I'm building a temperature monitoring unit with arduino, LM35 and a 16*2 LCD display. Now I am going to integrate this unit by SIM900A GSM/GPRS module and I get temperature readings by SMS.
Now my question is, can I get those values by voice calling. If I called to the GSM modem, can it tell the temperature readings.
You need to add all possible values as .amr files or you can break them and play the appropriate files using at commands. Like for 35 you can play sound "thirty" and then "five".
Follow the AMR playing application note available here
Apart of having all the messages in PCM files there is also possibility to use TTS (text to speech) There are small and compact TTS engines out there suitable for Arduino port. Here two I am using (with AVR32):
Tiny Speech Synth by stan 1901
just port it to your arduino (removing the waveout stuff and just use the buffer as PCM). The only lib it really needs is math.h for sin,cos. It may need a bit more work to actually make it more comprehensible but its not that bad when tuned the frequencies ... its using floats heavily but I think port to integer math is also possible ...
KECAL 1.0 ports for ATMEGA
its much older TTS engine originaly from ZX Spectrum but its a bit less comprehensible especially with low quality reproductors (like buzzer) ... But id does not need PWM or DAC ...
I do not know of any more recent OpenSource TTS engine compact enough for MCU platform all I know of are too big or relaying on SAPI,.NET or other OS integrated stuff making them useless.
The #1 is simple and commented enough to make changes improving the phonemes. The #2 was heavily optimized for speed and size (it run on ~4MHz Z80) so no way to improve quality there.
Btw there are also IC for TTS out there so that might be even better choice...
[edit1]
Take a look at this:
Is there any text to speech program that will run on an 8- or 16-bit CPU?
Among other things I added there very good quality and low CPU demand TTS engine ported from Z80 asm into C++, which can be directly used by MCUs ...
Related
I recently started coding on a raspberry pi. I build a circuit with three buttons, an LED and a 7 digit LCD. Its a fairly simply thing. You can set a time value with the + and - button in seconds and then press the other one to start a countdown. I use this to do triggered long exposures with my camera. However the raspberry pi is to big and bulky and needs to much energy.
Then I put my code and my circuit on an Arduino UNO which is an improvement in size and energy consumption.
Because my program is very simple I am sure that there must be a way to get this on a much smaller chip. I need some kind of programmable chip where I can put my code onto. Something that is small and dont has any other fancy features or more calculating power than I could need. As far as my knowledge goes I dont have any idea how to get into that.
At work we have a 3D printer with a W1209 temperature relay controller on it. This is a small circuit with the same 7 digit LCD pane and the temperature is also settable with two buttons. This inspired me to look for something much more primitive that would be enough for my needs.
Can you recommend any hardware or some tutorials about that?
Search the Microchip website for the DM164141 - MPLABXpress PIC16F18345 Evaluation Board. I think it's around $12 and should have enough I/O for your application. You can use the online MPLABXpress IDE for development.
Ive been trying to build a 32X12X12 LED cube (something like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1YNyQqbiF0 ) and trying to get some animation running on it. I used the Arduino to get a 8X8X8 cube running and i wanted to know:-
Is it possible to do the same with the Arduino (considering limited number of ports)?
If Yes, what additional hardware would i require? (Like Multiplexers and Shift Registers)
Is there a LED Driver or any other open source HW platform i could use to do this, that allows easy programming also?
I will multiplex your 3 questions into one answer: I recommend the MA72xx to drive your LEDs. You can drive up to 15 of them from your Arduino, which probably will suffice your 32x32x32 needs.
I have used and like the Atmel ATMEGA and ATTINY series microcontrollers, and think them quite good. One thing I am not terribly fond of though is the fact that they (and Microchip PIC uC family also) are all Harvard machines, meaning I can't really put external memory to use or execute out of RAM, only the flash.
While there are obvious advantages to this design, it makes it technically very difficult to do things like FORTH using an AVR or PIC. (I know there is at least one implementation, but it does not work like a normal FORTH and will wear out the flash rather rapidly)
FORTH was originally created for interactive machine control type systems where lots of flexibility was needed, so things like the Z80 or 6809 were used as microcontrollers with the control program executing out or RAM or some other storage device.
Does anyone know of current devices of similar complexity (preferably available in DIP packages) to the AVR/PIC that are von Neumman machines?
In addition to Freescale processors (that starblue has already pointed out), the Texas Instrument MSP430 family uses von Neumann architecture. However only the smallest ones are available in a DIP package.
UPDATE to include PIC32:
In my original post, I had forgotten that PIC32 microcontrollers have always been able to execute out of RAM, as demonstrated by this code example;and now Microchip has come out with the new PIC32MZ line of microcontrollers, with up to 2 MB of Flash and 512K of RAM which makes them feasible for fairly large RAM-based programs. Unfortunately none of them chips are available in DIP packages.
