Posted August 26, 2012 by Chris

“The problem: Grass dies without strong sunlight. The solution: Construct a grow light that doesn’t consume a lot of power, doesn’t block the natural sunlight, and produces natural-looking colors.”

Posted August 25, 2012 by Chris

“So, having spent the last couple of years experimenting with UAV systems I felt the need to try something that would stay on the ground. I have been fascinated by rock crawlers, the latest RC off-road trend. They seem the be the ideal platform for a land based all terrain rover system. Traction and maneuverability is very impressive.”

Posted August 24, 2012 by Chris

“The geek inside me has always wanted a fridge that shows the inside temperature for both the freezer and the fridge compartments. However, when we recently replaced our very old fridge we ended up getting a new one without the built in thermometer. So I decided that one of my next projects would have to rectify this problem.”

Posted August 23, 2012 by Chris

“This article will be very similar to the 16×2 LCD PIC Interface and FPGA to 16×2 LCD articles, but this time we will be looking at how to use the Arduino to interface with a standard 16×2 LCD. Remember these LCDs allow for english, greek, numbers and japanese hiragana/katakana to be output so they’re very useful in many, many ways.”

Posted August 22, 2012 by Chris

“To get an authentic experience when playing arcade games on your PC or XBox Live Arcade, you need legitimate arcade hardware. A good stick still costs a fair bit of coin however it’s not that hard to make one of your own at reduced cost.”

Posted August 21, 2012 by Chris

“This I2C-bus analyzer capture all transmissions via I2C/TWI bus, decode it and send to PC via virtual RS-232 port. Received data can be displayed by any terminal program on PC computer. Main part of analyzer is ATTiny2313 microcontroller with 20MHz crystal. Link to PC are realized by FTDI FT245RL on UM245R module.”

Posted August 20, 2012 by Chris

“A hand knitted 3x6cm rectangle from Schoeller’s Nm 10/3, 80% PES, 20% Inox steel fiber (M869) conductive (resistive) wool. The range is between 10-5K Ohm resting and 200 Ohm when fully stretched.”

Posted August 19, 2012 by Chris

“The design of the PCB board is single sided in order to simplify the board’s fabrication. I routinely make these and similar boards using the toner transfer method with good success. When we need additional functionality, such as motor control, sensors, or communications, you can use daughter boards that connect to the main microcontroller board.”

Posted August 18, 2012 by Chris

“If you thread a wire through a core and then pulse it with a current of sufficient strength, the magnetic domains will align such that the core will become magnetized in the one circular direction, or the other. The magnetic property that makes this work as a memory technology is that when a core flips from one state to another, it kicks back a small induced current pulse that can be sensed with a simple transistor amplifier.”

Posted August 17, 2012 by Chris

“I’ve done more trials since I posted about the etching solution yesterday. Some of them have failed, so I thought it best to present the recipe as a movie – so you get to see how the chemical process should work.”