The last couple of weeks I have been busy to put up a store for my kits and now I am glad to announce the one and only Tinker Store. The very first two kits are the Programmable LED and the Synchronizing Firefly. Along with the kits I did very detailed step-by-step instructions on how to assemble and solder them. Check them out on the HowTo page.
If you encounter any problems with the shop, then just drop me an email and I will fix it as soon as possible.
Today I received my copy of The Best of instructables, Volume 1. It’s a compilation of the best DIY projects found on the instructables site. Full of fantastic things, that you can do yourself. Flipping through the pages makes you want to go to your workbench and try them out.
And on page 111, tataaa, the Programmable LED.
I have to admit, I am a bit proud. Thanks instructables and Make for choosing my project.
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Lately I was playing with my dual color LED matrix from Sparkfun. It is a matrix of 8 by 8 dual color (red and green) LEDs that measures 5 cm by 5 cm. I just had some sprites flickering across the matrix as the magnifying glass of my “third hand” came in the way. I realized, that, if in the right distance, it will project the sprites on the ceiling. Although the projection is not very bright, it works, if the room is dark enough. Disco, here I come.
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Update 04. Dec. 2008: This article is replaced by the new howto.
This is a remake of the fireflies which I did a year ago. I was always fascinated by the emergence of patterns. One I like most is the synchronization of hundreds or thousands of fireflies. First they flash randomly but after some time and influencing each other, they flash in sync.
This circuit simulates fireflies with small microcontrollers. Note that every firefly acts completely autonomously, it is not a preprogrammed pattern. It is a self organizing system.
The NG version uses a small PCB (Printed Circuit Board) and a RGB-LED.
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This is for Mac OS X only, sorry folks.
I saw the funny command line interface to speech at Nerdlogger. Try this to play some tunes:
say -v Cellos "Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum he he he ho ho ho fa lah lah lah lah lah lah fa lah full hoo hoo hoo"
If you are brave enough, copy’n'paste the snippet below, replace USER and PASSWORD with your twitter account and it will read out loud the latest tweets of your friends.
curl -s -u user:password http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.xml | grep "<text>\|<screen_name>" | sed -e 's/ä/ä/' -e 's/ö/ö/' -e 's/ü/ü/' -e 's/<text>\(.*\)<\/text>/\1 from /' -e 's/<screen_name>\(.*\)<\/screen_name>/\1. . . . /' | say
Still a one liner 
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Some days ago I received my new PCBs. This time I tried Sparkfun’s BatchPCB. BatchPCB is a specialized service to enable even smallest orders. They collect some smallers orders and have them produced in a batch at Gold Phoenix. So the smallest order is a square inch.
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LCDs are often used in microcontroller projects. Most used are these green character displays with two or more rows to display menus, status or debug messages. With mass production of mobile phones, color LCDs get that cheap, that they can be used as replacement.
Some time ago I ordered a Nokia 6100 LCD including breakout board from Sparkfun. To test the display, I hacked a kind of small digital picture frame, that fetches pictures from Flickr. [Read more →]
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This is a new version of my Tengu clone. This time on a printed circuit board (PCB). I have them produced by Olimex and I am very pleased with the quality. The PCB worked on the first try and has some minor issues only.
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Today my first PCBs arrived. Hooray! For me, this is definitely like reaching the next level in DIY technologies.
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BlinkM is a smart LED, developed by Tod E. Kurt from ThingM. In a way it is a cousin of the Programmable LED. It is a microcontroller with an attached RGB LED. The idea is to implement PWM to control the color and brightness of the LED and put it in the controller. That means you have an abstraction level to make your programming easier. You can simply order “fade to red” or “fade to blue”.
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