Blog - Protostack

Large prototyping boards are back and better than before

March 22, 2017 Announcements 0 Comment

This time last year we released a new version of our medium sized board. The new version had exposed tracks on both sides which made them easier to see. This change also allowed SMD components to be soldered onto the top side. The Large Style 1 prototyping boards are back in stock with the same...

Protostack Workspace Project – Part 3, The Cooling System

August 22, 2015 Projects 0 Comment

This is the 3rd part of the workspace project where I describe the cooling system and how it was built. The desk has an electronics cavity which contains 2 audio filters, 2 stereo amplifiers, 2 power supplies and 2 protostack boards. These all create heat, so a method was needed to ventilate the cavity. The...

Protostack Workspace Project – Part 2, RGB Lighting Controller

July 12, 2015 Projects 0 Comment

Back in 2011 we wrote a tutorial on how to use Pulse Width Modulation to change the colour of an RGB LED. This part of the workspace project is based on the same principles, but on a larger scale. Overview The RGB Lighting Controller allows you to control the colour and brightness of LEDs using...

Katsushika Hokusai's Great Wave at Kanagawa

Protostack Workspace Project – Part 1

June 5, 2015 Projects 0 Comment

A few months ago I finished a project, to renovate my workspace. I work from home running Protostack and a software development house Zero Point Labs. I wanted to create a workspace that would suit my needs, plus have a bit of fun along the way. The main part of the project was building a...

USBASP Windows Driver Version 3.0.7

January 6, 2015 Announcements 6 Comments

The USBASP windows driver was previously based on libusb-win32. The certificate on the base drivers have expired and the library has now been superseded by libusbK. Earlier today we packaged up the driver and uploaded it to the server. You can now download it from the location below. https://protostack.com.au/download/USBasp-win-driver-x86-x64-v3.0.7.zip This driver should work with version...

Cables and Connectors

April 6, 2014 New Products 0 Comment

IDC connectors don't play nicely with breadboards. The 2 rows of pins are too closely spaced and there are many hacks to get around this issue. In one of our tutorials we recommend taking a IDC connector with right angle leads and bending the leads to make it fit. This does work, but is a...

Small, Medium and Large

March 29, 2014 New Products 0 Comment

Ever since we started, we've stocked full size and half size prototyping boards. The standard sizes allow the boards to be stacked together, which is why we called ourselves protostack. This month we are stocking a new board, which is approximately a quarter of the size of the full size one. Instead of calling it...

Announcing the ATMEGA1284 Development Kit

March 2, 2014 New Products 0 Comment

The ATMega1284 is an impressive microcontroller with plenty of memory, plenty of pins and loaded with features. The ATMEGA1284 Development Kit combines the microcontroller with our 40 Pin AVR Development Board and a bunch of other components to help you build ATMega1284 circuits faster. The kit is nearly identical to the one that Tweak Town...

ATMega1284 and Resistor Networks

January 24, 2014 New Products 0 Comment

We've been selling many different AVR microcontrollers for some time. This week we add the ATMEGA1284 to our lineup. The ATMEGA1284 is quite impressive with 128K of flash and 16K of RAM. It comes in a 40 pin through-hole PDIP package, has the same general pinout as the ATMEGA32A but runs faster and has more...

New Year, New Product Post

January 16, 2014 New Products 0 Comment

Welcome to 2014, I think it's going to be a good one. Let's start the year with 3 new products First up we have 16 character x 2 line Blue LCD Displays. They are just like the Yellow/Green ones we've had for a while, except the color is different. Because they use a HD44780 compatible...

8 Bit Logic Level Converter

December 10, 2013 New Products 0 Comment

More and more devices run on 3.3V or even less. Some have 5V tolerant data pins, but others can be damaged with 5V. The SN74LVC245A 8 Bit Logic Level Converter fixes that problem. The SN74LVC245A is an 8 bit bus transceiver with 3 state outputs. It has 2 buses (A & B), both 8 bits...

USBASP Windows Driver Version 1.2.6

November 27, 2013 Announcements 0 Comment

The USBASP windows driver is based on libusb-win32. A while back they released version 1.2.6 and this has now been packaged up for the USBASP. The download link is below: https://protostack.com.au/download/USBasp-win-driver-x86-x64-ia64-v1.2.6.zip This driver should work with version of Windows, XP and higher (both 32 and 64 bit editions).

