Arduino bootloader
What is the arduino bootloader ? It’s the thing that loads stuff when booting. Done Not funny you say ? … ok , ok I’ll try this again… It’s a special program that on boot waits for a signal from the PC that is connected to …
ATmega power consumption (I)
A few days ago I received a special request. It was about a circuit running on an ATmega328 that was supposed to replace and improve upon an circuit based on the much older ATmega8. One of the requirements for the older circuit was an as low as possible power consumption. …
Project : Steering wheel audio controls – Improvements – Circuit Design
Well , last time we saw what went wrong , or at least what didn’t go as expected , now I have to find a way to fix it. I’ll start on focusing on the issue of making the doors lock and unlock. I think I should make a new …
Project : Steering wheel audio controls – Improvements
Well, seems like the conclusions article was not the end of the story for my little car upgrade. After installation one big issue is that there’s no actual access to the car’s computer to input the lock and unlock signals. I also have to found any comprehensive diagram of the …
Arduino – IRLIb2
In my Arduino-based-car-radio-steering-wheel-interface-thing I talked a lot about infrared communications (IR communications) but without going into great detail about it. Infrared light is light transmitted at frequencies low enough that the human eye can’t see. This became especially useful to the mass consumer market when TV sets became widespread. The …
Project : Steering wheel audio controls – Conclusions
Building the module has been an interesting experience. I tried something new (at least for me) on the circuit. I didn’t talk much about the circuit used to power all of this in the other articles because I purchased an off the shelf module. To be more exact I opted …
Project : Steering wheel audio controls – Programming II
Let’s hit this nail on the head. Last time I talked about some general considerations regarding the code. Now I want to go through the code in blocks and, hopefully, give you an understanding of what I did and why I did it for you to know what works or, …
Project : Steering wheel audio controls – Programming I
After assembling the hardware on a breadboard, I started experimenting with the code. I also got the remote handy, remember in a previous posting I talked that the head unit came with a small remote. Just as a reminder the head unit is a CDX-GT410U and the remote is model …
Project : Steering wheel audio controls – Circuit Design
Now let’s look at designing a circuit to run the mess of cables I have shown in the last posting. The resulting circuit needs to be able to: Transmit an infrared signal to control the car radio. This will be accomplished by an infrared led controlled by one of my …
Project : Steering wheel audio controls – Reverse engineering
Reverse engineeringReverse engineering, the puzzle part. Well reverse engineering in the sense that I will take apart the steering wheel controls and figure out how to connect them to my circuit. After taking out the controls from the wheel I am left with the 2 rows of buttons that go …