component of the month

All About the Diode

All About the Diode

Collin Cunningham explains what diodes are all about, describing the history of the component, the various types, and even touches on creating your own. [M]aking this installment of the series taught me quite a few things. Prior to reading up on the diode, I wasn’t aware how closely its development was tied to the birth […]

Learn About LED Matrices

Learn About LED Matrices

Collin Cunningham’s videos remain golden! In Circuit Skills: LED Matrix he talks about LED matrices and how to control the LEDs with a multiplexing IC. He uses it to make a mini game machine! Many an experimenter, hacker, tinkerer, & maker have heeded the call of the mighty matrix – and it’s no mystery why. […]

Seven-Segment Matrix

Seven-Segment Matrix

June’s Component of the Month is the diode, and a 7-segment display actually consists of seven light-emitting diodes! So, why not matrix them up? Skot Croshere built a matrix out of 512 7-segment displays: he calls it the DigitGrid: The DigitGrid is an array of seven-segment displays. There are 4096 LEDs, forming 512 7-segment digits […]

Open-Source Microscope Illuminator

Open-Source Microscope Illuminator

Stephen Richardson of Tangent Audio built the AZIZ light ring for his Bausch & Lomb stereo microscope. AZIZ is an LED microscope illuminator that I designed and built from scratch. It is designed around a Texas Instruments TLC59116 constant-current PWM LED driver chip, and an Atmel ATTiny1634 AZIZ has 64 LEDs, half super-bright and half […]