Most of my readers here will be surprised to learn that I am an avid amateur astronomer. I spend every chance I get under the stars taking in the amazing views that can be seen from my 10" Meade LXD-55 Schmidt Newtonian. With my background in photography, it should come as no surprise that I have shifted more into astrophotography than visual observing. My imaging sessions are usually conducted with two of my best friends at a private observatory owned by one of them . The observatory is nice but it is located about 35-40 minutes from me and thus I do not get out there as much as I would like to. So over the last couple of months I have been gearing up my scope for imaging. One of the first task I had to tackle was building a cable that would allow me to control my telescope from my PC, and that is what today's tutorial is all about.  [node:read-more:link]

This morning I woke up very early. Nothing was on TV, the interwebs were boring me and I was not in a mood to play a video game. So I sat down at my workbench and decided to make a theremin. I remember as a child a neighbor having a tube theremin that produced those eerie high pitched notes of classic b grade horror movies. When ever we would visit their home for a cook out or party I would play with the theremin every chance I got. To me, it was the coolest noise maker ever. The fact that I could manipulate the tone and pitch of the sound with out touching anything together was simply awesome. So with a theremin project in mind I jumped back on the web and a quick search yielded me this pocket theremin project from Popular Science. It is comprised of just 9 components, all of which I had on hand. So with the schematic chosen I sat down and bread-boarded my first theremin. [node:read-more:link]

ATmega168A Pulse Width Modulation Tutorial

Protostack is back with another AVR tutorial. In this installment Daniel covers everything you need to know about PWM and gives you 3 examples using an Atmega 168. The first two use the existing PWM pins and are fairly common for the experienced AVR enthusiast, the third example however is quite interesting and shows us how to use timer interrupts to create 3 more PWM lines. Keep reading after the jump.... [node:read-more:link]

ADC on Atmega 168A Part 2

Part 2 of Protostack's AVR Analog to Digital Converter tutorial series covers using a second analog input and adding an interrupt with interrupt. We actually were looking for a tutorial on this exact thing a few months back to use with our Liquiduino PC Water Cooling Info Center. Thanks to Protostack, we can now start work back on the project. Head over to their site and check out part 2 of the ADC tutorial which makes use of the new version of the Atmega 168, the 168A. While you are there check out their USBASP programmer, and pick up some of their awesome proto boards. Check out the schematic after the jump. [node:read-more:link]

ADC on an ATMEGA 168 Tutorial on Protostack.com

Earlier this year Protostack posted a turorial on Analog to Digital Conversion on an Atmega 168. This tutorial covers everyting from the low pass filter on the AVCC lines to the registers you will need to tweak on the AVR itself. We are sure that this will come in handy in our future projects as well as yours. Head over to the Protostack site and check out the full tutorial, and while you are there pick up one of the new Atmega 168 Development Kits or their Exprimenters Kit! Check out the schematic after the jump. [node:read-more:link]

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