Electronic Circuits and Diagram-Electronics Projects and Design

We all know there exist 2 approaches to write a program – 1) Procedure oriented programming (POP) and 2) Object oriented programming (OOP). You can write a program in either way but there are notable differences between both approaches. These 2 approaches are the result of software development evolution over many decades. Since the invention of computer, many approaches and methods have been tried to write a program. It includes methods like a) Top-Down programming b) Bottom-Up programming c) Modular programming  d) Structured programming etc. The basic purpose or the basic aim of all these methods were same – “to…

This article is a little off topic as it is not related to electronics! However I thought this would be useful for some one who manages a Vbulletin forum software. For those who find the name “Vbulletin” alien, it’s a forum management software. We use it to power our CircuitsToday-Forums. Recently we lost access to our “administrator” account of our forum software! There had been no way we could access the admin account and all attempts to retrieve password from our “memories” failed miserably! What next ? Well there is a solution provided by the makers of Vbulletin software. So…

I am beginning a series of articles about C++ programming language. So lets begin with a simple C++ program as shown below. #include int main() { cout

ADC (Analog to digital converter) forms a very essential part in many embedded projects and this  article is about interfacing an ADC to 8051 embedded controller. ADC 0804 is the ADC used here and before going through the interfacing  procedure, we must neatly understand how the ADC 0804 works. ADC 0804. ADC0804 is an 8 bit successive approximation analogue to digital converter from National semiconductors. The features of ADC0804 are  differential analogue voltage inputs, 0-5V input voltage range, no zero adjustment, built in clock generator, reference voltage can be externally adjusted to convert smaller analogue voltage span to 8 bit resolution…

Introduction                 The first step to digital signal processing is to convert a signal into digital data, and here the Analog to Digital Converter devices comes into action. Some of the AVR micro controllers include ADC unit in their features. This is a very useful unit for measurement related applications. The ADC used in AVR micro controllers are of successive approximation converter type. Read the Wikipedia article on SAR type ADC here. And you can read the Circuitstoday article too. Using the ADC Unit SAR type ADC needs these following things to run properly: A very stable, low internal impedance,…

Introduction to Interrupts                 Although micro controllers can accept inputs from Digital I/O Ports,interrupts are preferred for accepting inputs generated by external events. This is mainly because of the less attention required for an interrupt based program. An Interrupt Event directs the flow of program execution to a totally independent piece of code, known as “Interrupt Sub-Routine”. There are many sources of Interrupts that are available for a micro controller. Most of them are generated by the internal modules and are known as internal interrupts. And there are two pins that accept external signals directly and allows external sources to…

 Introduction USART is one of the primitive inter-device communication protocols. It is not used in modern computers. But still, a few mother boards come with the module necessary for an USART communication. Here, in the case of PCs, the port is known as COM port and it follows RS232 protocol. It is no different from USART except for the voltage levels and some additional signals. Commonly MAX232 IC is used to translate the voltage level. MAX232 is a simple voltage translator buffer that converts +12/-12V of RS232 to 5/0V for USART. Other specifications are similar for USART and RS232. To…

Water level controller using 8051. A water level controller based using 8051 is shown in this article. A lot of water level controller projects have been published in this website but the is the first one based on a microcontroller. This water level controller monitors the level of the over head tank  and automatically switches on the water pump when ever the level goes below a preset limit. The level of the over head tank is indicated using 5 leds and the pump is switched of when the over head tank is filled. The pump is not allowed to start…

Bubble sorting is one of the simplest sorting algorithm that we can use to sort an array or a structure. Though it is so simple to implement in a C program, bubble sort is also considered as an inefficient sorting algorithm. Bubble sort comes handy in cases where the total number of elements to be sorted is so small (may be in the 100′s range). When the data size is large/huge bubble sort is seldom used in practical programming world. Let’s analyse bubble sort algorithm in detail by implementing it as a C program.  Note:- Since the algorithm is implemented with the help of 2 FOR…

Introduction                 Micro controllers support wired communication protocols. Most of the time, microcontrollers come along with internal modules that support these protocols. The commonly supported protocols are: UART or USART communication SPI TWI USI etc. And few advanced protocols like: USB CAN Ethernet  etc. SPI stands for Serial Peripheral Interface and it is the simplest among all the communication protocols. 8bit data registers in the devices are connected by wires. These data registers works as shift registers and one of the device controls the data exchange inside the  SPI Network. The device or devices that controls the operation inside the…