Category Archives: ATtiny Hacks

Making Synths out of Audio Cassettes

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8bit Mixtapes are simple Arduino-based sound and beat generators based on ATtiny 84s and 85s and designed fit inside old audio cassettes, or at least be about that size. Founded by [Dusjagr], [Ucok] and [Lyok], and including participants from around the globe, 8bit Mixtapes are small synthesizers that play one-line algorithmic symphonies, simple sound generators that work off of a single line of code.

The project has been going on for a number of years, with several different iterations released over the years–the most recent is the Mixtape NEO, released about a month ago that features audio bootloading and a …read more

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The Smart Pen

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“Ugh. You mean I have to press down on the pen’s button to open it? Gross.” In this day-and-age when we can swipe on our phones and do voice recognition, there seems no reason we should have to press a button. How antiquated. So [Marek Baczynski] modernized his pen for swiping and voice control. It’s also sure to get all the kids back to working on their penmanship.

Seriously though, not all hacks have to be serious. [Marek] and [Ghlargh] added a servo to activate the button, and then [Marek] added Bluetooth to control the servo. After writing a phone …read more

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The Smart Pen

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“Ugh. You mean I have to press down on the pen’s button to open it? Gross.” In this day-and-age when we can swipe on our phones and do voice recognition, there seems no reason we should have to press a button. How antiquated. So [Marek Baczynski] modernized his pen for swiping and voice control. It’s also sure to get all the kids back to working on their penmanship.

Seriously though, not all hacks have to be serious. [Marek] and [Ghlargh] added a servo to activate the button, and then [Marek] added Bluetooth to control the servo. After writing a phone …read more

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Ambitious ATtiny85 Board Tests a Beginner’s Skills

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[Chris O’Riley] has been playing around with Arduinos for around a year, and decided he wanted a breadboardable ATtiny85 in order to prototype using the actual controller that would be used in the final project. He wants to use it to interface with a Bosch BMP280 pressure sensor, but for now it stands alone.

It’s a simple board with the Tiny85, 3.3 V and 5 V regulators, a power LED, as well as the usual resistor sand caps. The double-sided PCB [Chris] milled himself — he’s an illustrator and photographer by day, so it’s no surprise the board turned out …read more

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Single Part Boost Converter Challenge (Completed)

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[Josh] posed an interesting challenge. Create a boost converter that can light a blue LED using a nearly dead battery and one part. Well, we were skeptical until we saw he wasn’t counting an ATtiny processor as a part. You can see a video of the challenge, below.

The challenge has already been solved, so if you view the link, you might want to avoid the comments until you’ve had time to think about your own solution. We’ll confess, the first one we thought of was probably not workable for reasons [Josh] explains. The final answer neatly fits the criteria …read more

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Copper Foil Makes Music–With a Little Help

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Craft stores are often the source of odd inspiration. In the stained glass section, we’ve seen the copper foil, and even used it to prototype some RF circuits on the tops of shoeboxes. However, we could never get a good method for connecting ICs to the relatively thick foil. [Bryan Cera] did it though. His paperSynth uses some paper and cardboard for a substrate, copper foil, and an ATtiny CPU to make music. You can see the device in operation in the video, below.

The copper foil is sticky and it isn’t conductive on the back, so anywhere the foil …read more

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A LED Strip Clock As Linear As Time

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We love custom clocks here at Hackaday, and are always thrilled to see each inventive means of time-keeping. In a seldom-seen take on the familiar device, the [Bastel Brothers]’s LED Strip Clock’s sleek profile finds itself in good company.

The clock is a two-metre strip of 60 LEDs; every minute past the current hour corresponds to one lit LED, every fifth LED is turned to red in order to make reading minutes easier. So 3 red LEDs +3 green LEDs=18 minutes, with the hour marked by a third color. Sounds complex, but the [Brothers] are quick to say you get …read more

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Saturday Clock: An 0.000011574Hz ATtiny85 clock

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In these times when we try to squeeze out extra clock cycles by adding more cores to our CPUs and by enlisting the aid of GPUs, [Ido Gendel] thought it would be fun to go in the exact opposite direction, supply a clock to the ATtiny85 that cycles only once per day, or at 0.000011574Hz. What application could this have? Well, if he could do it in seven instructions or less, how about turning on an LED at sunset Friday evening, to indicate the start of the Jewish Shabbat (Saturday), and turn it off again at sunset Saturday evening.

Notice …read more

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Tea for Two: A Tiny Tea Timer

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The ATtiny85 microcontroller doesn’t have all that much of anything: 8 KB of flash, an 8-bit architecture, and only eight pins (three of which are taken up with power and reset duties). And that’s exactly what makes it a great fit for tiny little projects.

[Mimile]’s Tea Timer has a switch, a button, eight LEDs, and a buzzer. Flip the switch to “set” and button presses run through the desired steeping times. Flip it to “run” and you’re timing. The LEDs blink and the buzzer plays “Tea for Two” in squawky square waves. Wonderful!

But wait, how to control all …read more

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Unlocking 12V Quick Charge on a USB Power Bank

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[Robert Nixdorf] frequently needs to use this high-end audio recorder, but it sucks dry a set of eight AA batteries in just a few hours. Obviously a longer lasting solution was required, and he started scouring the web looking for an answer. He bought a Quick Charge power bank and then hacked a Digispark to negotiate with the power bank to provide 12V output to Quick Charge his audio recorder.

Qualcomm’s Quick Charge system is designed to provide increased output voltages to reduce charging time in QC compatible devices such as mobile phones powered by their Snapdragon range of SoC’s. …read more

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