ATtiny2313 – Based thermostat project update. I wrote a small test firmware for it to test if everything is wired up the right way and to test it’s current consumption. And it turns out that there were some mistakes..
Also it’s current consumption is well below 150mA that I was expecting.
So I’ve came back to my ATtiny2313 – based thermostat project, that I’ve started to work on some time ago. And today I have assembled a first prototype (actually I only need a couple of these).
If you haven’t seen video I’ve made on this project, you can watch it here: Part1 Video.
It’s based around ATMEL AVR ATtiny2313 microcontroller, it will measure temperature using DS18B20 digital temperature sensor, and it has a 30A 240VAC relay to control heater.
One of the best ways to learn electronics is to see how someone else, more experienced designed something. Whether you’ll disassemble some device or will see some schematic or design – it gives you invaluable experience. In many cases you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, just use already known design cliche and only if needed add your own pieces of design. The more design cliche (building blocks) you know – the less time you’ll spend to make some project and the better design you’ll create.
Many people using Arduino or some other development board in their projects, instead of making their own board with microcontroller because they simply don’t know how to design PCB with microcontrollers. What microcontrollers need in order to operate?
This time I will be focusing on two most popular 8 bit micro architectures: Atmel AVR and Microchip PIC.
In reality what many people are afraid of is really simple to do. You just need a couple of passive components and you’re good to go.
My parents growing their own organic food and they asked me to deal with winter temperatures problem in the storage room. It gets really cold here, in Ukraine. Some winters have even lower temperatures than -30°C (-22°F). So right now I designing a simple thermostat for keeping temperature at about 5-7 degrees C above zero. Plus right now I started to use my garage as a gym, so this thermostat would be handy there too.
One of the most often things you need to do in electronics is to measure temperature. Even a simplest device might need an over-temperature protection.
In this temperature sensors overview video you’ll find out about most common types of temperature sensors, their main characteristics and usual ways of connecting those sensors to microcontroller. I’ll make dedicated tutorial on using each of those sensors in future, but now it’s just a review of main types.
In this video I’ll tell you what is darlington transistors, how to use them to switch medium current loads with microcontroller and what downsides they have.
Also you’ll find out about darlington arrays. Of course there would be small demonstration of controlling different loads at the end of this video.
In case if you don’t know how to use an ordinary bipolar transistors, check out this two videos:
How to design a transistor circuit that controls low-power devices from Ben Krasnow
SparkFun According to Pete 7-5-11: Diodes and Transistors
