Potentiometer Archives

Lunchbox Laser Shows

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, […]

One-Ton Linear Servo

RC hobby servomotors were just made for hacking. What’s not obvious is how much you can hack them — with a few tricks, you can use a servo to control almost anything. Hobby servos consist of a DC gear motor, a potentiometer (usually 5K), and a control circuit. The output shaft is the output of […]

Circle-A-Sketch

This simple project uses an Arduino, a photoresistor, 2 potentiometers, and a resistor and uses basic serial communication between the Arduino and your computer. Basically, the user can draw by controlling two potentiometers (drawing knobs) and the photoresistor determines how dark the circle will be drawn.

The Autophenakistoscope

Motorize a phenakistoscope, a 19th-century parlor novelty that preceded motion pictures, and keep its frames synched to an LED strobe by using a sensor and an Arduino microcontroller. Invented in 1832 by Joseph Plateau, this device creates a moving picture from a sequence of stills arranged on a spinning disk and viewed through strategically cut […]