Candice saved this hideous old lamp from a bulldozer (literally) and for the last year and a bit we’ve had it hanging up in our basement for extra ambient lighting. The light was setup only to be turned off/on by pulling/placing the plug and that part’s so sketch that we rarely use the thing. So when it came time to …

While trying to print something on my MakerBot last night, I had an awesome fail where the heater barrel of the plastruder was ripped out. Upon continued reflection, I think this was the product of how I had the heater barrel interfaced with the insulator barrel and I think I know how to fix it without replacing parts. …

My very first PCB Well, with the priceless aid of my dear friend HappyThawts, I’ve managed to produce my first home-made Printed Circuit Board! How it went There were a bunch of weird issues that came up in making it and thus it’s not all that ideal, though I could hack it to work. The main challenge was that my …

Getting the Arduino Processor to function on a breadboard The next step in my HypnoOrb project is to figure out how to get the Arduino microprocessor (AKA ATMega168) that makes the whole thing work function with as little hardware as possible. Thanks to this awesome site, I found, I now know what I wasn’t doing right …

Using the toys I’ve been enjoying ever so much lately, I’ve managed to really nicely smooth out the programming in my Arduino for my RGB LED. It’s so awesome that I’m given it a name! Meet the HypnoOrb! At this point I only have the raw prototype, but I’m considering going ahead an making more of them. I have to work …

I’ve taken a few little steps forward towards my plans of building some cool stuff I’ve yet to announce. Yesterday I focused on testing out a tutorial I found on the Arduino website regarding driving multiple LEDs via chained shift registers. This setup is pretty cool as it only takes 3 pins off of the arduino …