Transistors

Since Im fairly rusty on electronics I find myself having to lookup these few images alot while building my solar circuit.

Transistor Layout:
2N3904, NPN Transistor



2N3906 PNP Transistor

Nocturnal Solar Engines

I found Nocturnal Solar engines while poking around on the net and I am very very interested in them. I also found out about supercaps which can hold huge amounts of power (1F and up).

So while I dont have any circuits yet, here are the links Im using as references.

Beam Circuits - A fantastic source of info
Interactive Mud - a blog entry detailing his build of the same solar engine I plan to build. Made it alot easier for me to understand the circuit and also he provided a full part list.

Cool Cake

How cool is that cake !!!!!
Found it while looking up a transistor, be sure to checkout the photo gallery.

Simple at89s52 programmer

Simple at89s52 programmer

Made this programmer today, found the link through 8051projects.

Its simple because it does not use a buffer chip, which the 1st one I attempted did. My only issue I had really is I put a transistor in backwards :P

Will upload some snaps later.

Project working :)

Got my project working nicely. I hacked up a xmms plugin and added some comport code (alot of tweaking later) and viola.
Full write up will come later when I find the time.

Quick video below showing it doing its thing to Korn - Dead bodies Everywhere.

Working out why it doesnt work :P

My new thread on 8051 projects

Currently trying to figure out how to calculate the baud rate.

Will post more when I know more.

1st Stage solved, onto second.

Well all I needed todo was connect VCC to V+ and it worked as expected (see forum thread for info). Now Im onto the second stage controlling the leds via a comport interface. Following the 8051projects RS232 tutorial I have knocked up my scheme. Will order parts and continue the fun.

Stage 2 project Scheme:

AT89C51 Led chaser WIP - update

Thanks to the help of the avrfreaks & 8051projects forums I have solved my first hiccup. The wiring was wrong, Port 0 pins are earthed unless a value is written to them, so I was trying to make the voltage flow the wrong way.

I proved my code was being run on the chip by creating a program that simply turned off pin 1 and did nothing else. Tested, worked as expected, then modified it for pin 2 and so on.
The code is fine, as the simulator in keil's IDE proved, the big issue facing me atm is how do I slow down the code enough to see the leds blink when Im using my LED chaser code.

New scheme:


avrfreaks forum thread
8051 forum thread

AT89C51 Led chaser WIP

I am a newbie getting into programing micro controllers. Not really know what to buy I bought a programmer that did ATMEL chips as they seem pretty cool and have a good community following at avrfreaks.

So having bought the atmel programmer from futurlec and some chips that were supported.

I am using the Keil C51 ide, which i find pretty nice. Here is my current project code (hosted @ rapidshare.de).

The code is changed slightly from some examples I found at blitzlogic and a few others. Turning Port 0 / 1 on seems to be a fairly common test.

In addition to being new (well revisting something I havent done for 10 years) at micro controller programing I am also fairly rusty at electrontics (same 10 year deal). I am working off a 6v lantern (rectangular) battery as a power source and its all wired up on the bread board.

The 10Mhz crystal was used because its all that dicksmiths had and Im still waiting for my 2nd order from furturlec.

Now that I have explained all the above, here is the issue I (and most newbs)
have - IT DOESNT WORK :(.

ISSUE:

• LEDS 1&2 light up at ~50% brightness and LED 3 at ~20%.
• LEDS dont work as expected.
  

Parts:

• 1x AT89C51
• 1x 8.2k ohm resistor
  
• 8x 300 ohm resistors
• 8x 3mm 2.1v LEDS
• 1x 10Mhz SPK Crystal
• 2x 33pf Caps
• 1x 10uF Cap
• 1x 6v Lantern battery
  

I would appreciate if anyone could offer insite to the issue, it could possibly be my code.

Update:

I have run my hex file in the keil simulator (after I figured out how) and all PO.0 to P0.7 are getting their on / off in sequence (shown in small screenshot below).

So perhaps Its not the code (I wont rule it out till I hear from someone in the know). Im leaning more to my wiring, though the bread board layout is as simple as you could possibly get.

Code:

*full rar of keil project*

leds1.c:

#include <>

char const num[ ] = {0x01, 0x02, 0x04, 0x08, 0x10, 0x20, 0x40, 0x80};

void wait (void)
{ ; /* wait function */
}

void main( void )
{
unsigned int i;
unsigned char j;

P0 = 0; /* initialize ZERO to P0 */

while(1)
{
for( j = 0; j < p0 =" num[" i =" 0;" face="Georgia,serif">