Tim has a lovely blog (build-log!) of a wearable tricolor LED project. I liked the images of his attempt to cast them using ice cube trays. You can see the first two turned out very nicely and the remaining ones are kind of blobby. This particular effect is accidental, caused by a bubbling/melting of the casting compound. Still, it looks rather neat.
You can also, of course, make a nice mold out of milled aluminum….

I have yet to do any casting but am looking forward to trying it out

This is so cool…Phillip cut a video cable and brought out the i2c lines that are used to transmit/receive data from the monitor/display. (I guess that’s how well designed drivers know the resolutions available)

Some drivers let you poke data onto this bus, so you now have a way to communicate with i2c devices (like, say…a wii nunchuk). PC’s also have an onboard i2c bus for sensors, which I mentioned in my blinkM post.

I’m back from maker faire and am wrapping up the documentation for my latest fun toy. Its an Arduino shield that can play high quality audio, music and speech. One thing I’ve noticed in doing tronix for the last few years is how incredibly hard it is to have a project with audio in it. Audio takes up a lot of space, so you need a storage element, and our ears are sensitive to errors and noise so its tough to make it sound good. After mucking around with ISD chips, embedded MP3 boards, wiring to CD players, generating PWM sound, etc. I decided to investigate playing uncompressed Wave files from a memory card. Success!

Click on the play button to watch a demo of the wave shield playing assorted audio through a small speaker

The shield comes with an Arduino library for easy use; simply drag uncompressed wave files onto the SD card and plug it in. Then use the library to play audio when buttons are pressed, or when a sensor goes off, or when serial data is received, etc. Audio is played asynchronously as an interrupt, so the Arduino can perform tasks while the audio is playing.

* Can play any uncompressed 22KHz, 12bit, mono Wave (.wav) files of any size. While it isn’t CD quality (44KHz/16bit), it is certainly good enough to play music, have spoken word, or audio effects
* Output is mono, into L and R channels, standard 3.5mm headphone jack and a connection for a speaker that is switched on when the headphones are unplugged
* Files are read off of FAT16 formatted SD/MMC card
* Included library makes playing audio easy

Want more? Check out the webpage for documentation, code, schematics, etc & buy a kit!

After much demand, I have finally got a USB-Boarduino kit! This is a little smaller than the Boarduino but has USB built in and a 500mA fuse. It’s pretty much the same as the Boarduino in all other respects - just plug it into a breadboard for ez prototyping. I presolder and test the USB so its easy to assemble

I figure I should also mention the other stuff I added in the shop:

For my UK, European, and Australian customs I’ve added a multi-country 9V adapter, available with the ever-popular Arduino starter packs

Stacky headers! They are just like every-day 0.1″ headers but the legs are extra long.

These are very useful for stacking Arduino shields!

A USB to serial converter…some people have been having trouble getting a converter that works well with the minipov3 so I have found one that I’ve tested and works well. This one plugs right into a USB port or comes with a USB extender cable.

I’m at maker faire, sharin’ a table with Mitch Altman and like 8392732 TV-B-Gone’s and Brain Machines. I have demos of nearly every project I’ve ever done, even some unreleased ones!

We’re at the south-east (?) corner of the ‘Fiesta’ Building (Maker Shed/Store) so come by & say hello

Play the short video above to see what it looks like with 4 modules

In 1970, John Conway came up with a 1-player game called Game of Life. The Game of Life is a mathematical game that simulates ‘colonies’ that grow or die based on how crowded or lonely they are and is known for the way it creates a beautiful organic display out of randomness.

Here is a design for a simple electronic project that plays Conway’s Game of Life. Make one kit and keep it on your desk, or attach multiple kit modules together to create a large display.

Originally created by Dropout Design, this revision adds a few extra features. You can build the boards from the schematic and open source firmware, or buy full kits from the Adafruit shop. The kit is very easy to make and an excellent first electronics project. It is perfect for workshops since at the end everyone can connect their completed module together.

Features:

• Each kit displays a 4×4 grid (16 LEDs)
• Connect as many kits as youd like, in any configuration, to create a larger game board
• Runs off of 2 AA batteries, but can be easily modified to run off of USB or wall-wart power
• On/Off button to save power, also for resetting the display
• Automatically resets if the colony has died or stagnated (regeneration)
• Backwards compatible with older versions

Read all about it here…

Today I’m trying to figure out whats the story behind Potato Semiconductor.
At first I was thinking, ‘well, yknow it could mean something else in another language.’ But their logo is pretty clearly a Potato.

They reason:

Why called Potatosemi as Brand?
We are the IC design house making chips. Potato chips are the most popular chips in the world. They are high volume, low price & taste good. All of the people like to eat them. All of the people are happy with them. This is exactly our goals. We will like to make our chips as popular as potato chips, as high volume as potato chips, as low price as potato chips. All of the computers & electronics devices like our chips’ taste. All of the people like to use them because they are easy to use & all of the people are happy with potato chips.

Need I mention they’re in San Jose?

Their blog which is kinda awesome…

Near the top is a #define RX_BUFFER_SIZE 128, which means 128 bytes are used for the buffer. You can change this to 32 (or even 16!). If you have almost no serial input, make it as low as you’d like as long as its > 0.

You can get another 2 bytes by changing the head and tail index values from int to uint8_t type. Just recompile your sketch and it will automatically do your thing.

Check out more hacks here…

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.

Basically, an Arduino + XPort shield + XPort + LCD + some code = minitwitter. I’ll put up deets on how to DIY later tomorrow.
But you can try it out now!

Edit: I added a servo that moves when a message is sent, so that the (motion-sensitive) camera will take a picture after each update. whew!