Michael wrote in to say:
I ordered a Bulbdial Clock kit from your company on Wednesday Feb 7, 2013; it was waiting for me at the door on the 9th. Suffice it to say that I was extremely pleased with the rapid shipment of the product.
Following the html instructions I was able to assemble the project without errors the first time and got a working Bulbdial clock in about 2 hours (my whole family thinks it is cool).
Once again thanks for being there for an old kit builder.
Thanks, Michael!
From the complete overkill department, evilandy posted in the forums about his project which hooks up an Alpha Clock Five to a GPS module, a WiFi module, a WWVB Atomic radio receiver, two TXCO RTC modules and two microcontrollers because, well, we’ll let him tell you:
I wanted a clock that would display precision time and date in “all” worst case scenarios. If this clock does not show the precise time then it’s time to gather up food, water, ammunition, and the family and head for the underground bunker!
The keyswitch, fire button, and covered toggle are nice touches. Thanks for sharing your project, evilandy!
Our friends John Baichtal of Make Magazine, and Adam Wolf and Matthew Beckler of Wayne and Layne have recently released their collaboration, Make: Lego and Arduino Projects, with a forward by our other friend, Erin RobotGrrl Kennedy.
If that all-star cast isn’t reason enough to check it out, the book is about combining Lego and Arduino, key gateway drugs into engineering and electronics. To accompany the book, they’ve created Bricktronics, a library for use with Arduino and Lego and a set of accessories to help with the physical interfaces, including a shield that allows you to plug your Lego NXT accessories into your Arduino. In an article over at Make, John points out that models and code from some of the projects from the book are up on github, so you can already get started playing. Neat stuff!
William Phelps recently wrote to us with alternative firmware for Alpha Clock Five, our oversized alphanumeric LED clock/data display kit. His firmware adds two very welcome features: Automatic daylight saving time (DST) correction, and automatic time setting via a GPS module. It works remarkably well.
Here, we’ll show you how to hook it all up and how to use it.
Continue reading GPS time on the Alpha Clock Five
Chris Shen‘s first solo show just opened at 18 Hewett Street in London, and he shared with us about his piece, Infra, built using a Peggy 2:
The idea was to build a infrared display out of old remote controls, using the existing infrared LEDs as pixels of a low-res display. 625 old remote controls are mounted in a metal frame connected by individual wires to a modified Peggy 2 that runs the whole installation.
The main change to the Peggy was to solder molex headers instead of LEDs: this is to allow the wires to be easily plugged in and out of the board which is necessary when dismantling and reassembling the piece. Yes, all 625 remotes are numbered so they can be removed from the frame for transportation! The current and voltage was also adjusted fo IR LEDs as opposed to visible LEDs.
While researching, the main thing I was looking for was the ability to play video (live) on a low-res matrix. I looked into various ways of doing this but once I found the Peggy 2 kit it gave me confidence to go ahead with building Infra because of the open-source nature, existing work done by Windell, and Jay Clegg’s video Peggy mod.
I connect all the remote controls via 500 meters of speaker wire to the Peggy, held into the frame by a simple looped elastic band. The circuit is mounted to a sheet of acrylic as the circuit bowed with all the wire attached. Each remote had to be opened to solder the wire directly to the LEDs legs. The wire is then routed out through the back of the remote and closed back up.
Preparing all 625 remote controls was the most time consuming part, each was different and often not very clean especially once you get inside. Although looking at all of the remotes individually revealed another side to the project which I’ve documented through a small run of books.
Thank you to Chris for sharing about how you made your piece with us. His exhibit will be up through February 3rd, 2013, so if you’re in London, go see it soon!
Our good friend Jimmie P Rogers— of LoL Shield fame, amongst many of us who love Arduino and LEDs —has a brand new tattoo of the resistor color code: Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Gray, White. I’m pretty sure that Jimmy himself has known this color code since he was in diapers, but now he has an always-present chart that he can use as a visual aid while teaching electronics. And at five inches across, it doubles as a ruler (albeit one that will grow less accurate with age).
So, that’s pretty neat. But two things bring this above and beyond the “usual” coolness of a geek tattoo. First, Jimmie designed it in Processing, and second, as an open source tattoo, you can download the source code on his web site.
And for those of us who may be a little less committed: Our own favorite mnemonic for the resistor color code is “Black Beetles Running On Your Garden Bring Very Good Weather.”
We’re not sure what it it is about Hanukkah that brings out the Star Trek fans, but they’re back. First, Joyce brings us an updated TNG hanukiah. Joyce was one of those responsible for the epic menorah we posted about in 2009. The LED on the Enterprise is being worked on–we think they may have a problem with their dilithium crystals.
Next, VanEdge posted this menorah in the forums. Both of these fine examples are based on Pez dispensers, which seem to be a handy size for holiday hacking, particularly when combined with our LED Menorah kit.
Happy Hanukkah to you both, and thank you for sharing your projects!
Today we’re releasing a major update to Alpha Clock Five, our alphanumeric LED desk clock, alarm clock, and data display device.
Alpha Clock Five still has five remarkably bright, remarkably huge 2.3″ alphanumeric LED displays. But for version 2.0, we’ve rewritten the firmware from scratch. It’s packed with new features and it is simply a joy to use.
To name a few of those new features, Alpha Clock Five now:
And, here is one more thing that we’ve been cooking up for a long long time:
The all-new White Edition of Alpha Clock Five— with five 2.3″ alphanumeric LED displays, now in stunning white. (And, shown above with a phone for scale.)
Alpha Clock Five firmware v. 2.0 is now shipping on new Alpha Clock Five kits, and is also available as a download and free update for anyone who already has an Alpha Clock Five with the original firmware. Please see our documentation wiki for details.
Read on for more about what’s new in Alpha Clock Five v. 2.0, and about the design of the White Edition.
Continue reading Alpha Clock Five v2.0 and Alpha Clock White
Eric over at Low Voltage Labs has posted up his design for a simple PCB ideal for putting an LED into a pumpkin. This is very much like our simple LED pumpkin project but in a neat, reusable format. And it makes a mighty cute little jack-o-lantern all on its own.
He has made it available as a kit with PCB, switch, resistor, battery holder and the same candle flicker LEDs which we love so much. Unfortunately, the kit is currently sold out. Hopefully he’ll make more, if not in time for this Halloween, then at least for next year.
Justin Shaw of WyoLum recently presented with this little slice of awesome: One of our own Peggy 2 kits, adapted into a great big “word clock” with the help of custom software and laser-cut acrylic.
WyoLum is a small but international collective of Open Source Hardware enthusiasts who collaborate on hardware designs and other projects (like their Open Hardware Grants) that promote Open Source Hardware. One of their great ongoing projects has been a series of open source word clocks, ClockTHREE and ClockTHREEjr, which drew inspiration from a number of sources including QlockTWO, Doug Jackson’s word clocks, and the open source design of our Peggy 2 kit.
This is, of course, one of the great things about designing Open Source Hardware: seeing unexpected uses. When we first released the Peggy 2, we didn’t even remotely consider that others would later use our circuit diagram for tips on building their own RGB word clocks. And now it’s especially neat to see it come full circle, with the ClockTHREE software adapted to work back on the Peggy.
WyoLum’s design files for the Peggy 2 word clock are available for download here (by kind permission), and if you’re building one, you may also find helpful the ClockTHREE repository and our own documentation page for the Peggy 2.
Photo by Brian Krontz of WyoLum.
