to review the RDS functionality of the chip. I build this receiver around ATmega16A MCU. I choose this MCU because I got a few of ATmega16A MCUs in my inventory and also due to the higher number of  I/O pin count. RDA5807M module. In this design, the volume is contro...

USB Morse Keyer is a microcontroller-based auto keyer project with following features: USB / straight key / iambic key inputs. Support for both standalone and USB operating modes. 64-character USB typeahead buffer and 6-character Morse key typeahead buffer. Support 5, 10, 15 WPM. 6-page message memory. 1W Audio output. Audio and PTT output interfaces. 32 character display  Final view of the USB auto keyer. The USB interface of this unit is designed to work with most of the operating systems. It emulates a virtual serial terminal to transfer keystrokes to the keyer. In most of the operating systems, this interface works without installing any additional device drivers. To submit keystrokes user can use any serial terminal software such as PuTTY , Hyper Terminal , Minicom , etc. This keyer is designed to work with 7V to 16V DC input voltage. The most recommended working voltage is 9V. The bottom side of the USB auto keyer. To reduce the dimension of the P...

This quick post is about the verification script which I did to test the PT8211 DAC functionality. This script is designed to work with Arduino boards and, I tested with Arduino Due and Arduino Mega 2560 boards. The script is self-explanatory, and it emulates the I2S interface and communicates with the PT8211 DAC. The output waveform of PT8211 on Arduino Due board. With this script, PT8211 generate sine wave in both channels. The frequency of the waveform is dependent on the clock frequency of the Arduino board. In Due board, PT8211 generates 0.052kHz sine wave on both channels. Connections between PT8211 and Arduino. The test setup is quite straightforward. I2S and power pins of PT8211 need to connect to the Arduino board in the following order: Serial clock ( BCK ) - Pin 22 Channel selector ( WS ) - Pin 23 Data ( DIN ) - Pin 24 VCC - 5V (Mega 2560 board) 3.3V (Due board) GND - GND Left and right channels of the DAC is connected to oscilloscope or frequenc...

A few years back I purchased Honeywell CL15AE evaporative air cooler and it is15L indoor air cooler manufactured by JMATEK (for Honeywell). Sine last week this cooler became dead, and the only thing which I can see live is its red color power indicator. After disassembling the unit I see that most of the components of the controller PCB are rusted and damaged.  As I observed the main reason for corrosion is the absence of protective varnish on the top side of the PCB. The original control board of CL15AE cooler. At first, I restore all the damaged parts in the PCB with new parts, which including SS8050 , SS8550 , transistors and a few of electrolytic capacitors. After replacing those components, the unit starts to beep during power up but failed to power on. Damaged SS8050 and SS8550 transistors. After some tests, I figured out the problem is in SONiX SN8P2602 8-bit microcontroller.  Due to unavailability of microcontroller and it's firmware I decided to pr...

Simple NTP clock is a maintenance-free clock application developed to work on single-board computers like Raspberry Pi , Orange Pi , etc. This clock application uses the Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP) to get the time and display it on seven segment display which I designed . This application is designed to work on most of the Linux based systems and had minimum dependencies with system libraries and peripherals. I developed this application to work with Allwinner H2 Plus based Orange Pi Zero board, but this can compile for other platforms without doing any modifications on the source code. NTP clock on Orange Pi Zero. To compile this application issue the following commands: make clean make Parameters related to this application are available at config.json file. This file can be used to specify the NTP server, time zone, and display module port. The source code of this project is available at github.com .

This project is about an open source, USB based, 10 digit seven segment display unit. This unit is specifically designed to work with POS systems and banking applications. Initially, this system is developed to work with PC based systems, and later it was modified to work with other platforms and applications. Final view of the USB seven segment display module To simplify the communication interface this unit is designed to emulate a COM port in the host terminal. Because of this feature, this module can work with many systems without having any additional device driver(s). To extend the scope of this unit, it also comes with an option to switch between " direct mode " and " API mode ". In " direct mode " application or host device can directly send characters to the display unit over the emulated serial communication channel. The " API mode " is intended to provide more extensive features with this unit. All the " API mode ...

The 1750Hz tone bursts are often used to trigger repeaters. There are several methods to build 1750Hz tone generators which including TC5082 divider , using MCUs, etc. In this post, I present another 1750Hz tone generator which I built using 74HC4060 high-speed 14-stage binary ripple counter and 7.168MHz crystal. In this design, 74HC4060 is used to drive the crystal and divide its output by 4096. By using 7.168MHz crystal, this circuit produces 1750.0Hz square wave output with a 50% duty cycle. A prototype version of the 1750Hz tone generator. This circuit is extremely simple to build, and I construct my prototype using a breadboard. I tested this generator by connecting its output to my Baofeng UV-5R handheld transceiver and it gives an excellent result. The key motivation to build this generator using 74HC4060 is, because of its common availability. Most of the tone generators which I found on the internet are built using MCUs or by using rare ICs, because of that rea...

Dual-tone multi-frequency ( DTMF ) is a common signaling system used in telephone networks and other communication devices. It uses a mixture of two sine waves to generate tones which represent ten digits, the letters A to D , and the symbols # and * . While I’m examining other Arduino based DTMF generators I noticed most of the designs are based on Holtek HT9200 DTMF generator IC. After a couple of experiments, I figure out that Arduino itself is capable enough to generate DTMF tones without using any external IC or generator. Prototype assembly of the ladder circuit. The design which I explained in this article is based on R-2R ladder DAC. I did this design using Arduino Uno board and still this library support only for this board. But it can easily extend to other AVR MCU based Arduino boards. Schematic of the DTMF generator. The R-2R ladder is attached to the PORTD of the MCU which is Digital out 0 to 7 in Arduino Uno board. In this design, I used 100 Ω and ...

