I don’t own a moleskine so I can’t verify it, but Joe from engraveyourbook.com claims that he had a ‘organic chemistry test’ done on a piece of the cover that informed him that it was composed of vinyl (PVC).
PVC fumes are highly toxic to breathe in and are also damaging to laser engravers’ innards. So if you are in the business of laser-engraving them, you may want to hold off until the safety (or toxicity) is verified.
Note that having a laser-engraved moleskine is probably not so bad, just wash it off to make sure there’s no dust left.
[note: if you have a moleskine, you can try 'pulling' a corner. If it stretches, its almost certainly vinyl.]
If you want to make a clock with an Arduino/Boarduino/AVR, there is a way to hook up a precision 32khz watch crystal
mtbf0 shows you how! pictured above is his LCD clockduino!
Trialex followed up with a really-big-7-segment clock (in the same thread)
I made another little demo of an XPort Direct webserver tonight. This time, you can send me a short message and it will be photographed and put up on flickr.
This robot claw freaks me out a little. When I was a kid, I used to have nightmares about sticking my hand in the lobster tank at the store. Must be a New Englander thing…
There’s even a few libraries at the Arduino playground for easy use. Dave Fowler from uCHobby even started out with a great tutorial. However, I didn’t see any good tutorials on how to do the actual -connecting- part. So I took pix while I wired up one to a protoshield and tested it.
Here is an example of how to make a cool Internet application using the XPort shield I recently released. This is very simple, but its a good example of getting and outputting data. Basically the Arduino serves up a webpage with a bunch of nice javascript code that allows you to select a color. It also displays a “current color” (in this case a light green)
When you click "Submit" on the page, another request is made to the XPort/Arduino, this time with a GET command ?color=#xxxxxx with the color information. The Arduino looks for this command, parses the color requested and calls analogWrite() on the three LEDs to change them into that color.
Want to try it out? Go to -> http://ladyada.net/make/eshield/colorpickerfwd.html which will forward you to the correct IP address (since I dont have DNS for my home network). The XPort can only receive one connection at a time so if you cant get thru, please be patient!
Fancy yourself a chiptune-freak? Caitsith2’s Arduino shield is designed just for you…it allows easy interfacing with an SNES APU. just plug it on top and you’re ready to play some 16-bit wunderjingles
This here is the exotic scandinavian straw-spined porkypine. During the mating season, it illuminates into a magical rainbow, so as to attract other boarduinos
Want your Arduino to check email? How about sending a twitter (which can then be easily forwarded to a phone via SMS)? Or grabbing data from a website? There are so many possibilites for projects that connect to the Internet to get data, now there’s an easy way to do it with an Arduino.
This shield allows you to add and use an XPort or XPort direct(+) Ethernet module (they cost only US$30-$50) using any 4 pins. All of the TCP/IP stack awfulness is done for you in the module so its super easy to just connect to any server.