Pogo Pins and Photographing LCDs

November 17, 2013 New Products, Tutorials 0 Comment

This post is a new product post, a tutorial and a behind the scenes look, all about Pogo Pins. Pogo pins are small spring loaded pins that are used to make temporary connections to circuit boards. They are typically use for automated circuit testing or for programming Microcontrollers. Pogo Pins are now available for just...

Atmega168 Controlled Iron Man Suit

November 10, 2013 Miscellaneous 0 Comment

I had the opportunity last week to interview Murray Harms from Queensland Australia, and talk to him about his home made Iron Man Suit. He built it with his son for Halloween and as you can see below, it looks pretty amazing. What inspired you to make the suit? Well each year my 22yr old...

Kicking November off with 7 New Products

November 3, 2013 New Products 0 Comment

We are very excited to start the month with 7 great new products. First up with have transparent 400 tie point breadboards. Want to know how breadboards work? Easy, just look at these. They are made of a transparent plastic so you can see the metal clips on the inside, have 2 power rails on...

Dual Row Dupont Connectors and Pins

October 19, 2013 New Products 0 Comment

Just in, we have dual row Dupont connector housings. Like the single row housings, you can use them with the housing-less ribbon cables, male crimp pins or female crimp pins. We stock them in a range of sizes: 2 rows of 3 pins 2 rows of 4 pins 2 rows of 5 pins 2 rows...

5 Way Navigation Switch and Schottky Diodes

September 10, 2013 New Products 0 Comment

This 5 way navigation switch is 5 switches in one and a little like a mini joystick. It switches in 4 directions north, south, east and west or if you prefer up, down, left, right. You can also push down with a nice audible click. It comes it a through-hole snap in package but doesn't...

Ribbon Cables and DuPont Connectors

August 25, 2013 New Products 0 Comment

Ribbon jumper cables are pretty cool, just break off what you need and use them with your PCB or breadboard based project. This month we add 4 new ribbon jumper cables to our range. 200mm ribbon with 40 x 1 pin male connectors on either end 200mm ribbon with 40 x 1 pin male and...

Female Headers and Rubber Feet

August 18, 2013 New Products 0 Comment

2.54mm connector pitch is pretty ubiquitous in electronics. This is the pitch used by DIP IC packages, breadboards, IDC connectors and a whole bunch more. These female headers are 40 pins long and can connect with all many of things including snappable male headers and our male to male ribbon cables. If 40 pins are...

Heat them up and watch them shrink

July 28, 2013 New Products 0 Comment

Heat shrink tubing is wonderful stuff, just hit it with a hot air blower for a couple of seconds and watch it shrink. Great for insulating joins, strengthening cable ends and making everything a whole lot neater. Our new heat shrink packs have 24 assorted lengths of tubing and are available in 6 fashionable colours....

LCD Modules, Switch mode regulators, screws and more

June 8, 2013 New Products 0 Comment

7 new products this month, everything from LCD modules to screws. First up we have 20x4 character LCD Modules. They have 4 rows of 20 character and a yellow/green backlight. Because they use a HD44780 Compatible controller, they will work with most standard libraries. We are very excited about this next item. Ten Power Switched...

Introducing the 40 pin AVR Development Board

June 2, 2013 New Products 0 Comment

We are please to announce our newest product, the 40 pin AVR Development Board. This board is similar in concept to the 28 pin AVR Development Board, except that... well it has more pins. More specifically it works with 40 pin AVR Microcontrollers like the ATMega32A This board conforms to the full size protostack form...

15 new products for May

May 14, 2013 New Products 0 Comment

It's always exciting to add new products and this month is no exception The first thing we noticed about these mini breadboards were the amazing colors. The second thing we noticed was the size. Pocket sized for those pocket sized projects. We've stocked Curved tip tweezers since 2010 and when our stock ran out we...

Just In, 3 new ICs for March

March 24, 2013 New Products 1 Comment

3 new products this month, all ICs this time. Have you ever wished you could control a pot using a microcontroller? Well you could connect a stepper motor to one, on or maybe use on of these. The Maxim MCP4131 is a digital potentiometer that can be set using an SPI interface. With a 7...

New Products for July

July 18, 2012 New Products 0 Comment

8 new products this month. We hope you like them as much as we do. Firstly we have an 8 by 8 LED matrix. Each cell contains a red and green LED. If you turn them both on you get yellow. They fit in all our prototyping boards, so why not join a bunch together...

