 Our friend Colin Karpfinger from Punchthrough.com has just completed his latest project. You might remember his last project, it was the LightBlue Bean. The Automated Surf Notifier uses a LightBlue Bean at the heart and interfaces with some colorful LEDs to indicate where the ideal surf waves are located. Using some daisy chainable LEDs mounted behind a poster of the coast make for a great indication method. “I
If you are looking for a DIY meter project have a look at this DIY Component Tester (translated), it tests Transistors, Capacitors, Inductors and Resistors. It is AVR based and is very flexible, in most cases you can just jam in a device and press the button to analyze the device. “Automatic detection of NPN and PNP transistors, N-and P-channel MOSFETs, diodes, thyristors, inductors, triacs, resistors and capacitors. Measure
 Check out this great Binary Wrist Watch. It’s a true watch for the geek since most won’t be able to read it! Via: Dangerous Prototypes “The time setting mode can be entered by holding the left button for two seconds. After that the display is blanked and the time can be set bit by bit by switching through the bits by pressing the left button. If the bit
 If you are going to be building a MAME cabinet, you should have a look at the Mini MAME Cabinet that Greg Kennedy built for some tips. He built this thing from scratch and kept the costs down, using some older electronics was a great way get some use out of the hardware that might not have had a use otherwise. The hand made cabinet turned out very
Do you still cut your lawn by dragging an antiquated gas powered spinning blade back and forth across the grass? If so you might want to build an autoCut. The autoCut is a robotic lawn mower that is powered from LiPo batteries and the brain comprises of a Raspberry Pi. The goal is to have completely autonomous operation but I think an IP camera would also be a great
If you are into cool clocks have a look at this Voltmeter Clock Project. It is based on the version that I built but has been enhanced with a ton of features such as master clock sync. “I have used three voltmeters and mounted them on a wooden plinth with a clear Perspex cover to give the clock an industrial look. I have modified Alan’s code to run on
Martin_H from the Parallax forum has built a cool little robot called Drawbot, it uses a Parallax Propeller Microcontroller programmed using PropForth. The main drive for this robot are the cheap $5 stepper motors that are available on eBay out of China. Looks like it is just powerful enough for this project. There is some loss of position after it draws a lot due to things like wheel slip.
