I like cheap electronics for playing. Cheap is good for budget conscious hobbyists and China is delivering lots of toys for playing – one being the inexpensive “mono” OLED displays. The single-color displays often come in a dual-color implementation where the top row of pixels are one color and the remaining majority of the lower […]
Projects
3D-Printed Prank Vibrating Cup
Picture the following: you have an nice white cup in front of you. It’s filled to the brim with sparkling, cool, and refreshing H20. Your fingers curl around the nicely curved handle, and you bring the cup to your lips. Suddenly, a strong vibration assaults the nerves in your hand, causing you to drop the […]
3D-Printed RGB Wallet
Stand out from the crowd with this unabashedly ostentatious excuse for a wallet. It’s got plenty of space, RGB lights, and you can even put your name on it for added vanity. Interested? Keep reading! In the files section of this build you can find two things: a Fusion archive and some STL files. If […]
The Annoy-O-Bug: A Chirping Light-Up Throwie
Small enough to slip in a mint tin, yet loud enough to be heard across a house at only a few dollars per unit. A nice combination for a pretty good prank! Let’s dive in! Step One: The Circuit You can purchase the printed circuit board from OSH Park using the link in the parts […]
nRF24L01+ with ATtiny85 3 Pins
This would be the continuation of my previous project Programming ATtiny85 with Arduino Uno. Now with cheaper ATtiny85 in place I was looking for cheaper ways to transmit the sensor data. Which brought me to nRF24L01+ a cheap, low power RF transceiver. This seemed to be the better solution for me. But there was one […]
A Strange Attraction. Various Hall Effect Sensors
I came pretty close to calling this one “Magnets, How do they work?” But I thought that might confuse more than it would amuse. All jokes aside, hall effect sensors are pretty cool, and also pretty simple to use, but there are a few types you may not know about and I figured it would […]
Simple Temperature With Thermistor + Arduino
A Thermistor is a thermal-resistor. It’s just a simple device that changes it’s resistance based on temperature. If the LRD/Photoresistor is day of of arduino class. The thermistor should be day 1.01. (Can I do that?). If you need precise temperature readings, this is not the part for you. Check out the DS18B20, TMP102, or […]
Do You Have The Time? DS1307 RT Clock + Arduino
Most microcontrollers are time-agnostic, meaning they are unaware of the time around them, but that’s ok as most things we make have no need for it. But… every once in awhile you come up with an idea that requires knowing the actual time. Mostly this is used for data-logging, or creating this year’s newest clock. […]
How to Get Started with the ESP32
ESP32 is the hottest new wireless chip out there, offering both WiFi and Bluetooth Low Energy radios rolled up with a dual-core 32-bit processor and packed with peripherals of every kind. We got some review sample dev boards, Adafruit and Seeed Studio had them in stock for a while, and AI-Thinker — the company that […]
Are we getting close? Proximity Sensors + Arduino
In past tutorials, we have covered temperature, color, time, direction, but never distance or proximity. I think I strayed away from this because most of the lower cost proximity sensors are pretty drop-dead-simple to use and thought it might not be that useful. But the time has come, I’m writing about some distance/proximity sensors. While […]