[Shadow] sent in his ambient LED strip project. He picked up a ton of RGB (Red/Green/Blue) LEDs off of eBay and built several LED strips. To get up and running, he used an LED-wiz controller. With the off the shelf controller, this is a pretty easy project, and the ambient lighting effect looks great. Check out the video after the break or on the project page.
In 2006, we posted about [rafkep]’s similar ambient lighting project.
[dcb] posted about his work on the mpgduino mpguino. The project uses an arduino with a LCD display to monitor fuel consumption based on vehicle speed and the pulses of the fuel injectors being fired. It’s definitely an interesting project given current fuel costs and the passive nature of the project. You can easily tap the wires needed for the monitor and remove it without voiding your warranty (not that we really care).
It’s been a while since we’d seen any new SMS/GSM/serial remote interface projects. [Emanuele] sent in his version of a project to do just that. It uses a PIC16F84 and will send or receive commands. A pair of relays provide options for controlling whatever you want to hook it up to. You’ll need a login, but he’s released the full schematics and firmware. He developed this to find uses for old phones, but an alternative is to pick up a cheap calling card cell and dedicate it to a project like this. This seems like a great way to add an out of band alarm system to your house/car/robotic minion.
[Jerome] sent in this awesome Muffin maker (yes, muffins) that [Carl Boucher] and [Dominic Dussault] built for [Carl]’s final project in his Industrial Electrical Technician program. No real technical details, just some tasty inspiration. If you prefer cookies, you might want to check out fabbing with Nutella.
[Marcus] sent in his work on making ECGs. His first one was inspired by [Jason]’s. Believe it or not, you can build this thing for under $5. After getting it semi-functional, he decided to pick up a cheap one and mod it for PC input via the sound card. (There are plenty of sound card oscilloscope projects that will work for this.) Remember kids, don’t go sticking electrodes on anyone unless you know what you’re doing: correctly placed electrical shocks (even low power ones) can be deadly.
[Kieth] picked up an Infocus projector only to find that it needed some repair. The polarizer on the blue light path was toast. When he parted out an Optoma projector he scored a polarizer that was just about right for the repair. It’s a good read even if you don’t have a projector in pieces at the moment. He ended up bending the mounting bracket a bit to hold the filter and got his projector fully up and running again.
Most people make LEDs light up for their first microcontroller project. [Alex] built a “large scale dot matrix printer.” This beast is a PIC controlled ground graffiti machine. As it rolls across the ground it deposits strategically located bits of spray paint. Rather than use actual spray paint, he opted for a set of solenoid controlled nozzles that shoot the paint downward.
