Category Archives: Engineering

YOU HAVE EIGHT EARTH MINUTES LEFT

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Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But, the deadline for our Arduino Contest at Instructables is approaching right fast: Entries are accepted until this Sunday, Nov 15, 2009, at 11:59 PM PST.

Why enter? To show off your cool stuff! Also, you could win a Meggy Jr RGB handheld gaming kit, or an Arduino Mega or other nice goodies, so don’t you want to come out and play?

Official contest rules are here. The basic entry requirement is that you make a project that involves the Arduino IDE in some way, and you can already check out many of the great projects entered. Woo!

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New LED Hanukkah Menorah Kit

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Night #3. 10 mm yellow diffused LEDs.

One of our first kit projects, and one of the consistently most popular, has been the LED Mini Menorah project. For a couple years now we have meant to revisit that project, and we’ve finally got around to doing so. Here is the result: our new Deluxe LED Menorah Kit.

Continue reading New LED Hanukkah Menorah Kit →

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Contest reminder!

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We’ve seen a lot of great Arduino Halloween projects out there this year. A few of them have been submitted to our Arduino contest over at Instructables, and we’d love to see more. The entry deadline is Nov. 15, so you’ve still got time to send them in.

Speaking of contests, the Make Halloween contest deadline is here. Quick, get those microcontroller projects entered before midnight on Nov. 3!

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Peggy-O-lantern

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Pegg-O-Lantern


Lately we have been working on a new version of the PeggyDraw program, which is a program that lets you draw things that you want to display on the Peggy 2 for static images. The new version isn’t quite ready to show off this week, which is too bad because we like to put out our Peggies for halloween.

On the bright side, Mark Delp just sent in a program called bmp2peg that’s been added to the Peggy project at Google Code. It converts a (tiny) windows BMP file and generates an Arduino sketch that can run on the Peggy. (bmp2peg runs on windows, and also on linux if you recompile it, macs unknown thus far.) Both bmp2peg and the original cross-platform PeggyDraw can be used to put static images on the Peggy, or to generate static frames that you swap out in the code to build simple animations. The window-friendly pumpkin above was drawn as an image file, converted with bmp2peg, and installed on a Peggy 2 filled with orange LEDs.


Last year at halloween we took a different approach to the Peggy in the window. We took one filled with red LEDs, and every twenty seconds (or so) it would flash the letters “BOO” — huge and bright — and then go dark again. We took a little movie of this last year, showing how that works.

(The flickr video is embedded below — if you can’t see it, click through to see it.)

PeggyBoo


The video is very dark, but it’s accurate: our street really is that dark on Halloween. You have to walk slowly because you can’t see where the sidewalk is.

Update: PeggyDraw 2 is now available for your Peggy 2 fun!

You can find more Halloween decor projects in our Halloween Project Archive.

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Rovin Pumpkin

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Rovin pumpkin - 01

The Rovin’ Pumpkin’ is a simple robotic pumpkin, and a close cousin of the Snap-O-Lantern. Silently, it sits on your porch– camouflaged amongst the humble squashes.

After a minute, its green eyes start to glow, and it creeps… moving about one foot to the left… and stops. The eyes go dark again. It fades into the darkness. And it waits.

Continue reading Rovin Pumpkin →

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An interesting wafer

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wafer - 3

I picked up this interesting wafer at the silicon valley electronics flea market. So far as I can guess, these are some sort of image sensors. The manufacturer has cleverly divided the wafer up to make three different sizes of sensors at the same time– only three of the large ones, and many more in the two smaller sizes.

So, before I pull out the microscope and look for brand names, can anyone guess (or identify) *exactly* what we’re looking at here? For scale, the wafer is about six inches across. A few more pictures follow.
Continue reading An interesting wafer →

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Instructables Arduino Contest

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Over at Instructables, we’re sponsoring an Arduino contest with prizes including Meggy Jr RGB kits. The rules are simple: use Arduino in your project! And by Arduino, we mean any project involving the Arduino IDE in some way. (And yes, you can use your Meggy Jr RGB or your Peggy 2 for this contest.) We look forward to seeing your projects and would love to see them in the flickr auxiliary, too.

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The Larson Scanner Kit

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pumpkin
Today we’re releasing a new open-source project and kit, which is an updated approach to the “Larson Scanner.” The Larson scanner is named in honor of Glen A. Larson, the man responsible for producing both the original Battlestar Galactica and Knight Rider television shows, and consists of a set of red LEDs that scan back and forth.

Three years ago, we showed how to make a Cylon Jack-O-Lantern, in what has become one of our all-time most popular tutorials. The circuit for that project was based on a 555 timer, driving a 4017 decade counter, and has 6 pixels of resolution. To create the incandescent fading effect, we added low-pass transistor drivers. We also wrote up a version of that article for the 2007 Make Magazine Halloween special, which included a slightly nicer version of that same circuit.

And while it’s been popular, we’ve always had some nagging reservations about it, and in particular its battery life. This year, we decided to do something about it and made a much betterversion of the Larson Scanner, and so here it is:

bright
Continue reading The Larson Scanner Kit →

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Some thoughts on throwies

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Throwies - 03

We’re big fans of LED throwies and derivative projects where you light an LED simply by connecting it across the terminal of a small lithium coin cell.

You’ll find this trick used in a lot of our projects that call for simply lighting up an LED in a tiny space, like the temporary LED lanterns, LED Ghosties, Robogames awards,
LED origami circuitry, light-up Lego minifigures, and edge-lit holiday cards. You’ll also find them in those little keychain flashlights– open one up and there’s just a battery and an LED.

So the throwie (and I use the term loosely, referring to devices with or without magnets) is a darned useful thing. But the first time that I was introduced to the concept, I asked what a lot of other electronics-oriented people do: “where’s the resistor?”

Turns out that it’s a fair question. LEDs aren’t normally driven directly from a battery. And yet (1) people were making throwies with every imaginable color of LED and (2) they apparently weren’t exploding. So what’s the deal?

Continue reading Some thoughts on throwies →

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