Who I am
About me:
I am your host, Sylvain Bissonnette. I am French Canadian (Québécois) and live in Boucherville, QC.
My passion for electronics systems started when I was 8 years. My dad also worked in electronics and he's been my mentor.
What I like the most in electronic is working with MCU and developing embedded and Windows software for my systems.
Currently, I am working for Hydro-Québec (the Electric Company). I am part of a dynamic team working in research and development.
My main duties consist in designing and developing device drivers for various projects.
I love my work and have been doing it for more than 20 years.
My other activities are: Scuba diving, underwater photography, travel, wood working and of course, drinking beer!
Cheers,
Sylvain Bissonnette
Please Read Me,
Hi Friends
English is not my native language, I'm french speaking, so that's why there is a lot of gramatical error in my blog & code. I will be please to correct those error if you point it to me.
I also want to clarify, that all I give is on my blog, do not ask me for PCB or any other files or "Please help me" without doing anything before writing to me. I think I am generous please do not exaggerate.
Sylvain Bissonnette
Kitchen Table
History
I was looking for a new LED project, by surfin the web I found shift bright led and I idee came to my mind
Shift Brite can be found at macetech
AVR ISP Galvanic Isolation
History
I had done a project where the AVR is powered via the main 110Vac line, So I had to find a solution to be able to test my code in real life, I had look to many thing and found very cool opto-isolator, "you must check the datasheet IL717"
Super Laser Driver
History
Yes you will say another Laser Driver, but take time to check all the features of this one, I had look and I had build a lot of those and each one had some poor result.
Vintage Audio Spectrum Display
History
After doing some project with vintage tube I got the idea of doing a audio spectrum display with "magic eyes tube". and drive those with a AVR MCU with Fast Fourier Transform
MegaLoad U | Beta tester needed
I just finish a new version of MegaLoad, It's name is MegaLoad U for Universal. You will be able to use old and future devices without upgrading MegaLoad U. It not compatible with the old bootloader files. You need the bootloader that came with MegaLoad U. It's a first release so please be cool with me! So I'm waiting for your beta testing…
No longer support for Megaload
DownLoad
PCB shop
History
Here is my PCB shop, If you do just a little bit of electronics you need this. Home made PCB is a kind of an art. You can archive without any problem track as small as 10 mils without any trace cut or short. I've used MG Chemical products with great success. One thing to know is that there is a lots of possibility of problem due to many factor.
My Lab
History
Here is my lab, it could give you some idea to build yours, with lots of year and money you can do it !
Bench Power Supply 0-25v @ 0-5amp
History
This project is like the one that all of you must have done in electronics. I took the idea from Circuit Cellar. The original power supply provides an output of 2.5-15V at 500mA. This circuit will provide 0-25V at 0 to 5A. You will see there is a lot of modification to achieve this.
This is my second version of this power supply, the first one was made with mosfet who need a higher voltage on the gate I had to use a higher input voltage and because of this there was a lot of heat generated for nothing. This version work with transistor and it's much more better.
RGB Laser Projector
History
This project is my second one with laser, I had learn many thing from my first green laser projector. Now I had decide to make a professional laser projector with 3 laser of 3 different color, Red, Green and Blue. And with galvos who have better spec. I had buy a 30kpps galvo, a 300mw red, 80mw green and 250mw blue.
MegaLoad
No longer support for Megaload
History
MegaLoad is a Windows based boot loader for all Atmel ATMega microcontrollers that support the Bootloader function. MegaLoad is a solution for everybody who wants fast loading (~8k in 3 seconds) and easy software upgrade via MCU RS232 port.
MegaLoad is written in Visual C# and the source code is available for 100$usd that can be pay via paypal at bibi@microsyl.com
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Weather Station
admin 
All projects, Sensor 
Anemometer, AVR, Digital, Humidity, Lightning Detector, MS5534, Rain Fall Sensor, Sensor, SHT75, Temperature, Tipping Bucket.jpg)
History
This project is one of many others I had made to control my house with rules, web interface, logger and many more. This one is a weather station that reports almost anything about the external environment. I bought mechanical part of the wind sensor at http://www.aag.com.mx/indexaag.html I had to remove all the electronics that came with it and replace them with my own.
