 Pendulum clocks are wonderful works of art but they aren’t always the most accurate time keepers. Keith, who we featured back in 2009 for his Servo Guitar has built an automated solution to keep pendulum clocks in time. He uses a hall effect sensor to monitor the pendulum swings. An Arduino circuit is configured to count the number of transitions on the AC power supply that feeds the
Looking for a new powerful development environment to hack together some quick powerful projects? Have a look at the Espruino. It is a JavaScript Interpreter for STM32 ARM Microcontrollers which will let you get up and running fast because there is no IDE running on your computer. Just connect to the device and start programming. The pricing looks very attractive also. Thanks for sending in the tip Gordon. “How
There are some projects that provide you with hours of enjoyment. This Color Organ is one of those types of projects since you can play different songs and watch the dancing colors. Ledartist goes through all of the parts needed for the project and some of the issues in developing the circuit. Hearing about problems is great since you can learn what not to do without going down the
You might remember a few years ago when I shared how I monitor my running CNC machine. Looks like Dave from Plastibots has added a cool twist to the idea. Dave uses a wireless IP camera to monitor his equipment but he also came up with a way to wirelessly e-stop the machine by remotely pressing the escape button if the system is acting up. Instead of coming up
Our friend Bob Davis has been working with some Signature Electronic Signs. He didn’t like the complex controller that came with the device so he made a controller based on the arduino to control the sign. You can see the code that makes the system work here. These displays are available on Ebay at some reasonable prices, Bob describes some of technical details of the display here where he
  If you follow the instructions on this site you will end up with a Stun Baton which takes a 4 volt battery and converts it to 10,000 volts of sparking fun. Of course be very careful if you decide to take on this project since the voltages created can do some serious harm. Thanks for the tip Isaac R. “The Royer Oscillator magically turns the ~13 volts at
Matt Meerian from Home Brew Electronics has an issue with his basement waterproofing tar seeping into his sum pump pit. As you can imagine cold tar seeping into the pit would cause havoc with the pump and water level detection. He has designed a DIY Internet Sump Pump Monitor to alert him if there is a problem such as the pump running too long or the water level getting
