Microreader Kit and Beyond

This kit is essentially a small microreader with an IC attached to it, which gives it data to read. The microreader displays text one letter at a time in a loop. Whenever you restart it, it picks a new phrase from its software at random.

The Microreader kit comes with pretty good, colorful instructions. For the sake of this instructable, an IC socket will be used to promote easy removal of the chip for programming. An IC socket is a bed the integrated circuit (IC) can sit in. This way you can take it out and program it or pet it if you want. You can get it from the Makezine Store.

You can use the MiniPOV as a programmer. No it's not a cheap trick to get more people buying them -- using the MiniPOV to program the Microreader is actually cheaper than buying a standard IC programmer. Alternatively, you can make your own programmer using this instructable.

Using an IC in this project makes it more difficult (annoying) to put together. I bought a cheap 20 pin IC from Radioshack, which I've heard isn't very good. It works fine for this project though. Also, you may consider an IC because this eliminates the possibly of accidentally destroying your IC.

This kit is great for soldering beginners. To learn the basics of soldering check out this great guide by noahw. Also, here's a good video tutorial from the MAKE blog.

Idealy, you can put this little reader on all sorts of stuff. Eventually this guide will illustrate how to temporarily attach this to a piece of clothing.

Step 1: What you get and what you need.

This kit is pretty simple.

What you get:
Microreader
Battery Holder (with screw)
IC

What you need:
Soldering iron with a fine tip
solder
2 AA batteries
wire cutter

and if you want to program it using a programmer get a 20-pin IC socket.

The pictured holder isn't 100% necessary but it may help. I found it easier to just do this on a tabletop.

Comments

[fkuk]

how do you program it i get you write the program on the computer then how do you get that on to the chip

[Radobot]

Try to use picaxe!
http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe

[chrisrock410]

how much would this cost?

[frank26080115]

Using a coin cell would look a lot better

[MAKEkits]

Yes you're right! The designer used batteries for price and to make it last longer.

[Myself]

The first step could do a much better job of explaining what a Microreader is (it's apparently not the text editor of the same name) and why I'd want one.

[deflater]

Where can you buy these displays? Digikey has some alphanumeric displays but the digits look a lot smaller.

[josh92176]

If that IC is an attiny 2313 then instead of buying a miniPOV one could make this.

[MAKEkits]

Awesome! I'll add that link to the first step.

[ongissim]

So what you did was put an IC socket in place of the IC, just so you can take the IC out to find the message in the source code?

[MAKEkits]

The socket was soldered so you could take the chip out whenever you want. You can of course get a firmware writer that interfaces with the IC a different way, but I don't think most people would have those.