One Way To Reuse Your Christmas Lights Post-holiday

December 25, 2011 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

[Andrew] shows us one way to reuse all those strands of Christmas lights you used for decoration this year. He had a friend that was helping with stage props for a local musical and ended up using his skills to build a lighted sign with some animation capabilities.

The original plan was to cut out letters for a sign by hand and ring them with white Christmas lights. It is possible to hand cut parts reasonably well, but [Andrew] knew he could get a much better result in less time using a CNC ShopBot to make them. He didn’t know the spacing for the lights so waited and drilled holes for them by hand. Each strand is connected to a relay, then driven by an Arduino. They turned out great as you can see in the clip after the break.

This is a timely hack, because it uses plain old while incandescent bulb strands which will be going on sale in the next few days. Usually you can get them on clearance for a dollar or less so plan ahead and hit the big box store early. Continue reading “One Way To Reuse Your Christmas Lights Post-holiday” →

Reduced-cost Braille Display For Use With Computers

December 24, 2011 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

Apparently a Braille computer display can cost several thousand dollars. That’s why [David Pankhurst] is working on a low-cost alternative. His offering is an open source version he calls the Audrey Braille Display.

The concept is quite good. This prototype has one line of six Braille characters. Each character is made of two sliding strips containing eight arrangements of bumps. These can make up any character when positioned correctly. Two motors do all the work, one engages a single strip to reposition it, the other moves the first motor to select which strip should move. This is explained quite well in [David’s] most recent post. Or you can get a preview of the physical build here.

The concept is sound, but the refresh rate must be very slow. We wonder if there’s a way to keep one motor stationary and use solenoids to engage a drive shaft on the individual slide rods? This way, every row could be changed at the same time, disengaging when the appropriate slot is reached.

This hardware is much needed until developing Braille technologies actually come to market.

[via Dangerous Prototypes]

Digital Synth For The Non-chiptune Inclined

December 24, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

Chiptunes are great, and we can’t imagine a world without the Mega Man 2 soundtrack, but sometimes we all like a more 70’s style synth. This is where the Roninsynth steps in. It’s an Arduino shield that puts the basic components of a wall of synth into your pocket.

Unlike the analog oscillators of yore, the Roninsynth is based on a single dsPIC33F chip. It has all the waveforms we would expect from its big brother – sine, saw, triangle, square, and noise – and a couple modulation options. What’s really interesting is the GUI the Roninsynth team put together. Instead of going with the knobs and buttons approach of the MIDIbox SID, the Roninsynth does everything with software. Think of it as a hardware-based softsynth.

Of course, there isn’t support for looping and phrases like what we saw yesterday, but there’s a ton of neat sounds that can be made and the capability for analog input. If you’ve ever wanted to sound like Radiohead, we can’t think of an easier way to build an Ondes Martenot.

Arduino Notebook Cover Makes It Easy To Tinker Anywhere

December 21, 2011 by Mike Nathan 27 Comments

arduino-notebook-cover

[Erv] was putting his holiday shopping list together and decided that instead of buying his friends something from the store, he would give them something a bit more useful. A former Electrical Engineer by trade, [Erv] typically prefers PIC microcontrollers, but he says that Arduinos are just so convenient to use for prototyping that he likes to always have one on hand.

He figured that his friends might enjoy having easy access to an Arduino as well, so he made them some slick ZapBook covers which enable them to have a prototyping platform on hand at all times. The cover is made from a PCB and includes a socket for an Arduino Pro Mini, along with a handful of built-in LEDs. He has extended a few other I/O pins from the Arduino as well, but he says that the small solder bridges connecting the LEDs can be removed in a pinch, freeing up 8 additional pins with ease. We are pretty keen on the idea of an easily portable prototyping setup, though it doesn’t hurt that [Erv] incorporated a Hack a Day skull with light up eyes into his design either!

We’re not sure if he’s planning on releasing the schematics for the board, but the notebooks would be pretty useful for any hackerspaces hosting beginner Arduino programming classes.

This CheerLights Display Has A Mind Of Its Own

December 19, 2011 by Mike Nathan 6 Comments

[Axel] wanted to participate in the CheerLights project this holiday season, but not one to always follow the rules he decided to make his display a bit different than most others out there. While the lights at his house are synchronized with the CheerLights project, he programmed his Cheeriobot with a little added personality.

Normally, Cheeriobot is happy to follow the rest of the world, changing its colors whenever the Twitter feed dictates. If things are a bit slow however, Cheeriobot gets impatient and will send a tweet to @CheerLights on its own to ensure that it doesn’t display a single color for too long.

[Axel] also created a mode that turns Cheeriobot into a bit of a contrarian. The display’s “Rebel Mode” causes it to change colors when someone tweets, but it selects a random color instead of following the rest of the pack.

It’s definitely an interesting twist on the CheerLights project, and we really like the fact that it keeps things moving if the stream of tweets ever slows down.

Head-mounted Light Display Takes Holiday Cheer On The Go

December 18, 2011 by Mike Nathan 12 Comments

hat-mounted-light-display

Most holiday light displays we see this time of year are stationary, or at least confined to somebody’s home. [Marco Guardigli] wanted to take his lights on the go, and thought that a light up winter hat would be perfect for showing off his holiday spirit.

In the winter he sports a sturdy wool felt hat, which was ideal for mounting LEDs. He picked up a basic LilyPad Arduino that uses a small LiPo battery as its power source, mounting it inside the hat with a bit of glue. He wired up a series of SMD LEDs around the perimeter of the hat which blend in quite well in the felt, leaving them nearly invisible to the naked eye when powered off. When he flips the LilyPad on however, there’s no missing the bright blue LEDs nor the music emanating from the tiny speaker he also mounted in the hat.

We think that [Marco’s] display is great, and if we were to build one, we would likely include a copious amount of red and green LEDs in ours. Do any of you take your Christmas light display on the go? We’d love to see them, so be sure to let us know in the comments.

Stick around to see a short video of [Marco’s] hat in action.

Continue reading “Head-mounted Light Display Takes Holiday Cheer On The Go” →

Controlling Your Christmas Lights Without Ever Getting Off The Couch

December 18, 2011 by Mike Nathan 11 Comments

remote-xmas-tree-light-switch

14 year-old [Connor Smith] has been busy this holiday season, thinking up ways to improve the lighting situation at home.

A few weeks ago he put together this 3-channel light controller to toggle his parents’ external lights, incorporating an Arduino for control. The Arduino was used to switch the channels on and off at specified intervals in order to create a simple light show on the house’s exterior. Not satisfied with just a few strings of blinky lights, he took his controller back inside for some additional modifications.

He had grown tired of crawling behind the Christmas tree to plug and unplug it every day, and decided to make things easier on himself. He stripped the IR receiver out of an old VCR and interfaced it with the Arduino in his light controller using the IRremote library. After taking a bit of time to decode the values for two infrequently used buttons on his TV remote, he had himself a Christmas tree light switch that he could activate from across the room.

Check out the short video below to see his remote switch in action.

Continue reading “Controlling Your Christmas Lights Without Ever Getting Off The Couch” →