One problem faced by many around the world involved in hobby electronics is availability of components. Handling pcb design and fabrication followed by populating components only adds to the difficulty. By the time a hobbyist thinks about firmware, it is almost appearing insurmountable. This project aspired to address these issues.
Arduino is a great starting point for electronics, and with a motor shield it can also be a nice tidy platform for robotics and mechatronics. The MAKE MotorShield Kit, designed by Adafruit Industries in partnership with MAKE, is a full-featured motor board that can power many simple to medium-complexity projects. It’s got: 2 connections for […]
These directions were adapted from alan-parekh.com. The IR Jammer project is microcontroller-based; what this means is there is a small self-contained computer that controls the unit. The IR Jammer will cause most infrared remote controls to stop working. This means that you could prevent someone from changing the TV channel or adjusting the volume on […]
The Evasive Beeping Thing is appropriately named, since it dutifully does exactly what its name implies: it sends out a 5-second, high-pitched beep every few minutes. The source is extremely difficult to locate because of the way that high frequencies can penetrate objects and trick our ears. You’ve probably encountered something similar in the real […]
Back in the 1970s, my friend Wayne Gillis and I used to do light shows at science fiction conventions. We had the usual panoply of overhead, slide, and custom-made projectors, and a single, very expensive, helium-neon laser from Edmund Scientific. Calling ourselves Light Opera, and later, Illuminatus, we performed at ConFusion conventions in Ann Arbor, […]
This DIY Geiger counter clicks and flashes an LED each time it detects a radioactive particle. It works with most common Geiger–Müller tubes, and easily connects to radiation rate meters, data loggers, true random number generators, and the Radiation Network’s GeigerGraph software. Share your radiation readings with the whole world!
In early 2011 my robot club, the Dallas Personal Robotics Group, was looking for a way to help our beginning members build up their skills. To this end, we produced a series of lessons covering 5 topics needed to make a simple, programmable robot: making PCBs with the toner transfer method, programming ATtiny microprocessors, laying […]
