Driver for the CH341/340 Mac OS X 10.10.x

Been bitten by the CH340/341 of the cinese arduino nano clones myself in these day .
Found the right one right away after a short search on the internet it' here . 
After experimenting with the nano clone have to add a few caveat...
0) old CH340/341 Drivers can PANIC the Mac OS X Kernel
1) DO NOT use 3.3 Volt for anything than a few mA as it's generated by the CH340 chip so is not capable of more than few mA
2) DO NOT short o put a too strong load (say less than 500mA) on the power out(5V) pin of the arduino nano when USB powered as the diode put in series with the USB power can blow up ( it's a SCHOTTKY) .
3) TRY to let the CH340/341 alone undisturbed when connected to the Mac via USB.

That all for today. If i come up with something else will report here.

7 Segment 4 Digit Led Display with ATTINY 2313 driver

Hi all This my first adaptation of code from "vimeo.com/37941225" by grist.carrigafoyl, no other references, to be compliant with Arduino IDE so you can compile it from the IDE.  It work well without glitches for me up to my still limited testing.  It needs the library "TinyWireS" to use the slave version of Don Blake's library, available elsewere on the Arduino playground http://playground.arduino.cc//Code/USIi2c. The Address of the slave is still hardcoded into the firmware.  To be changed with a read/write flash memory function in the future. the Code is available here happy coding

Programming the Atmega328-pu

If you are programming an Atmega328-PU for the first time out of the box , DO solw down the bit-clock of the programmer either using the -B option of avrdude or the switch on the programmer hardware.

This is absolutely the most frustrating experience in programming a microcontroller.
The Atmega family from Atmel is a wonder of semplicity and power, BUT you need to know your devil.
For every number (Atmega168, Atmega88, Atmega 328 and so on ... ) there are different version of the processor, namely the V the P the Pu and other, they are not the same !!! mainly they change the signature, this make them effectively different, look in the datasheet to see which one is the right one for the processo you have, if you don choose the right one in the programmer you can't program the chip.
Back to the Atmega 328-PU, this small bugger it's a '168 with double the memory, so, for example, you can fit double the program length from Arduino, BUT it's different from the '328 used in Arduino, they use a '328P, low power version, and you have a 328-PU more generally available.
To use it with Arduino look in the Arduino forum and search for Atmega328 or Atmega328PU, there you will find the reference to what to change in the Arduino ide to program the bootloader.
Nobody if not vaguley mention the fact that you have to slow down the bit-clock, coupled with the fact that I never need to do so with the Atmega168 or Atiny45 ( I've programmed them 100's of time), it took me a whole afternoon to find what was wrong, in the end I flipped the switch that slow the bit-clock in the programmer and everything went fine...
Gosh Batman ! slow that CLOCK !!!!

Doram Distortion Meter

Hi everybody a fellow of mine has found this instrument . Used to work , it was used to test distortion while designing audio power amp, mfctd circa 1975.
No other infos.
Looking for information about it , how to use it, possibly a manual.
thank a lot.

Articolo Soft start per lampade alogene

Su infoportal ho pubblicato un breve articolo sulla costruzione di un semplice Soft start per Lampade alogene a bassa tensione.
Infoportal - Articoli - Alimentatori - soft start per lampade alogene

Wow !  A new tutorial about the attiny45-85 based on my work
HLT wiki/Arduino A Ttiny 4585
Interesting !

Arduino IDE with ATTiny45 (porting)

form my pages here 

some notes to better use the board end the software

You HAVE to modify "board.txt" to include the Attiny45 processor, add this part to end of the file

attiny45.name=Arduino w ATtiny45

attiny45.upload.protocol=stk500

attiny45.upload.maximum_size=4096

attiny45.upload.speed=19200

attiny45.bootloader.low_fuses=0xdf

attiny45.bootloader.high_fuses=0xca

attiny45.bootloader.path= attiny45

attiny45.bootloader.file=ATmegaBOOT.hex

attiny45.bootloader.unlock_bits=0x3F

attiny45.bootloader.lock_bits=0x0F

attiny45.build.mcu=attiny45

attiny45.build.f_cpu=8000000L

attiny45.build.core=attiny45

these line will define the board giving max memory size for program (4096) and instruct the compiler to build code for the tiny45.

to know which mcu are supported by avr-gcc and their names use
avr-gcc --target-help
in a terminal window (works in Mac OSX and probably in Linux)

PIN MAPPINGThe best I can do for the pin mapping is in the pins_arduino.c in the core folder, the function are multiple per pin depends on the function you use to refer to the pin;
I.E. analogWrite (0,231) // output a pwn signal to real pin 5
digitalRead(5) // read a digital value from real pin 1
analogRead(5) // read an analog value from real pin 1
and so on ... like in a real arduino .