Stepper Motor Controlling using Arduino

I found a stepper motor from a broken printer and I was thinking how to control this. Because controlling an stepper motor is not easy as controlling a simple DC motor.

First I found that the stepper was a uni-polar type one. Then using Arduino stepper library, it was a peace of cake building this project.

I purchased ULN2004A motor controller and here is the schematic from Arduino official tutorial.

This is an interesting project because you can control the speed of your stepper motor using potentiometer. I used a 50K (Kilo Ohms) one.

Here is an image of my project setup :

Here is the video of my project:

And here is the Arduino official tutorial page link. You can find the source code from this link. Have a good day!!

PIC16F877A Prototyping Board

I built my second prototyping board and this time it is for the big guy PIC16F877A. I used a ZIF socket to easily remove and re connect the microcontroller.

Same as the previous board I built this on a vero board. I added a 7805 regulator and 4 MHz crystal oscillator. And also female headers for all the required ports and some additional headers for power output. 

Here is the schematic of the circuit.

You can also try this. Comments are always welcome!!

PIC16F84A Prototyping Board

I was doing some experiments with PIC16F84A Microcontroller and I got bored doing it on project board. So I wanted to build a small prototyping board and I did. Here is my prototyping board for PIC16F84A Microcontroller.

I built it on a Vero board and it has a 7805 regulator so that I can directly connect it to different power sources. I also added IN4001 diode to protect it from voltage direction mistakes. I added female headers to PORT A and PORT B pins so that I can connect sensors, LEDs etc. I also added few headers to ground and +5V to get output power.

Here is the schematic of the circuit.

The oscillator I used was 4MHz one and it is ok for most experiments.

If you are planning to build this, I advise you to use a ZIP socket instead of the general IC socket. Good Luck.

Raspberry PI LED Blink Tutorial

Hello Friends, Today I am going to create a Raspberry Pi LED Blinking Project. I am using Raspberry Pi 3 Model B for this tutorial.

In this tutorial, I will step by step show you how to write a simple Python code to blink an LED which connect to your Raspberry Pi via GPIO pins.

Here is the video of completed project.

Now it is the time to up your Pi and ready to get started.

PIC16F628A Programmable Timer

I was looking for a programmable timer and fortunaitly I could find a great project. First I was trying to build a simple timer circuit using NE555 or 4060 ICs. Then I wanted to move to a rich project with a LCD screen and ability to program for short and long duration times. Then I found this excellent project which exactly meets my requirements.

Then I built this project on a simple vero board and it is working very well. Here are two images of the built project.

You can set the maximum time to 99 Hours and 99 Minutes. The circuit has two options. First you can set the time which your device keep off and then the time you want to keep your device on. The display will show you the (count down) remaining time.

I am using this circuit to turn off and on lights of my house to a predefined time. I also added a battery backup to avoid resetting the timer on power breaks.

You can find more information from the below link. This is the link of the original source of this nice timer circuit.

Link to the original post with schematic and source code download

I should also thank the author Raj Bhatt for posting this great project.

SainSmart Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Starter Kit

I recently bought SainSmart Raspberry Pi 3 Model B starter kit and not disappointed at all.
I bought it from one of eBay seller and it was very much worth for the price. I received the item even before the estimated date and also in a good package. At the time I write this article, the price of this set was US $51.29

Here is the link of the eBay seller : Link of the Seller

Following items include in this set.

• 1x New 2016 Raspberry Pi 3 (This is element 14 version)
• 1x SainSmart ABS Black Case (Fits to the pi well)
• 3x Aluminum Heat-sink (Average heat sinks)
• 1x 5V Micro USB Charger Power Supply (Good quality charger, it can run your pi with some loads without any issue)
• 1x USB Cable (Generic micro USB cable. you can use as your mobile phone data cable too ;)
• 1x Quick-Start Guide (Basic guide with some information to up your pi)

This set does not includes a micro SD card. And also GPIO cable also not included.

Ultrasonic Distance Measurement with Arduino

We can use ultrasonic sensors to measure distance with Arduino. There are several types of ultrasonic sensors available in the electronic market. In this example, I am using the famous HC-SR04 type ultrasonic sensor. This sensor is cheap, easy to connect to Arduino and highly used in robotic projects to identify obstacles. I will also use a LCD screen to display the distance in both Inches and Centimeters.

Arduino and DS1307 LCD Digital Clock Project

1) Introduction and Images

Hello friends, today I am going to build a Digital Clock using Arduino UNO and famous DS1307 Real Time Clock IC.