However Olimex, sort of the Bulgarian equivalent of SparkFun and Adafruit, has a PIC32-HMZ144 development board for $21.95 EUR, which is about $24. This is a smoking hot deal since the processor alone costs over $12 at Digi-Key. (There are other boards available from US suppliers from around $50 and up.)
The original PIC32MX line has twenty variants in 28-pin DIP packages, but they are limited to a maximum of 64K of RAM, still useful for some projects.
Farnell has a nice search function that let's you search for microcontrollers in DIP packages. Though you'll have figure out which families are non-Harvard by looking at the data sheets.
Take a look at the 68K ones and the HCS08.
Update: In the meantime some ARM Cortex-M controllers in DIP packages have become available, the LPC810M021FN8 and the LPC1114FN28 from NXP.
You might want to peruse the designs available at the OpenCores project. That is an open source project devoted to CPU core designs implemented in VHDL, Verilog, and similar FPGA design languages. There are complete and respectable implementations of classic 8-bit CPUs such as the 8080, 6502, and 8051. The 6502 I linked to claims to be cycle-accurate compared to the original chip. Others are functionally complete, but often have more modern buses and signals.
They won't (I think) be available in DIP packages, but you can always find breakout boards.
The designs are all open source, under a wide variety of licenses.
You may also have a look at the Zilog eZ80. Since they're binary-compatible with the old Z80, you should be able find a FORTH implementation that runs on them, but you'd probably need to run it on top of good old CP/M :)
Also, these are the only ones that I found that have the memory bus accessible from the outside, i.e. allow code execution from external memory.
The arm based ones, even the cortex-m3 claims to be harvard, but you can load programs into data ram and execute from that ram. it is really not harvard. Other arms are normally not harvard, some have external memory interfaces you can use to expand the internal resources.
This is actually not a question, but more of a related query. Why would you go to von-neumann in a microcontroller if the previous generation was harvard? Isnt it all win-win in terms of performance? other than complexity (which if the original PIC's can handle it, should not be that great) what are the downsides of having Harvard architecture?
The new Kinetis line of microcontrollers from Freescale puts an ARM Cortex-M4 inside a microcontroller package, and program code can be located anywhere in addressable space (RAM or FLASH, or even Flex Memory.)
The Kinetis Solution Advisor is a powerful selector guide that can help you find the micro you want. Memory from 32kB to 1MB, all the peripherals you could want, and pricing from under a dollar to around 10.
I would like to solder a microcontroller, control buttons and an DVI/HDMI output and program this in a way, that I can store images on it and let them display as a dia-show via the outputs.
It doesn't have to have a lot of storage capacity, 128Mb would be enough.
but I don't know how to start, because I haven't done anything like this before.
My aim is to present some important images to friends by just taking this hardware, connecting it to a TV screen and showing these photos. If should be able to switch the photos manually (using a button) or automatically in a dia-show.
It should support several TV resolutions and it should be connectable to my PC (USB prefered), so that I can upload and delete photos.
So where to start and how to do that?
Thank you in advance, Andreas
If your aim is just to show some photos, there are assuredly simpler and more cost effective ways to do so; devices exist which do more or less exactly what you are proposing.
If your aim is to learn about microcontrollers and this is a project your are taking up to further that, I would recommend looking into the Arduino: http://www.arduino.cc/ or a similar kit based micro, and growing your project from that.
Microcontroller + low level language will be a huge pain to work with, particularly if you wish to handle various file formats and screen resolutions. Get a full-blown computer with an OS instead - something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC/104
If your goal is purely to be able to display photos then I would recommend using a digital camera with video out capabilities.
If your aim is to learn about electronics and microcontrollers I would start with a good book and an Arduino board. Note that writing microcontroller code to handle file systems, image formats and video output is non-trivial. Simpler projects may be a better starting point as they are more accessible resulting in quicker progress, less frustration and more motivation!
The engineering field is a interesting field. You can start with the web site "www.microchip.com". You will need a high end device consider the PIC32MX795L512, there is a nice starter kit for it, "Ethernet Starter Kit" http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=2615&dDocName=en545713. This kit has the on board debugger & programmer to do all the hard work.
You get sample projects with the package, you can program using ansi c programming.
IDE : MPLAB which is free, and the C32 compiler has a student/lite version.
Arduino also has a board with the same device.
I personally like "www.techtoys.com.hk", they have device compatible with Microchip boards like techtoys.com.hk/PIC_boards/PIC32STK%20SSD1963%20EVK/PIC32STK%20SSD1963%20EVK%20R1A.htm, or this techtoys.com.hk/PIC_boards/PIC2432EVK-RD4/PIC2432%20EVK%20RD4.htm where this board you will need a debugger/programmer like the low cost PIC Kit 3 "microchip.com/pickit3".
