Hackaday Links: January 13

An 8×8 LED Matrix Game Grows Up:

[Pixel Land] is an iPhone game similar to [Super Mario Brothers] using a virtual array of 8×8 pixels. This wouldn’t normally be interesting, but we’ve actually featured “this” game as an 8×8 LED matrix game.

How to Drill Golf or Ping-Pong Balls:

Drilling golf or ping-pong balls is not easy.  This simple drill press fixture makes that job easier and repeatable. So the next time you want to make lots of diffusers for your LED board, this might be a good device to consider!

The PICkit 2:

If you’ve ever wanted to get into PIC programming, possibly the PICkit 2 would be for you. [Ray] has written a review of his first experiences with setting it up and programming.

Mr Bitey is hungry for resistors!

Is light industrial machinery a hack? It’s a hard thing to define, but if so [Mr. Bitey] would meet the qualifications.  It also meets the qualifications of having a great video, and name, so be sure to check it out!

A [Snap Circuits] Programmable Robot:

The robot pictured above on [Instructables] was built using [Snap Circuits], with parts that literally snap together. A neat concept, this construction set seems to fall somewhere between traditional Legos and push-in breadboards.

18 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: January 13

  1. Cool@the snap circuit robot. I bought the picaxe and other items as replacement parts on the snap circuits website to augment the 750 level kit and bought my son the advanced rover kit. I was having a hard time visualizing how to control the robot with the limited number of i/o ports. This is a great link. Glad to see it working. Now how to figure out getting input into the picaxe, or how to gang 2 or more of the 8pin adapters together for an avr processor.

  2. It’s better to leave the drill impression in the bottom of the well (instead of a through-hole) so you can dead-on center the jig later on.

    If the fit isn’t tight enough you can shim it with paper or cut a slot across the depth of the hole to make a clamp.

  3. PicKit2 Reviewer… “It can do high-voltage programming, which means if I somehow messed up with the fuse settings I don’t have to panic. In comparison, AVR’s ISP programmer doesn’t do this (unless if you get a more expensive model). I remember the horrible experience when I first programmed my ATMega328 with wrong fuse values, I had to spend a whole day searching for solutions. Eventually I made a high-voltage rescue circuit and fixed the problem. But what a pain!”

    Misleading information from the misinformed… Arduino effect no doubt.

    1. @Drone: let me tell you what happened when I ‘messed up with the fuse settings’. I programmed the clock source as ‘External Clock’ instead of ‘External Crystal’. A simple mistake, yet the programmer was unable to detect or operate the microcontroller any more since it could start without an external clock. This was completely done in AVRStudio, had nothing to do with Arduino.

  4. Re: ladder toss game, no need to tie a knot at the end of the cord! I made this game recently, and used nylon cord, which I thoroughly melted the ends of and pressed against my drill press to flatten and quickly cool, making a rivet-like end against the balls. Ive only had one come loose so far, and it’s an quick fix.

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