Not only does this mood lamp which [J. Sutton] built look great, but we love the modular design he adopted when building the circuit boards. If you’re building something that is going to sit on your desk for some time it just has to look good. We think that he achieved that, using a small …
Mood lamp/notifier uses neat modular PCB design
GUI window manager on an AVR chip
This project is reminiscent of the old days when window managers were an amazing new idea. The difference is that this window-based GUI is running on an ATmega1284 microcontroller. But the behavior and speed of the interface is pretty much exactly what you’d expect if working on an early 90′s home computer. It even uses …
This piggy bank is our stock broker
[Johna and Justin] are working to take the emotion out of playing the market. They built this piggy bank which automatically purchases stock when your coinage totals the cost of a single share. That’s right, just turn the selector to one of your three chosen stocks (Google, Facebook, and Apple are used in this example) …
Asynchronous fireflies use few parts
[Karl Lunt] wrote in to share his LED firefly project. His goals for the project were to develop a low-power, low parts count module that can sense when it’s dark and then mimic the blinking patterns you’d associate with its biological namesake. We like his design which uses a coin cell battery holder as the …
Replace your project power supplies with recycled Li-Ion cells and a switching regulator
[Dr. Iguana's] experience moving from projects powered by disposable Alkaline cells and linear regulators to recycled Lithium Ion cells using the buck regulators seen above might serve as an inspiration to make the transition in your own projects. The recycled cells he’s talking about are pulled out of larger battery packs. As we’ve seen in the past, …
Measuring the lifespan of LEGO
How many times can you put two LEGO pieces together and take them apart again before they wear out? The answer is 37,112. At least that’s the number established by one test case. [Phillipe Cantin] was interested in this peculiar question so he built the test rig above to measure a LEGO’s lifespan. The hacked together apparatus …
Pulse Oximeter from LM324, LED, and Photodiode
This pulse oximeter is so simple and cheap to build it’s almost criminal. The most obvious way to monitor the output of the sensor is to use an oscilloscope. The poor-man’s stand-in for that is a sound card, which is what [Scott Harden] demonstrates in his write-up. It uses a concept we’ve seen a few …
Living night light with glowing algae
I may sound like I’m being over enthusiastic in this video. I’m not. Everyone who has seen this thinks it is simply amazing. My father, an ex navy man, has told me stories of glowing water since I was little. Being a person who was obsessed with all things that light up, this always stuck …
Semi-automatic pick and place machine
This is a fascinating take on building your own pick and place machine. It does an amazing job of automating the hardest parts of hand assembly, while relying on human dexterity to achieve the hardest parts of automation. It’s a semiautomatic pick and place machine driven by an Arduino and controlled by an Android tablet. …
Hidden servo automates slat-style window blinds
[Home Awesomation] has been working on automating his slat-style window blinds. His focus has been on adjusting the angle of the slats, not on completely retracting the shades. Since the slat angle adjustment requires little torque a servo motor turns out to be just perfect for the job. The good news is that the existing …