The trouble is you need to write the HDMI video library yourself, there are some VGA libraries available but they are only black and white and very hard to get color with these analog images. The rest of the libraries are already there, USB MSD(flash drive), SD Card, pictures (jpg) etc.
microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=2680&dDocName=en547784
Feel free to contact me if you need some help, I might be able to help with the HDMI library.
It's a lot of fun to play with these toys.
Regards
Lucas
B-Eng Digital Engineering.
imlucanio#yahoo.com (no spamming)
Remember to add the http and www to the web links.
It sounds like you want an iPod. That is a dead simple thing to work with and it does everything you want. Otherwise, very complicated. I'd suggest the BeagleBoard and embedded Linux. Yes, it warrants that level of complexity.
The options for small microcontrollers just aren't there. The Arduino is very popular and yes, you can interface an SD card to it. That'd be your storage. Yes, you can put a digital potentiometer on it, that can be your interface. I've seen some video overlays that do simple text, but never any JPEG display (too much processing required). And certainly no 24 bit color (so that the output would actually look good) - that would take WAY too many pins to do correctly (and the Arduino doesn't have a D/A converter! You'd have to rig something up that would suck). And even then, all of the options for TV out weren't HDMI, but RCA (the old red/white/yellow cables).
So in short, no. Get a computer. That's what can do the job.
Besides Arduino, what other ways are there to learn hardware programming in a hands-on way? Are there any nifty kits available, either a pre-assembled robot, that you can program to move a certain way, or do certain things, or anything similar to that?
Atmel AVR and the PIC both have experiment boards that you can use solder stuff on to, usually they have a couple of buttons and some lights pre-soldered to the area. This let's you program/flash the microprocessor and play with the output pins. You can either write the programs in assembly or C.
Parallax have a number of kits. They have two product lines suited for "playing around", Basic Stamp and something called Propeller. The former is a small microprocessor that runs programs written in Basic (a tad disgusting ;)) and the latter runs something called Spin or assembly (well after compilation obviously.)
I would go with either AVR or the PIC. I've done PIC but I've heard good things about AVR, they seem to ship with better software.
At first look Microsoft's VPL sounds good, but when it comes to actually LEARNING how hardware works it goes a LONG way to hide those details from you. As a matter of fact it is pretty much designed for people who don't program, and is distastful to someone who's actually written embedded software. IF you just want to make stuff happen and not delve into the details it's fine, but if you want to get down to the metal like programming the "Arduino" boards it's not for you.
If you're used to something like the Arduino then something like the PIC will be an easy transistion. SparcFun Electronics has all sorts of DIY type projects and hardware available. If you have a decent bookstore around your area, I would suggest looking for "Circuit Cellar" magazine. It has articles on a monthly basis with project for someone looking to get into hardware projects, everything from homebrew Software Defined Radio to FPGA based 3D graphics. (Raytracing actually) Usually the authors describe the project in an article and "WHY" they made the decisions they did, a description and schematics of the hardware and provide a link to source code.
Cypress Semiconductor has one of the most interesting embedded processors on the market and several high quality dev boards for sale. The PSoC includes the ability to not only configure the software, but also to "drop in" software configured hardware such Analog to digital converters, serial I/O, Digital to Analog and Various amps and filters. It's a REALLY cool concept, and the "touch sensor" capability of the PSoC were actually used in several models of the IPod.
One thing about programming these little micros is they don't have a lot between you and the hardware, you get to see how things really work. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about an 8-bit microcontroller or a quad-core Pentium programming hardware is largely the same concept. You write to a memory mapped register for some piece of hardware like a serial controller, and the hardware responds in someway. If you program a baudrate generator in a PIC or PC it's largely the same idea, you write a value that will be used as a division factor from a given clock to achive a given baudrate. The numbers and names maybe different, but the concepts is the same. On a PC you may have to map to the PCI address of the card, which adds a some complications, but if you looked underneath the OS you would see that that was done just by writing values to registers simalar to programming a PIC to use a different "Page" of memory. Is it worth learning an 8-bitter? Well, there are approximately $5 billion dollars in sales of the little 8-bit micros today with projection only showing growth in that market in the future. I saw one reference that state the average car has 25 Microcontrollers in it. That's not too bad.
I haven't played with it much, but the iRobot looks pretty cool.
The ability to simulate how your robot will work which some of the other answers mentioned is nice, but there's nothing like seeing a real-life robot do what you programmed it to do. That, to me, is what really makes robots fun and cool.
There's the .NET Micro Framework.
It's incredibly simple to use/setup and there's lots of hardware being made to target this framework.
You should take a look at Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio which supports many different kits.
I have always been curious about gumstix. It seems more professional than arduino, and it aims at the Linux programmer. I cannot give you a real suggestion, as I've never played with it, but I would definitely go with one of this toys if I had to do and learn some cool hardware programming.