Here is an interesting project that allows you to have the look of a flickering candle without the issues of open flames. There is an Instructable for the project here and more details over at Gadget Gangster. "The fakenflicker is a tiny, battery powered candle simulator. 3 colored LED’s authentically flicker and fade, just like a real candle, controlled by a PICaxe 08M. This project was designed by propellanttech.
Prototyping circuit designs are usually needed even after a circuit design has been developed in conjunction with a circuit simulator. Bruce Heran built this Vacuum Tube Prototyping Design Board to allow to test designs quickly and easily. "I have frequently found that the models do not agree with the final build. Some are right on, but most are off enough to turn a good idea into a waste of
A simple game is always much more fun when it is spiced up with some cool electronics. The wooden tilt maze game has been around for a long time. This Marble Maze that is Remote Controlled using an Accelerometer kicks up the original game by allowing the player to interact with the game using a controller that moves the real game according to user movements. Have a look at
PyroElectro has built an interesting motor Optical Motor Encoder system that allows a sled to move back and forth using optical feedback to know where the sled is. A L298 DC Motor Controller is used to drive the simple DC motor that is used to precisely position the sled. You may remember this CD-ROM Read Head Actuator Head Scratcher article from earlier in the year where I was wondering
There are lots of Nerd Kits project examples available. Josh Davis used the LED Array Sign project and added a cool option for the sign to display voice messages left with the help of a Google voice to text service. Josh has documented the project here and has made the code available. Via: Make "On the software side of things, there are two python scripts that make everything happen.
Have a look at this beautiful Mini Acrylic Tesla Coil Project that our friend Daniel Eindhoven from Megavolts.nl put together. The build detail on this project might even rival the MV CoilMaster Mark1 Coil Gun! "A small TeslaCoil fully made of acrylic plastic. The cool thing about this is that every part is transparent. This coil is driven by the power supply of my large DC Teslacoil. Total height
One way to learn lots about a protocol is by implementing a bit banged version. Openschemes shares with us his experimentation with the Arduino and the FT232 chip. "We’ve been considering the synchronous bit bang mode of the FT232R for an upcoming project. The first steps towards something like this are always to build up a little debug board or test bench that can be used for debug and