USBASP programmer 2.0

January 23, 2012 New Products 0 Comment

We recently selected a new USBASP supplier who has made a few improvements. Addition of PPTC resettable fuse on 5V supply from USB JP1 (Supply Target) now has a 3 pin header to allow the selection of 3.3V on pin 2 of the ISP connector JP3 (Slow SCK) has been added back. This jumper was...

Updated USBASP Windows Driver

January 19, 2012 New Products 6 Comments

The USBASP windows driver is based on libusb-win32. Back in May last year, we released version 1.2.4.0 of the driver. That version was a big improvement over the previous one as it was partly signed. Since then, the libusb-win32 project has released version 1.2.5.0 of their driver. This driver is now fully signed, so installation...

Finishing the year off with 13 new products

December 29, 2011 New Products 0 Comment

It's been a while since we've had new stock in, but the drought is over. This month we add 13 new products to our lineup. For some time we've stocked 10 pin IDC cables. This month we introduce the 6 pin variant which is available now for just $2.10. Clarence Zener was a physicist who...

What can you build with logic chips?

October 6, 2011 New Products 0 Comment

There is a bit over 2 weeks left for the 7400 Contest with entries closing on October 21st. There are heaps of prizes up for grabs, including 3 ATmega328 Development Kits, Hack Packs from Dangerous Prorotypes and prize packs from Freetronics. What will you build?

8 Breadboard Hacks

September 19, 2011 Tutorials 13 Comments

A few hacks to make bread boarding easier... 1. Hacking the power buses The power buses on a breadboard are constructed in multiple pieces. To get continuity down the length of the bus you need to add jumper "staples" like so. With this hack, we peel back the adhesive tape on the back of the...

ATmega328 now available

September 7, 2011 New Products 0 Comment

We've been getting a lot of requests to stock Atmel ATmega328 microcontrollers and they have finally arrived. The ATmega328-PU is the through-hole variety and fits onto our 28 pin AVR Development Board. The ATmega328 is almost identical to the ATmega168a but has double the Flash, double the EEPROM and double the SRAM. It can be...

9 new products for July

July 3, 2011 New Products 0 Comment

This month we have a nice collection of new products, 9 in total. First we have Lite-on LTE-301 infrared Emitters and LTR-301 infrared sensors. These have many uses including object detection and remote control. These SPDT toggle switches are small, but feel very solid. Rated for 6 amps at 28 VDC they are great for...

ATmega168A Pulse Width Modulation – PWM

June 25, 2011 AVR Microcontrollers, Tutorials 6 Comments

Dimming an incandescent bulb is easy. Simply adjust the current down using a potentiometer and you are done. Dimming an LED is another story entirely. When you reduce current through an LED there are unintended consequences like color shifts and dropouts. A better way is to use Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). With PWM the LED...

USBASP driver for Windows 7 and Windows Vista x64

May 24, 2011 Announcements 74 Comments

Until now, the USBASP windows driver wasn't signed. On older versions of windows this was't too much of a problem as you could override the signature error. On Windows Vista x64 and Windows 7, it is almost a show stopper. Various methods have been suggested including a utility called Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider or Pressing...

Extending Terminal Blocks

May 12, 2011 Tutorials 0 Comment

This week we have something that is so simple, it hardly qualifies as a tutorial, so let's call it a "tip" and get started. For some time we've stocked 2 pin and 3 pin terminal blocks. These terminal blocks have standard 5.08mm spacing, so they fit in all our development and prototyping boards. This is...

Finishing off the month with 2 new products

April 28, 2011 New Products 0 Comment

First up we have spools of 2mm desoldering wick. This stuff is indispensible. It's made of fine braided copper which soaks up solder using capillary action. It is primarily used for desoldering but also comes in handy for soldering surface mounted components by hand. The 2nd new product this month is 200mm Female to Female...

28 Pin AVR Development Board – Version 1.6

April 17, 2011 Announcements 0 Comment

We released the 28 Pin AVR Development Board back in 2008 and since then it has gone through many iterations. This week we release version 1.6 which adds 4 improvements. These improvements were based on customer feedback and we are very grateful for the feedback. Please keep it coming. What has changed? The size of...

Soldering is Easy

April 15, 2011 Tutorials 0 Comment

Jeff Keyzer, Mitch Altman and Andie Nordgren have created a seven page comic book about soldering. The style reminds me a little of Forrest Mims' Getting Started in Electronics. In any event it is a great book and will be part of a bigger book "How to Make Cool Things with Microcontrollers (For People Who...

