Drilling precise grids without a CNC machine can be tough to pull off. [Ookseer] has come up with a nifty method for dilling aligned holes with a drill press. He uses a right-angle jig on a Dremel drill press with stacks of business cards as spacers. The same number of cards is added between the substrate and the jig to space each new hole evenly. This method comes in handy when drilling grids in an enclosure for speakers, temperature sensors, or for an aesthetically pleasing design.
[John Peterson] showed us his Puzzlemation, animated tile puzzle at Maker Faire. It was originally designed for the Microchip 16-bit Embedded Control Design Contest. The puzzle is made from multiple modules each with an 8×8 LED grid. The tiles are battery powered and each one has PIC24FJ64GA004 microcontroller. They sit on a tray with flat copper strips as a serial bus. The tray controller broadcasts the animation to the tiles. Each tile waits for its unique identifier and saves that portion of the animation. The tiles don’t actually know what order they’re in so once the animation is in motion you can figure out their proper order; rearranging them so the animation is correct. We’ve got a video of it in action after the break.
