AVR Clock

So I have been tinkering with AVR micro-controllers since some time & finally decided to sit down & create a project that's simple enough & uses a few basic components.

Enter the AVR Clock.

Main Parts -
1) Arduino Deumilanove
2) DS1307 Real Time Clock (RTC)
3) 16x2 LCD Screen

Arduino is a low-cost AVR powered platform having a huge online support group & is quite popular amongst hobbyist, artists & educationists. The Arduino community has even created a programming language that reduces the learning curve for people who have no background in coding. I however decided not to use the IDE since I already knew how to program the AVR using avr-gcc based tools.

DS1307 is low power consuming, battery backed chip that can be programmed to hold time & date for a really long time. According to the datasheet, a 3.3v Lithium Ion cell will last for approximately 9 years !!! Plus it communicates to the controller over I2C protocol, further reducing wiring footprints. Sparkfun offers another chip, DS3231, which has an inbuilt temperature sensor & works on 3.3v instead of 5v. I would recommend the DS3231 in case you plan to buy a RTC. I picked the DS1307 code from AVRfreaks.

The LCD uses an industry standard controller & I picked up the code from avr-libc examples itself.

AVR Clock

Code hosted at github.com - https://github.com/roguehit/avrclock

Now that the breadboard prototype works correctly, I will create a custom PCB for the AVR Clock next week.

The first

Blogging has been around for long time. But it never appealed me as much as orkut or ther networking site. .so folks you will be hearing frm me a lot in the comin days.