 Bruce sent in a link to this cool picture of a very old display in this 1901 picture (top of the tallest building in the picture). It looks to be a primitive 16 segment display. The building is The Great Coal Mine, Coney Island. I wonder what the display was used for? Below you can see the modern version of this display. “The Great Coal Mine was a
If you like stair lighting as much as I do you will want to have a look at this. Geert built his RGB Stair Lighting using an Arduino Uno and TI TLC5940m PWM Chips. He uses 3 of the TI TLC5940m chips to allow to control 3 channels of light on each of his 12 stair steps. Geert now has some cool lights on his stairs and his next step is
This Interactive Mirror project by OpenGadgets is based on the IOIO Microcontroller which looks like it is very flexible. A 32X16 pixel matrix display is mounted behind a 2 way mirror, this display is connected to the IOIO microcontroller and talks to the Android phone using bluetooth. With the current implementation you are able to send things such as low resolution pictures and video to the display. There is
  If you have ever had a motorcycle you know that being seen by other motorists is always on your mind. Pete Mills recently purchased a motorcycle and installed a custom brake light to combat this issue. His DIY Motorcycle LED Brake Light was inspired by a flashing brake light of an ambulance. His design flashed quickly when it is activated and then goes on solid. There is also
Mike Szczys from Hack a Day shares a hack that he found by Geert on his Just a Thought blog. Geert wanted to jazz up his stairs but adding some DIY RGB LED stair lighting. He used an Arduino Uno for the brain and some TI TLC5940 chips to do the heavy lifting of doing the PWM (pulse width modulation) for all of the channels of LEDs. “We need a
Thanks to Lior Elazary for sending in this great project. It accomplished a few things, he was able to justify the purchase of a laser cutter and his kids learned come computer basics. His Mechanical Bit Adder Clock is sure to be built by many since he also made a detailed Instructable for it. “The inspiration for this project came from trying to teach my son and daughter about
 The prize this week is a non contact AC test pen. This pen can be used to test if AC voltage is present in a wire without needing to touch the bare conductor. This contest will run for one week (April 15 – 20, 2012). Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item above and what it can be used for. Please do