TFA9842AJ is quiet old 7.5W audio power amplifier introduced by NXP . This amplifier IC is no longer produced by NXP, but still, it's available to purchase in many places, which including eBay , AliExpress , Amazon , etc. NXP TFA9842AJ Power amplifier IC. I tested a couple of TFA9842AJ based amplifiers in the last couple of years. The main reason I liked TFA9842AJ is its simple, clean design, wide operating voltage, and high-quality bass-rich audio output. Thanks to it's built-in DC volume control circuit this audio amplifier can easily interface with MCU. In this article, we provide a generic TFA9842AJ module which works with most of Arduino boards, MCUs and SOCs. Schematic of the TFA9842AJ module. As illustrated above, this system consists of LM321 operational amplifier and TFA9842AJ IC. To support both 5V and 3.3V logic inputs we introduce logical level selection jumper ( J2 ) into this design. To control the volume PWM input must apply to the J1 . In this...

In my workshop, I got a couple of INGCO power tools. INGCO is a Chinese power tool manufacturer, and this brand is quite popular in Sri Lanka. Out of those tools I frequently used INGCO MG1502.2 mini drill. I purchased this drill three years back and mainly use for engraving and for precision drilling. A few days ago while I'm using this drill, it suddenly stopped. As a first thing, I checked brushes and mains-lead. After a few minutes of inspections, I found out that both brushes and mains lead are in perfect order. To further examine I decided to open the drill. The internal layout of this drill is quite simple. It mainly consists of an AC motor and electronic speed controller circuit. After a few checkups, I determined that the electronic speed controller is dead. In speed controller board I notice some unknown microcontroller, 74HC595 shift register, and Z0409MF TRIAC. As like many Chinese products here also they erased the IC number and other markings of the MCU. After ...

The main objective of this project is to design a maintenance free and low-cost light which automatically turns on and off at the predetermined time of the day. To meet the above requirement I designed this controller using ATmega8 MCU and DS1307 RTC. The driver stage of this light controller is intended to work with commonly available 7W LED modules. PCB of the programmable light controller. The core component of this programmable light is ATmega8 low power CMOS microcontroller. The main reason to select this microcontroller is it’s lower cost and higher availability. Except for the above two reasons this microcontroller also bundled with a rich set of peripherals which including 23 GPIOs, 3 independent timers, Two-wire serial interface, EEPROM, etc. Apart from ATmega8 microcontroller, this system uses DS1307 real time clock to maintain system time. Like ATmega8, DS1307 is also a very popular RTC in the market. This controller is designed to work with a 24V DC power supp...

Recently I build my new house near Maharagama town. While building this house I allocate space for my antennas and observation equipment. Before installing antennas, I decided to install a lightning rod into the house. The main reason to install a lightning rod is because of the height of the building. It nearly 48 feet (approximately 15m) high, and located in open space, because of those reasons there is a very high probability to hit lightning into my antennas and other equipment. Installed lightning rod At the time of this writing, in here in Sri Lanka mainly two types of lightning arrestor systems are in use. The first type is a conventional lightning rod . This type of lightning rod is very common in Sri Lanka and it made with copper rods. The second type is ESE ( Early Streamer Emission ) type lighting arrestor. This ESE type is now getting popular in here and I saw it in a couple of new buildings. As I noticed most of the lightning arrestor installation companies are ...

This is TCS230 based Bluetooth color picker prototype which we build to test the concept. In here the idea is to extract color from any physical object and transfer it to PC / mobile. To test this concept, we use low-cost TCS230 color sensor. A prototype version of color picker on a tiny breadboard. TCS230 is programmable color light-to-frequency convert IC. This chip produces square wave output with frequency directly proportional to the light intensity. To drive this sensor and capture its output we used PIC16F628A microcontroller. The processed output is then transferred to the host using the HC-05 Bluetooth SPP ( Serial Port Protocol ) module. In PC we wrote small Python script to display captured value and color in a Window. In this design, we drive the TCS230 sensor with 20% frequency scaling. The entire circuit is built using commonly available modules and components. For the color sensor, we use the 8-pin TCS230 sensor module which is commonly found in eBay and other...

13.8V power supplies are commonly used in amateur radio experiments. Most of the portable amateur radio transceivers are designed to work with a 13.8V power source. We mainly build this power supply unit to power some of our amateur radio circuits and modules. This design is based on the popular LM338 5A voltage regulator. We choose this regulator because of to it’s higher current rating, short-circuit protection feature and higher availability. The prototype version of 13.8V - 5A power supply unit. Apart from that, we include MC3423 based crowbar sensing circuit to preventing an over-voltage condition of a power supply unit. We design this circuit by using commonly available 18V×2 (5A) + 12V (1A) transformer. This transformer is available in the market because it’s commonly used with some AF power amplifier systems/kits. We use its 12V terminal to drive 120mm - 12V cooling fan.

In this project, we build a simple I 2 S stereo decoder with an amplifier. To decode I 2 S data we use Princeton Technologies PT8211 16bit DAC. KA2206 audio power amplifier is used as the driver stage of this system. The prototype version of I2S stereo decoder Structure of this I 2 S amplifier is self-explanatory from the schematic. We select PT8211 and KA2206 combination due to lower cost and availability. Unfortunately, PT8211 DIP package is not available in the local market and we use SO package in our prototype. We design PCB for the DIP packages, and therefore we solder PT8211 SO package to PCB using " SO8 to DIP8 " converter. We design this system to work with 9V DC power source but at the prototyping stages, we noticed that it works well with lower DC voltage such as 5V. For the output use any 8Ω or 4Ω (5W or higher rated) full range speaker pair. We test this with 8Ω 8W oval speakers which are commonly found on televisions.