If you want to play some retro arcade games, you will install the amazing MAME and run your favorite ROM. One of my best-of-all-times is Bomb Jack.
But you have to play it with the keyboard. Bah!
Or an USB game pad. Better, but still — bah!
Nothing compares to real arcade controls. And with a bit of tinkering, you can get a tiny step closer to the real gaming experience.
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Jonathan asked me, if I would like to do a project with him on Braitenberg vehicles. After some research and reading the first couple of chapters in Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology, I was hooked in. Here is the first version of a Braitenberg vehicle, powered with two RC-Servos and an Arduino as its brain.
Best of all, it needs no soldering, drilling or hot glue. And if you’ve played already with Arduinos, there is a good chance, that you have already most of the needed parts at home..
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Jonathan bought a 64pixels kit and modded it into a green version. The three solar cells, that he uses are rated with: 2.7 volts (open circuit) @ 15mA (short circuit). He writes, it works well in bright sun light. His desktop lamp shines with 60 Watts and that seems to work as well.
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In this post I will try to show, why it’s a good idea to use a current limiting resistor for an LED. And when it’s save to drive the LED without any resistor.
If you read about LEDs, you will notice that everyone tells you, that you need a current limiting resistor. But mostly they do not tell you why.
If you look at a datasheet of an LED, you will notice that graphs shown are not linear. An LED is a diode, a semiconductor and behaves differently compared to a resistor.
If you apply a specific voltage to a resistor, you can compute the resulting current with:
I = V / R Example: I = 5 Volt / 100 Ohm = 50 mA
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I love Blinkenlights. And all kinds of other blinking and flashing LED stuff. I think, it’s already a form of addiction. When I ran across an LED matrix with square pixels, I thought it would be cool to build a small animated display with it. To keep things simple, the display is attached directly to the microcontroller the “Evil-Mad-Scientist-way”.
The display performs really well, the pixels are bright and the batteries last for over two weeks running non-stop. The microcontroller has 2 k flash RAM. That’s enough for three simple animations and a couple of messages.
If you want to see the guts, then follow me to the 64pixels howto.
And grab a 64pixels kit from the Tinker Store, if you want to build your very own.
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It took a bit longer than I expected to get the new kits on the blog shop. But hey, I’m a software developer, we never deliver on time 
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Finally all parts arrived and all pictures are taken. There are two new howtos with detailed step-by-step instructions and schematics, Tiny25 header and Tiny2313 header. And get a kit in the shop if you like.
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These tiny controller boards are build to provide a quick start for projects with 8 and 20 pin AVR microcontrollers, e.g. ATtiny13, ATtiny45, ATtiny85 and ATtiny2313. They don’t include any fancy stuff, they are just as simple as possible.
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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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