Return of the Peggy Projects

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One of the great things about building electronics projects is seeing what they inspire other people to do, and the 625 LEDs of the Peggy 2 can be pretty inspiring:

Mark at awe.com did some awesome scrolling text on Peggy 2 and has even shared his sketch for others to use. His video is embedded above or you can click on over to YouTube.

Phillip at peilipu’s posterous hooked up a Peggy 2LE and a Danger Shield to play Pong, a game we’re rather fond of.

Nick over at NJS Shredding wired up an off-board Peggy 2, neatly built into a wooden box and mounted to the ceiling. He also posted a video which shows the scale of it quite well.

Another ceiling mounted Peggy 2 installation was recently posted on the Make blog. This one, with an amazing array of ribbon cables connecting strips of LEDs, is entertaining visitors at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh and was created by the late artist Rick Gribenas. Thanks to Matt Mets for sending us the picture!

Also at a museum in Pittsburgh, Deren Guler used a Peggy 2 in a kid-powered generator exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center. Thanks for sending the picture, Deren!

You can read more about Peggy 2 on our store here, and full documentation is available on our wiki here and links to more projects are posted there as well.

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Urban scientist: An unusual spider

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Red-backed Jumping Spider 7

Red-backed Jumping Spider 3

It’s always good to keep your eyes open, ready to see new things. I came across this striking not-particularly-small spider with a bright red velvety abdomen, just hanging out on the concrete side of a building here in Sunnyvale, California.

I’ve never seen one of these before! How might you go about identifying it?

Continue reading Urban scientist: An unusual spider →

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Playtime – Videogame mythologies

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Game of Life 15

The Maison d’Ailleurs (translated as “House of Elsewhere”), is a museum of science fiction, utopia and extraordinary journeys in Switzerland.

A new version of our Interactive Game of Life exhibit, shown above, is part of their new show, Playtime – Videogame mythologies. The show is devoted to the culture of video games, and exploring how the relationship between play, the various manners of gaming, and technology interrelate.

Playtime – Videogame mythologies runs through December 9, 2012 at Maison d’Ailleurs.

Here is a short video (YouYube link here) showing off the new museum display:

We’ve also just posted an extended introduction to this project here in our post about our new Interactive Game of Life kits.

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Interactive Game of Life Kit

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Game of Life 6

Game of Life 4

Game of Life 12

Two years ago we designed an interactive exhibit of Conway’s Game of Life for the San Jose Museum of Art. The hardware that we used for that project eventually became the basis for our Octolively interactive LED kits.

We’ve recently had occasion to revisit our Game of Life project, and to build an all-new version of the museum exhibit. Along the way, we’ve rewritten the firmware from scratch and added a number of features. And today we’re pleased to announce the result: our new Interactive Game of Life Kit.

Continue reading Interactive Game of Life Kit →

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Basics: Open Collector Outputs

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SN7407N

One of the joys of working with basic digital electronics– and logic gate ICs in particular –is that it almost works like building with a set of Lego blocks: One output goes here, which connects to the next input here, and so forth until it does what you wanted.

If you’ve played with chips like these, you’ve probably also come across chips with “open collector” outputs. And if not, they’re worth knowing about. Open-collector outputs form the basis of a number of clever tricks for level-shifting and interfacing between different types of logic, and from logic to other types of electronic circuits.

In what follows, we’ll work with the SN7407N, which is one of the most basic ICs with open-collector outputs. We’ll discuss what it means to have “open collector” outputs, and show some of the different ways that they are used. Continue reading Basics: Open Collector Outputs →

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