This project answers to a need I had: a third hand that holds a camera while I perform a test and takes photos/videos (useful when you’re stuck at the lab late at night, and suddenly need a photographer). The downside to a robotic arm was obvious – It needs to be programmed, and it is […]
Received a couple of nice big bread boards for Christmas and decided that one of them needed an arduino to use with it. After some thought I decided that the best option was to build the required parts of an Arduino circuit direct on the breadboard. Also the cheapest at only £4 for the required […]
These two integrated circuits from Maxim are for driving either 64 individual Led’s, or up to 8 digits of 7-segment displays. The drivers implement a SPI compatible slave interface that can be controlled from the Arduino using only 3 of the digital output pins. An extensive datasheet for the IC’s is available from the Maxim […]
Another project I’m working on required a good timer, but the more I read about Arduino, I realized that I couldn’t make an accurate timer using an Arduino that was already devoted to other tasks. The Arduino will always lose time if you perform other tasks. The solution was a Real Time Clock module that keeps perfect […]
I needed a couple of AA batteries and found the display at the supermarket where they were all arrayed. Normally when I’m shopping in the supermarket, I tend to look at the price/kg or price/l when comparing similar products. In the case of the batteries, there was no such indicator. Fine, I thought, I’ll work […]
This was a 6 week project created for the Spring 2012 Things That Think course at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Our project is an autonomous Sunflower. As in nature, the highest priority for our flower is sunlight, necessary for photosynthesis. Our Arduino controlled sunflower is constructed using 3D printing and laser cutting technologies. […]
Charlieplexing is an ingenius method for controlling many LEDs without using many microcontroller pins. You can turn on or off one LED at a time. To light more than one LED at a time, you can scan the LEDs by turning a sequence of them on and off really fast. The number of LEDs you […]
We all need to dream more so I’ve created this Arduino Powered “dream generator” to help plant the seeds for some big thinking craziness. When you approach the generator a Maxbotix ultrasonic sensor triggers lights and music that draw you in so you can stare into the blue LED enshrouded infiniteness of the box. Press […]
Creating a robotics platform from scratch takes allot of work and a few dollars. Buying a ready built one is easy but costs allot of money (at least for me). So instead I decided to piggy back off of the companies who make remote control cars. This is a great because it comes ready made […]
One of the basic tasks in many home automation systems is controlling power to appliances. They could be lights, or a heater, or an exhaust fan, or just about anything else that runs on mains power. The problem of course is that it’s dangerous to mess with mains-level power directly and you may even be […]
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