Analogue to Digital Conversion Interrupts on an ATmega168A

April 3, 2011 AVR Microcontrollers, Tutorials 4 Comments

Back in February, we wrote a post on Analogue to Digital Conversion. Many people mentioned that it was a bit light and they would like a more advanced tutorial. Well here it is... In this tutorial we add a second analogue input and use the ADC Conversion Complete interrupt. The circuit we are using is...

Flush Diagonal Cutters

March 19, 2011 New Products 0 Comment

When cutting leads on a circuit board, standard diagonal cutters will do the job but for a neater job Flush diagonal cutters are the way to go. The flush cutting blade allows you to get closer to the PCB and makes a cleaner cut. These are now available in our tools section for just $8.50.

Customer Project – LCD Clock

March 8, 2011 New Products 0 Comment

Last week, one of our customers, Martin Ederveen showed us what he made with his ATMEGA168 Experimenter's Kit, an LCD clock. Martin based the circuit on the Analogue to Digital Conversion, we did last month, then took the analog input out and added 2 push buttons. The push buttons are used to set the hours...

Analogue to Digital Conversion on an ATmega168

February 13, 2011 AVR Microcontrollers, Tutorials 18 Comments

Many AVR microcontrollers are capable of doing Analogue to Digital Conversion. The ATmega168 has 6 ports (8 ports on the SMD packages) that can be used for analogue input. This tutorial shows you how. The circuit We'll be building the following circuit on a breadboard. The Breadboard layout is based on the Atmega8 breadboard circuit...

555 Contest

February 5, 2011 Miscellaneous 0 Comment

The NE555 was designed in 1970 by Hans Camenzind and to this day remains an incredibly versatile chip. Jeri Ellsworth and Chris Gammell have put together a 555 design contest. There are 5 different categories and many prizes. including a Protostack ATMEGA168 Development Kit and USBASP Programmer. Entries are due March 1st and will be...

ATmega8A Microcontrollers in Stock

January 21, 2011 New Products 0 Comment

Sometime last year we ran out of ATmega8 microcontrollers. These became obsolete and were being replaced by the ATmega8A. Unfortunately we have seen huge shortages in AVR microcontrollers over the last 18 months and the new ATmega8A was no different. Whilst shortages still continue, we have managed to get hold of some ATmega8As in the...

Four new Products for January

January 12, 2011 New Products 0 Comment

We'll start off with DC Panel mount Jacks. These are similar to the DC Jacks that we bundle with the ATMEGA168 Development Kits, except they have a panel mounting. Simple drill a hole in your panel, pop these in and screw them into place. These 6 pin IDC connectors are available as both female and...

Reading and writing Atmega168 EEPROM

January 9, 2011 AVR Microcontrollers, Tutorials 3 Comments

EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory) Is non-volatile memory, meaning it persists after power is removed. The ATmega168 microcontroller has 512 bytes of EEPROM which can be used to store system parameters and small amounts of data. This tutorial shows you how to read and write EEPROM. Overview Our code examples will be very...

AVR Eclipse Environment on Windows

December 29, 2010 AVR Microcontrollers, Tutorials 13 Comments

In this tutorial we will show you how to setup an AVR Eclipse development environment on Windows. Installing the AVR-GCC toolchain The AVR-GCC toolchain is a collection of tools which are used to compile and upload firmware to AVR microcontrollers. The toolchain comprises of: GCC - The C/C++ Compiler GNU Binutils - A collection of...

AVR Memory Architecture

December 23, 2010 AVR Microcontrollers, Tutorials 0 Comment

The AVR family of microcontrollers use a modified Harvard Architecture which uses 3 types of memory, most of which are on chip. Flash RAM EEPROM Flash Flash is non volatile memory, which means it perisists when power is removed. Its purpose is to hold intructions that the microcontroller executes. The amount of flash can range...

Spikenzie Labs Dice Kits

November 22, 2010 New Products 0 Comment

These electronic dice kits from Spikenzie Labs are perfect for beginners and come with everything you need to make your own ‘Electronic Die’. The name Dice kit sounds a great deal better than ‘Die Kit’, so they bent english grammar rules just a little in the name of making a marketable product. The die have...

Atmega168 Experimenter’s Kit

October 23, 2010 New Products 2 Comments

Recently a friend asked me, "What do I buy if I'm just starting out with embedded systems and want to learn?". I told him a breadboard solution would be best and started rattling off all the bits that he would need. Then I got thinking, what if we made this a kit? So here it...

Categories

Latest Posts

Recent Tweets

Tags

Archives

Phone:

Email:

Shopping Cart