DIY Controller (Atmel based)

[kwirky]

I've ordered some ATMEL128 boards from futurlec.com along with some opto-relays and a serial interface. Each board is aprox $29 and each opto-relay board is $14. the optorelay boards have 4 relays per board. (relays let you turn 110AC high voltage wall-socket power on and off using low-voltage electronics)

I'm learning atmel programming and electronics interfacing for both my fine arts practice and my aquarium hobby. I'm pretty excited about the potential of these guys . I've been going through tutorials using the emulator built into AVR Studio. kinda neat.

I could use it to control water pumps for elaborate wavemaking, auto top off, all sorts of stuff. An ambitious idea would be to emulate the Tunze controllers and control the AC frequency the same way the controllers do (like what the profilux does). you get 48 inputs and outputs along with analog inputs and outputs (for probes and temp sensors n such).

i'm sourcing out a pH probe interface or schematics to make one. pH probes don't work with normal 5V resistance. You need to work the pH probe with an interface. kinda hard to find these things but I'm getting close.

I also ordered a 16x4 character LCD screen with backlight and a 128x64 pixel screen (b&w, no greyscale).

I'll be getting the stuff probably about 3 weeks from now. it's 3-6 days shipping USPS express but it'll probably be held up at the border.

I'll let u all know how it goes . Any work I do will be open source and I'll post code examples of working stuff as I go.

information on the ATMEL chip:
ATMEL assembly programming for beginners: http://www.avr-asm-download.de/beginner_en.pdf

ATMEL boards and other tidbits of electronics: http://www.futurlec.com

the ATMEGA board i'm using: http://www.futurlec.com/ATMEGA_Controller.shtml

ATMEL forums and projects: http://www.avrfreaks.net

AVR studio IDE for programming ATMEL chips: http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/to...p?tool_id=2725