Did the dog eat all of your microcontroller I/O? Here’s a handy little article from Open Music Labs on how to do some clever circuit hacking to allow a shift register (and thus as many switches as you could possibly want) to be read from 2 or even 1(!) microcontroller pins.
It’s been a big year here at the Maker Shed. This has been our best year to date and we have shipped around 30,000 orders to makers all over the world! Ever wonder what our top products are? Below are the Top 10 items shipped from the Maker Shed in 2011.
If you’re looking to recreate the Times Square ball drop this New Year’s Eve, Dino Segovis has posted his plans for making an Arduino-based New Year Mini Ball Drop LED Timer. You activate it with one minute left in the year and five LEDs inside ping pong balls simulate the dropping ball. Then, at the stroke of midnight, a 2012 sign lights up as the trusty tone library plays Auld Lang Syne.
Open Music Labs has put up a great tutorial on how to read a matrix of switches, useful if you’re doing a project with keypads or musical keyboards.
Jason Gessner’s wife is an avid runner and they’ve often joked that she puts in more miles than he does in his car. This inspired Jason to create an odometer to track the miles his wife logs during training and races. Jason used a numerical readout he found at a surplus store and hooked it up to a Motor Shield. A computer with Ruby checks the DailyMile API every minute for new entries and sends a signal to the Arduino over serial to increment the counter with a satisfying click for each mile his wife has logged.
It’s been such a treat to look through so many heartfelt (yes, sometimes brash) comments on posts from the past year. Looking to 2012, I’m sure we’ll see more newsworthy items that whet people’s appetite for healthy debate. But first, check out these ten from the past year that cranked up the heat in the comments.
Instructables user LucidMovement built this great lamp out of electro-luminescent wire covered in crystals. So, of course, all of you reading this have thought to yourself at one time or another “I would absolutely love to grow some crystals on el-wire and then encase it in silicone and acrylic.” No? Oh, well maybe it was […]
