Tag Archives: holiday

Holiday electronics kits: Great boxes of kits!

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The kits go marching...

If you’re planning to get some of our holiday electronics kits in time for Christmas, please note that the remaining amount of time is decreasing at a rate of one second per second. Orders placed today (Tues. 12/19 until midnight) will ship via priority mail on Wednesday, and will (probably!) arrive by Saturday. Express mail shipping is also available; have your order in by Thursday (through midnight) for Saturday delivery.

Above, a box full of kits sits in the hallway just before a trip to the post office.

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How to make high-tech LED decorations for the holidays

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CompletedOrnament   WhiteMenorah.jpg

Here we present two open-source, do-it-yourself, microcontroller-powered holiday electronics projects: A micro-readerboard Christmas tree ornament and a mini-LED Hanukkah menorah. Read on to see exactly what they do (Check out the video!), how they work, and how you can make your own.
Continue reading How to make high-tech LED decorations for the holidays →

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LED Holiday Project Kits

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Animated GIF of ornament

We have written instructions for building two sweet microcontroller-based electronics projects for the holidays: an alphanumeric LED christmas tree ornament and an LED mini-menorah (hanukkiah).

These are open-source projects; You can download and modify the source code, use it to program your own microcontroller, and solder the microcontroller to some LEDs to help make your own holiday decorations.

If programming microcontrollers is not your idea of a good time, we understand. Not everyone has (1) access to a microcontroller programmer, (2) the time and (3) the desire to modify the firmware of their christmas tree ornaments.

Low-cost open-source holiday project kits brought to you by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

In order to help our fellow citizens Evil Mad Scientists with their holiday projects, we have put together electronic soldering kits for these projects. (Updated: November 2007)

CompletedWhite

 

LED mini-menorah kits are now available at our new web store.

 

Lit up segments spell out the letter M

 

 

Kits for version 2.0 of the open-source LED Micro-Readerboard project are now available at the Make Store.

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Play with your food: A Chocolate Debian

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Chocolate Debian

Every year we make chocolate truffles for the holidays. This year, we made Thanksgiving-themed truffles with dried cranberries and freshly candied orange peel, labeled with a little curl of red-colored white chocolate. We’ve decided to name this particular treat a “Chocolate Debian,” for reasons that may be obvious to some.

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What I took with me for Thanksgiving

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What I took with me for Thanksgiving

The lab staff is travelling this week. Here’s what I brought with me, which might give you a hint about some of our upcoming projects:


  • A: MacBook Pro
  • B: Cookbooks (We’re doing the cooking!)
  • C: AVRISP mkII microcontroller programmer box
  • D: Star-shaped cookie biscuit cutter
  • E: The microcontroller programmer itself (fits in the box)
  • F: USB cable for programmer (fits in the box)
  • G: Olimex development board for 20-pin AVR chips (fits in the box)
  • H: Power for the Olimex board
  • I: Ten Atmel ATtiny2313 microcontrollers (fit in the box)
  • J: Microcontroller target board with 17-segment LED display and battery box (fits in the box)
  • K: Sheet from ATtiny2313 data sheet showing pinouts
  • L: Four fresh nutmeg nuts. (Meg nuts?)

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