Big Time Character LCD Clock

While the SSD1306 OLED has somewhat become the go-to display for up-to-date projects, the good old character displays with their Hitachi HD44780 controller don’t seem to be disappearing just yet either. And why would they, especially if you want to show just text, having a built-in font has certainly its perk compared to worrying about integrating your own characters — which you can still do on top as well. Or perhaps you can combine both worlds, which is what [oldmaninSC] did with his digital clock that takes an entire 16×2 LCD to show each single digit.

The whole clock uses 16 individual, upright rotated 16×2 LCDs that are arranged in two rows of eight LCDs each, turning the entire construct sort of into a giant 8×2 display itself. For some additional information such as the date, there’s also a smaller font available that uses only half the height, allowing up to four total rows of information. To communicate with each LCD via I2C, two TCA9548A I2C multiplexers are connected to an Arduino, along with an RTC to keep track of the time and date itself.

As the TCA9548A has three pins dedicated to define its own address, the entire clock could be scaled up to a total of 64 LCDs — so how about a 16×4 display made out of 16×4 displays? Sure, adding smooth scrolling might become a bit tricky at some point, but imagine playing Tetris on that one!

A Tiny LED Matrix Is Better With Friends

When we last heard from [lixielabs] he was building Nixie tube replacements out of etched acrylic and LEDs. Well he’s moved forward a few decades to bring us the Pixie, a chainable, addressable backpack for tiny LED matrix displays.

Each Pixie module is designed to host two gorgeous little Lite-On LTP-305G/HR 5×7 LED dot matrix displays, which we suspect have been impulse purchases in many a shopping cart. Along with the displays there is a small matrix controller and an ATTINY45 to expose a friendly electrical interface. Each module is designed to be mounted edge to edge and daisy chained out to 12 or more (with two displays each) for a flexible display any size you need. But to address the entire array only two control pins are required (data and clock).

[lixielabs] has done the legwork to make using those pins as easy as possible. He is careful to point out the importance of a good SDK and provides handy Arduino libraries for common microcontrollers and a reference implementation for the Raspberry Pi that should be easy to crib from to support new platforms. To go with that library support is superb documentation in the form of a datasheet (complete with dimensions and schematic!) and well stocked GitHub repo with examples and more.

To get a sense of their graphical capabilities, check out a video of 6 Pixie’s acting as a VU meter after the break. The Pixie looks like what you get when a hacker gets frustrated at reinventing LED dot matrix control for every project and decided to solve it once and for all. The design is clean, well documented, and extremely functional. We’re excited to see what comes next! Continue reading “A Tiny LED Matrix Is Better With Friends”

V12 Corvette Gets Electronic Gauge Mod

[Wesley Kagan] is building a Corvette with a V12 engine swap. Much of the driveline will be entirely replaced, which means the components to drive the mechanical speedometer and tachometer will no longer be present in the final car. Instead, [Wesley] came up with his own electronic gauge conversion to do the job.

It’s a build that respects the original aesthetic of the car, reusing the original gauges but driving them differently. In place of the original mechanical drives from the transmission and distributor respectively, the speedometer and tach instead get servos installed in the back with a 3D printed gear train. The odometer gets its own continuous rotation servo, too. An Arduino Nano is used to drive the servos, using data from a GPS module and the car’s ignition system.

Files are available for anyone wishing to 3D print parts to modify their own gauges. We can’t wait to see how the gauges look when finally installed. We can imagine some teething problems with slew rate or update speed, but we’re sure it’s nothing [Wesley] can’t engineer out with a few revisions. Custom gauges are something we’ve seen a few times around these parts; this digital setup is particularly useful for engine data. Video after the break.

Continue reading “V12 Corvette Gets Electronic Gauge Mod”

Automatic Sanitizer For Your Cupholder

Why is it so hard to remember to use hand sanitizer between going into the store and driving back home? We tried hanging a bottle off the windshield wiper stalk, but it gets in the way and is hard to use and share with passengers. The ideal thing would be to have a hands-free pump in the car that reminds you to use it.

