Posted October 10, 2012 by Chris

“Using an IR remote as a teach pendant on a homebuilt 6-axis arm. PicAxe 20M2 controller records arm joint positions in EEPROM for later playback. After further programming the robot can be ‘taught’ to spell words using small letter blocks. Don’t miss the youtube demonstration videos!”

Posted October 9, 2012 by Chris

“I decided to use an ATtiny84 as the heart of the project. It’s way under-utilized here, but I didn’t have any ATtiny25s in stock. I could have used a 555 instead of a microcontroller, but then I wouldn’t have gotten a cool fade-in and fade-out PWM effect. Plus the 555 at one minute or higher time scales is a little ungainly, with the high value capacitor required. And I REALLY wanted a smooth fade-in.”

Posted September 21, 2012 by Chris

“I had seen Roo Reynolds talking about hacking his doorbell to get it onto Twitter and as our doorbell is a bit rubbish I thought this seemed like a good project…I decided to start off with the physical/audible side of things and then later move on to pushing notifications out to laptops on the local network or beyond.”

Posted July 1, 2012 by Chris

“The main theme of this project is to design and implement an automatic control barrier. An automatic control barrier has much application in industry as well as in security systems and tool plazas. It gives a basic idea how to operate automatic gates using microcontrollers.
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Posted June 29, 2012 by Chris

“Wine doesn’t like subzero temperatures, and during wintertime, my “winecellar” got pretty cold. There was an electric heating element, but the thermostat was broken, so it was either full burn or nothing. That’s how the temperature monitor/controller came to be.”

Posted June 19, 2012 by Chris

“I often need a simple function generator. Just to generate a certain frequency. After all the years I’ve worked with electronics, I still haven’t got me one. Even though I need it now and then, I just couldn’t seem to justify the cost of one. So, standard solution – build one yourself.”

Posted June 16, 2012 by Chris

“I tested both LEDs and small incandescent light bulbs and although LEDs require less current to produce the same amount of light, light bulbs tend to create a softer effect. In this circuit I’ll use LEDs but nothing stops you from using light bulbs.”

Posted May 30, 2012 by Chris

“As shown in the schematic, the temperature sensor of our electronic thermometer is an LM35DZ. For one degree of temperature change, it increases its output 10mV, this circuit measures temperature values only between +10°C and +39°C.”

Posted May 27, 2012 by Chris

“Team JARJ of Olin College has designed a lock cracking device which can take a combination lock with an unknown combination and unlock it and display the correct combination to its user.”

Posted May 15, 2012 by Chris

“The goal of this project was to develop 3D spinning mechanism capable of displaying smooth video or static images. The device uses a spinning ring with tri-color LEDs inside, and relies on precise angular sensing and persistance-of-vision and to create the effect of a spherical display surface.”