AVR Code Debuger
History
The fact is, 10 years ago this project could have been completed. It will be a useful tool to help you debug code. The challenge was to make a debugger that does not require any MCU resources to be used from the MCU, allowing the debugger to run integrated with the code being debugged.
Water Detector
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History
This is a very simple one. That's the only project who don't have any MCU, why??? Because it is connected to a external MCU!, It is a water detector who serve to close the main water valve of my home if water is detected at certain places.
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Very High Gain Microphone
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History
This project is my father’s idea, he found in an old army surplus store with a radar dish and mount. His idea was to make a very high gain microphone to be able to listen to almost anything, like birds or whatever else you want.
Mood Light
History
This project began when I was surfing the web looking for any cool electronic projects. I found the mood lamp made by Toon Beerten "http://tobe.nimio.info/led_mood_lamp.php". I was really impressed by the 3 watt RGB LED. I bought some of those on ebay and made some tests with an AVR with PWM to control each color intensity. At this point I found those LEDs very interesting and powerful, so then I needed a project.
Mood Lamp
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History
After I made my Kitchen Mood Light, I had another idea for 3W RGB LED's. My idea was to make a simple lamp with 3W RGB LED's, controlled by a MCU, and have an IR remote control to change the color, effects and patterns.
Inductor & Capacitor Meter (LCMeter)
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History
Here is my new inductance & capacitance meter. I had took the analog oscillator part from a well know schematic found on the internet and adapt it for a AVR. It's impressive to have a very accurate result with a so small circuit. The way it's work is simple you chance a oscillator frequency with the part you want to find is value.
Scope Clock
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History
One day my father asked me if I wanted his old Heatkit 10-10 oscilloscope. Quickly I said "No. What can I do with this old AC-only 500khz single trace scope?" A couple of weeks later I was surfing the net and I saw some guy who had made a clock with the CRT like my father's scope. I grabbed the phone to ask him if he still had the scope … and the answer was yes.
Nixie Clock
History
After doing the Scope clock project I was feeling in an "antique mood". So I bought some big nixie tubes on eBay from Russia and also I bought the nixie tube driver. It's a 74141 and it can handle 200 volts!
Train Modeling Digital Devices Control (DCC)
History
This is the second part of the DCC project, controlling all accessories via the DCC data on the track. You can connect: switches, lights and many more… This board has hardware address setting via jumpers, so you can have many of those
Train Modeling Digital Control (DCC)
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History
This is a common project with my father, building a train modeling. One more time it could be simple, but I had decided to challenge myself once again. The train modeling had changed with years, now you can have more than one engines on the same track and each one could have a different speed, direction "watch out". It's done by sending data on the track by reversing the voltage on the track with an exact timing protocol.
Digital Temperature, Humidity, Barometric Pressur Sensor
admin All projects, Sensor AVR, Barometer, Barometric, Digital, Humidity, MS5534, Sensor, SHT75, Temperature.jpg)
History
This project is one of many others I had made to control my house with rules, web interface, logger and many more. This project could take several measurements: Temperature/Humidity/Barometric pressure measurements. All measurements are taken digitally and have their own dedicated A/D converter in each sensor. It's a REAL digital environment sensor WITHOUT any calibration.
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Network Light Dimmer
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History
This project is one of many I have undertaken to control my house using a set of rules, a web interface, a logger and many more components. This project is a light dimmer which has multiple control interfaces such an RS485 network, an infrared remote control, a proximity touch slider or touch sensor.
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Function Generator
History
This project didn’t look complicated but it was. The MCU part is really simple: just some code for the Display, Keypad and DDS Communication.