You don’t have to wire this to the ignition or anything — all you have to do is power it with the cigarette lighter (or straight-up outlet, if you’re lucky). Every time you turn the key, this pump powers up and performs a little song to remind you to use it. Electronically speaking, it couldn’t be simpler — an Arduino UNO reads your hand from the distance sensor and activates a servo that dispenses three short pumps of isopropyl alcohol. Check it out in action after the break.

Want a hands-free solution for the house? Just build something you can step on.

Continue reading “Automatic Sanitizer For Your Cupholder”

Gigantic Working Arduino Uses 1/4″ Cables

What is it about larger-than-life versions of things that makes them so awesome? We’re not sure exactly, but this giant working Arduino definitely has the ‘it’ factor, whatever that may be. It’s twelve times the size of a regular Uno and has a Nano embedded in the back of it. To give you an idea of the scale, the reset button is an arcade button.

The Arduino Giga’s PCB is made of 3/4″ plywood, and the giant components represent a week and a half of 3D printing. The lettering and pin numbers are all carved on a CNC and filled in with what appears to be caulk. They didn’t get carved out deeply enough the first time around, but [byte sized] came up with a clever way to perfectly re-register the plywood so it carved in exactly the same places.

Although we love everything about this build, our favorite part has to be the way that [byte sized] made the female headers work. Each one has a 1/4″ audio jack embedded inside of it (a task which required a special 3D printed tool), so patch cables are the new jumper cables. [byte sized] put it to the test with some addressable RGB LEDs on his Christmas tree, which you can see in the build video after the break.

You can buy one of those giant working 555 timer kits, but why not just make one yourself?

Continue reading “Gigantic Working Arduino Uses 1/4″ Cables”

Easy Frequency Counter Looks Good, Reads To 6.5 MHz

We were struck by how attractive [mircemk’s] Arduino-based frequency counter looks. It also is a reasonably simple build. It can count up to 6.5 MHz which isn’t that much, but there’s a lot you can do even with that limitation.

The LED display is decidedly retro. Inside a very modern Arduino Nano does most of the work. There is a simple shaping circuit to improve the response to irregular-shaped input waveforms. We’d have probably used a single op-amp as a zero-crossing detector. Admittedly, that’s a bit more complex, but not much more and it should give better results.

Continue reading “Easy Frequency Counter Looks Good, Reads To 6.5 MHz”

Mind-Controlled Beer Pong Gets Easier As You Drink

Wouldn’t it be nice if beer pong could somehow get easier the more you drink? You know, so you can drink more? [Ty Palowski] has made it so with automated, mind-controlled beer pong.

[Ty] started by making a beer pong table that moves the cups back and forth at both ends. An Arduino Nano controls a stepper that controls a slider, and the cups move with the slider through the magic of magnets. The mind control part came cheaper than you might think. Back in 2009, Mattel released a game called Mind Flex that involves an EEG headset and using brain waves to guide a foam ball on a stream of air through a little obstacle course. These headsets are available for about $12 on ebay, or at least they were before this post went up.

[Ty] cracked open the headset added an HC-06 Bluetooth module to talk to the Arduino. It’s using a program called Brainwave OSC to get the raw data from the headset and break it into levels of concentration and relaxation. The Arduino program monitors the attention levels, and when a certain threshold of focus is reached, it moves the cups back and forth at a predetermined speed ranging from 1 to an impossible-looking 10. Check out the two videos after the break. The first one covers the making of the the automatic beer pong part, and the second is where [Ty] adds mind control.

We’ve seen a different headset — the hacker-friendly NeuroSky Mindwave — pop up a few times. Here’s one that’s been hacked to induce lucid dreaming.

Continue reading “Mind-Controlled Beer Pong Gets Easier As You Drink”