Word Clock: Building the Frame

I’ve started building a word clock. For the most part, I’m copying this one, but I’m hoping to include an improvement or two. Since the electronics piece is pretty straightforward, I began by building the frame the lights for each word from bleeding into the next. With the frame fully assembled, it was time to…

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Laser Switch Completed

I have finished my laser switch project (all related posts here). The system works as follows: I have a laser pointer hacked into a duck hunt gun. When I pull the trigger on the gun, the laser points out from the barrel of the gun. On the wall, I have four picture frames, each with…

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Office Lights Installed

Last year I was finishing part of my basement to build a new office for myself. A friend recommended I utilize some of the wasted space behind one of the walls by adding some built-in shelves. I grew up working in my father’s cabinet shop, I couldn’t just build simple flat shelves. Instead I came up…

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Spectrum Analyzer

I’ve started work on a spectrum analyzer built around the MSGEQ7. A spectrum analyzer measures the magnitude of an input signal versus frequency. – Wikipedia In this case the MSGEQ7 will be measuring an audio signal, cutting it up into 7 frequency bands (lows/mids/highs/etc.). The data will be read by an arduino and displayed on a series…

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Hacking a Swing

The newest member of my family has become quite attached to swinging. The problem was that the swing was battery powered. I was reasonably surprised at how long the batteries lasted–nearly a month of every day use. Still, when they finally expired, I was reluctant to make another purchase. So instead, I embarked on a project…

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Office Lights

How many projects is it okay to start without finishing at least one? It seems I’m determined to find out. I’m currently in the process of finishing a room in my basement which will become my new office/hackerspace. Naturally, I incorporated copious amounts of LEDs into the design. I picked up a couple of reels…

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TLC5940 library for chipKIT

As part of our keyboard project, a friend and I set out to develop a library for the chipKIT to communicate with the TLC5940 LED Driver. The chipKIT, if you’re not familiar, is a 32-bit arduino clone that runs on the PIC32MX family of processors. While Digilent, the company behind the chipKIT, has done a great…

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Catching Up

A lot has happened on the Keyboard project since I last posted. Let’s get you up to speed. After etching the TLC boards in the last post, we drilled holes for the components and began mounting them. It quickly became apparent that the boards were of less quality than they seemed. The traces were very…

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