A DDS is a chip that is driven by a hi-frequency oscillator. I used a 50 Mhz clock. Inside this IC there is a big divider that goes down to less than 1Hz. The resulting clock is passed to another counter which is connected to a Sine ROM table. If you need a triangle wave, the counter is directly connected to the output. For a square wave, the signal which drives the counter is redirected to the primary output.
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Digital Room to Room Intercom
History
This project was inspired by my girlfriend, who asked me to build an intercom for our house. There are many ways to build an intercom; an example is batteries in series with 2 telephones, a key switch and an amplifier. I felt this was far too simple. I decided to build an intercom with an MCU which digitalizes a voice and then sends it serially and then regenerates the analog signal.
LED Sign with MMC Memory card
History
At the beginning this project was to buy a led sign to interface with my home automation network. This automation network display information like temperature, wind speed, humidity, etc. I had bought on EBay a LED Sign but when I received it I got a surprise! There was no serial port to program messages… After a couple of days, I look inside to see how it was built.
Nokia LCD Library
History
I found this LCD make for cellular phone Nokia 3310 by browsing the web at www.jelu.se. There is many interesting things about this LCD: low price, easy to interface via SPI port, can support graphic and text and consume low current. The only thing that I did is writing code who gives you friendly functions to support this LCD. The last version of the library only send the bytes who had changed since the last update. It's considerably reduce the refresh time who can be very important in a batteries powered system.
Graphic LCD Library for SED1330
History
This LCD is very different from the other standards text 2 x 20. This graphic and text LCD is 320 x 200 pixels. This LCD have differents memories map for the text and graphic region. If you buy this LCD in a "real" electronic store you will pay like 400$ each but you can find it brand new in a surplus store for 50$!!!. I used this LCD in a major project to display charts and a lots of information collected around my house: temperature, humidity, wind speed, etc. This LCD is perfect for project that needs to display a lot of information.
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Text LCD Library
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History
What can we say about a standard text LCD? Nothing else then for 90% of your project you usually begin with this LCD. With those friendly functions you will be able to begin your projects without loosing time writing code for the LCD.
OneWire Library
History
The OneWire protocol which in fact needs two wires (data and ground) is fantastic for many reasons: you can have a very long cable (250 feets), you can have multiples of devices on this cable and with a simple code you can poll those devices to get temperature, voltage, switch position, wind speed, etc.
Frequancy Meter
History
Here is my new Frequency meter who was done with a LCD's cellular phone!!! This is a simple project. The Frequency is passing through an op-amp to convert it in a square wave. The ouput of the op-amp is feeding the 3*8 bits counter (24 bits) who can accumulate at a maximum of 16777216 count.
MP3 Player
History
I decided to do this project for several reasons: first I like music, second I have a huge collection of MP3, and third I wanted to be able to play them anytime in my living room. I began the project with one major restriction, the printed circuit board of MP3 player MUST be single side in order to do it myself. After 2 months of drawing, I realized this project was in fact ‘feasible’! One major characteristic of this player was the bi-directional remote control. I had to give several information, folders and songs on a small graphic LCD.
Propeller Clock
History
I got this idea by browsing the web. I found by hazard Mr. Bob Blick's page who make the first propeller clock. I began to check how can I build one myself. Base on AVR AT90S2313 I saw rapidly that my MCU must be clocked very fast to make all the calculations needed to light the leds at the right place. The speed is at 16Mhz, 4 times faster than Atmel's specifications. It's working without any problems.
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Bar Code Reader
History
This is a low cost bar code reader made from a product which has a very long history. You can see it at this link. The bar code reader named CueCat is built to be connected in a PS2 keyboard port (standard PC/AT Keyboard). The problem is the information encrypted.
Please note
All my source codes were taken from my personal projects.
Everything is for your information only. The C/C++ codes have been written
with ICCAVR. You can find the header and source CRT files by downloading their compiler.
All is for your information and everything is AS IS without any warranty of any kind. No other files are available and I don't make any modification for any body.
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