Parallax Christmas Light Show

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btUh–1xbls]

[iboucher] wanted to do some crazy Christmas light choreography.  Finding the cost of the off the shelf system to be way too much, he set out to build his own. After a visit to eBay to pick up some cheap 1 amp relays, he was ready to get started.  Using a Basic Stamp2 that he had laying around, he was able to put together a fairly complete 16 port system.  Great job [iboucher]

[via Hacked Gadgets]

A Welcome Train For The Holidays

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnFyI0a-55s]

[Eric] was charged with the task of setting up the train to welcome people on the porch.  The train had been in the family for a long time, so he didn’t want to modify the train itself. Luckily, it has an IR port. He recorded the IR signal from the remote and used a home made pressure sensor to signal the train to start.

A ShiftBrite Christmas

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PVC5jABuB8]

[Garrett] took 30 of his ShiftBrite modules and mounted them to his front fence for Christmas. The ShiftBrite is a serially addressable high output RGB LED. The individual modules are quite adept at applications like this where you’re stringing multiple lights together. They have identical buses on either side, specifically for daisychaining. The installation above looks great.

Parts: 1-Wire Temperature Sensor (DS1822)

1wire

Download: buspirate.v0d.zip

Dallas/Maxim’s 1-Wire protocol is the most requested addition to the Bus Pirate.  We finally got some 1-Wire parts, and today we’ll demonstrate the DS1822 1-Wire digital thermometer. Grab the datasheet (PDF) and follow along.

This post is accompanied by release v.0d of the Bus Pirate firmware for hardware version 0. This includes the new 1-Wire protocol library, more configuration options, and other improvements.

Continue reading “Parts: 1-Wire Temperature Sensor (DS1822)”

Nintendo Keyless Entry

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUm7daf36Mk]

The Nintendo keyless entry system will vigilantly guard your door from intruders. Enter the right code and you get access, enter the wrong code and it will deny you and take your picture. [action_owl] did a fantastic job on this lock, using mainly recycled parts like an old CDRom and an Arduino. It works both with or without the computer. If you choose not to use the computer, you don’t get pictures of the people who entered the code wrong.

We like this project, but we feel it needs to be pointed out that this lock is pretty useless. Everyone already knows the code to get in is UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A.

PS2 Controller Thermometer

ps2-temp

Finding themselves in need of a thermometer that could communicate with the computer, The Cheap Vegetable Gardener resorted to a bit of hacking. They created this PS2 controller thermometer by attaching some thermistors to the analog stick inputs. Each PS2 controller could collect data from up to four thermistors.  There is an auto shutoff feature built into the controller that shuts off the analog signal after a period of non use. To overcome this, they simply taped the L2 button down.

[thanks Shawn]