ELSIE LC Meter
I have long needed a device to measure inductance and capacitance in the nanohenry-microhenry range, and the picofarad and above range. I'm still working on a PIC-based, LCD readout meter that I saw on the Columbus QRP Club (Ohio) site. I ordered the issue of Everday Practical Electronics to get the schematic and board image. Meanwhile, I read about the ELSIE Morse readout LC meter on the AMQRP site. They used to sell a Manhattan-construction kit, but I decided to do the PC board in EAGLE CAD, and it is a simple board to do.
In order to program the Atmel AVR chip (similar to a PIC microcontroller), I had to build a flash programmer for the AT90S2313 IC. I decided on the just about the simplest one I could find, out of many, the TwinAVR, which can use the simple, command-line SP12 programmer by Steven Bolt. The programmer connects to the parallel port of the PC, and the SP12 commands dump a hex file into the microcontroller.Below is a photo of the TwinAVR board that I made using toner transfer. Click to enlarge.
TwinAVR Programmer
Following are build photos of the project.
The wired PC board
The wired board, foil-side
Fitting to the case
Finished ELSIE