A liquid crystal display (commonly abbreviated LCD) is a thin, flat display device made up of any number of color or monochrome pixels arrayed in front of a light source or reflector. It is prized by engineers because it uses very small amounts of electric power, and is therefore suitable for use in battery-powered electronic devices

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Hi-tech PICC source code
This is a PIC based water level detector.Why I choose PIC ? First I have a lot of them for my DIY projects,second I want to use this project with 4.5V batteries and PIC Micro has the sleep mode which has very low power consumption,so the life of the battery can be extended.Most of time of this circuit operates in the sleep mode and wake-up from sleep through watchdog time-out every about 2 second.

The 8051 is the name of a big family of microcontrollers. The device which we are going to use along this tutorial is the 'AT89S52' which is a typical 8051 microcontroller manufactured by Atmel™. Note that this part doesn't aim to explain the functioning of the different components of a 89S52 microcontroller, but rather to give you a general idea of the organization of the chip and the available features, which shall be explained in detail along this tutorial.

The block diagram provided by Atmel™ in their datasheet showing the architecture the 89S52 device can seem very complicated, and since we are going to use the C high level language to program it, a simpler architecture can be represented as the figure 1.2.A.

This figures shows the main features and components that the designer can interact with. You can notice that the 89S52 has 4 different ports, each one having 8 Input/output lines providing a total of 32 I/O lines. Those ports can be used to output DATA and orders do other devices, or to read the state of a sensor, or a switch. Most of the ports of the 89S52 have 'dual function' meaning that they can be used for two different functions: the fist one is to perform input/output operations and the second one is used to implement special features of the microcontroller like counting external pulses, interrupting the execution of the program according to external events, performing serial data transfer or connecting the chip to a computer to update the software.

Each port has 8 pins, and will be treated from the software point of view as an 8-bit variable called 'register', each bit being connected to a different Input/Output pin.


Figure 1.2.A

Advasense has announced what they claim is the world's smallest 5MP autofocus camera module. The module, which was developed with the help of Creative Sensor Inc., uses a technology called Feedback Controlled Pixels (FCP) to reduce image lag and noise within the tiny sensor. The new moduled, the ASIO 5, is designed for mobile phones but looks ideal for robotics use. The sensor provides a maximum resolution of 2592x1944 at 15 FPS, HD 1080p at 30 FPS, or 720p at 60 FPS. The output is Bayer RGB data (for the ASIO5) or RGB and YUV (for the ASIO5I). Both MIPI and SMIA serial output is provided as well as a parallel output and an I2C control interface. In addition to autofocus, the module also provides built-in image stabilization. For more details see the full specification. No word on quantity or single unit pricing but most mobile phone components are designed to be as inexpensive as possible.

Wines & Vines reports on a prototype grapevine pruning robot that could save vinyards time and money. The artist's rendering above shows the robot with a tractor drive unit that would propel it as it prunes the vines using a 3D vision system and multiple hydraulic pruning shears. Multiple images are compiled to produce an internal 3D representation of the vine, to which pruning rules are applied. The robot, developed by Vision Robotics, can work 24 hours a day in any lighting.