Posted November 8, 2012 by Chris

“In this article, we’ll be constructing the Club Jameco Kit: The 8x8x8 LED Cube and providing an informal critique of the kit. In this way, you’ll be able to see both, how it has all the parts you need to build an 8x8x8 LED Cube, but also how to steer clear of the many pitfalls that exist when building a project of this complexity.”

Posted September 27, 2012 by Chris

“The concept for this small birthday present was to create a small heart shape with red LEDs and then to draw a heart shape underneath it on the PCB as a backdrop. Then a microcontroller was added to control the LEDs for both fade and pattern control. Controlling LEDs via PWM allows us to save precious battery life and control the exact brightness of each specific LED.”

Posted October 6, 2011 by Chris

To go with my other vga oriented projects here’s a VGA interface that is built entirely with TTL discrete logic chips. I built it primarily for the 7400 contest over at dangerous prototypes, so give a comment over there if you like the design. This interface outputs the proper Hsync and Vsync signals using some 74193 counters and uses an 8-state machine to output different color signals to an LCD.

Posted July 7, 2011 by Chris

If you’re a music lover, this Pyro Electro project is for you. Today I show you how to build your own IR Theremin. This style of theremin uses an infrared proximity sensor, a headphone speaker and a PIC micro to create an off-the-shelf style of instrument. The article includes demo vids of me playing simple songs on the theremin.

Posted April 14, 2011 by Chris

Today’s PyroElectro Project: A Propeller Clock! These things are all over the place on the web and on youtube, but few bother to explain how they are built. This project goes from start to finish explaining how to build a simple POV that can display virtually whatever you want.

Posted March 31, 2011 by Chris

Today’s PyroElectro Project: The Tupperware Turret is a highly modified airsoft pistol put onto a pan and tilt platform with a turret cover. It rotates, tilts up and down and has precise fire control. Control is done wirelessly with a generic TV remote control.

Posted March 17, 2011 by Chris

This week’s PyroElectro project is a small mint-box sized audio/video test box for testing audio and video output in an easy way. The VGA signal output is simply 3 blocks of Red, Green and Blue. The audio output is a single tone that can be changed with a trimpot/knob.

Posted April 24, 2008 by Chris

Being that my car already measures velocity & position, why not fill the void with an accelerometer & measure acceleration? The Personal G-Force Meter Does just that using standard 7-Segment LEDs for output. Check out the video for an overview of how it works!

Posted March 18, 2008 by Chris

Moving to a true pyro design, we have the Stunning Camera. With some slight modifications to a single-use camera a stun-camera is born. Whenever someone tries to take a picture it gives them a mild shock (The video demonstration is pretty good).

Posted February 28, 2008 by Chris

The autonomous drifter is an rc car with a modified transmitter that allows a computer to control it via the serial port. It has both manual and autonomous control using the keyboard.