futz f&ts v.i. To tinker experimentally; to change something just to see what it does

I love my 2-wire LCDs and use them all the time, but since I started tinkering with the PIC10F322 chip that has only four I/O pins I decided to have a closer look at Roman Black's "Shift1" system. I could really use that one extra pin!

Shift1 uses a 74HC595 shift register with a couple RC circ...

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I got my PC boards from OSH Park. The top boards are just some SOT23 breakouts to make breadboarding easier. Soldering wire legs onto SOT23s is a little difficult, and they don't hold up well to plugging and unplugging.

The bottom boards are my PIC10F322 general purpose board. OSH Park shorted me...

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I was recently looking at Microchip's PIC10F322 microcontroller and thought it was a very capable little MCU for its price (and size). It has some really interesting peripherals onboard, like the Configurable Logic Cell (CLC), the Numerically Controlled Oscillator (NCO) Module and the Complementary...

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In a recent Ebay China toy order I grabbed four HY-SRF05 ultrasonic rangefinder sensors to play with. Can't beat the price at $1.89 USD each with free shipping. They'd be dirt cheap at twice that price.

Here I'm controlling the SRF05 with a PIC18F2680 and displaying the results on my "Predko" 2-wi...

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A guy emailed me wanting to know how to write C code to do a servo slowdown device like this PICAXE one by Kevin Goom. So I started small and worked up to a full port of the PICAXE code in C. The only thing I left out is the indicator LED, but that's simple enough to add later.

I started out by...

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