Fresh hacks every day
This is a blinky ball that [David] designed, built, and programmed himself. Does it look familiar? It should, he took his inspiration from the original prototype, and the Hackerspace-produced derivative. [David's] version is not as small, or as blinky, but in our minds the development process is the real reason for building something like this. He took … Read the rest
This Arduino MIDI sequencer has no shortage of ways to display loop info. The screen above is a touch-sensitive interface that acts as the user input. But if this screen is not visible, you can still see which tracks have activated samples for each beat and what effects are being used. That’s thanks to the collection of display boards which … Read the rest
Reading from a large number of inputs, like this piano keyboard, can be tedious. Even when multiplexing there’s a lot to keep track of. But if you choose the right microcontroller, you may have hardware assistance. Here’s an ATmega640 is using it’s external memory interface to read the key matrix.
You may remember the Open Music Labs article about … Read the rest
Here’s an interesting article about reading data from shift registers using less than three pins. 74HC165 shift registers are a popular choice for adding inputs to a microcontroller. They have a parallel input register which can be read using the latch, then shifted into a microcontroller via the data and clock pins. For those counting, that’s the three pins … Read the rest
Hack a Day’s very own (and very prolific contributor) [Mike Szczys] put up a great tutorial on how to drive shift registers with an SPI interface.
[Mike]‘s earlier tutorial of the 595 shift register goes through the functions of a shift register pin by pin. In a 595, bits for each position in the register are sent over one … Read the rest
When it comes to Halloween costumes, [Michael] doesn’t like buying expensive and poorly made bits of cloth and fabric that resembles [random Disney character]. Last year, his son decided to be a robot for Halloween and although gray spray paint and dryer vent hose make a very good costume, that only goes so far. The robot needed lights, so [Michael] … Read the rest
[Kirill] wrote in to share his ATtiny hack, a 4x4x LED cube. The 64 LED display is a great choice to fully utilize the hardware he chose. It’s multiplexed by level. Each of the four levels are wired with common cathodes, switched by a 2N3904 transistor. The anodes are driven by two 595 shift registers, providing a total of … Read the rest
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