Build a camera boom at less than a grand

The folks at The Geek Group built a camera crane for less than $1000. In the video embedded after the break a presenter takes you through the different parts that make up the boom and how it is operated. This feels like something from a Junkyard Wars challenge as most of the parts are scavenged or from an industrial … Read the rest

LED PDF from TI (KUWTA)

[Satiagraha] let us know that Texas Instruments(TI) has given out a neat “LED Reference Design Cookbook” PDF. The document contains 17 some odd little projects featuring different TI ICs and ways of using them to control LEDs in things from backlights to torches to solar lanterns to advanced PWM control! Sure the document is biased towards using … Read the rest

Review: mbed NXP LPC1768 microcontroller

mbed is a next-generation 32-bit microcontroller platform. It’s a prototyping and teaching tool somewhat along the lines of Arduino. On steroids. With claws and fangs. Other contenders in this class include the MAKE Controller, STM32 Primer and Primer 2, Freescale Tower, and Microchip’s PIC32 Starter Kit. The mbed hardware has a number of advantages (and a few disadvantages) compared to … Read the rest