Led on

Throwing Down an LED where the Potential is great

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:15:14 +0000

I saw this post on Instructables where someone asked how they could add an LED on to a high-voltage source. And for reasons I can’t explain, I just felt compelled to take a crack at it…

On the surface it’s a pretty boring/simple question. But on the other, as much as I’ve answered this question for myself several times, I thought I’d provide my approach for the world to judge. Supposedly I’ve learned how to do this (and a lot more) in school, but it seems to me like the basics like this are worthy of most of the attention.

World, meet the HypnoOrb

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:44:35 +0000

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 out pricing and smooth of some aspects of the design. If you’re interested in getting one, please contact me or post a message here - the more interest I see on this thing, the faster I’ll work at finding an inexpensive means of producing them.

Goofin' Around with 7-Segment Displays & my Arduino

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:09:09 +0000

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 (excluding power, which could be easily driven separately). I used the tutorial here to get the potentiometer going.

Arduino/Freeduino Play

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:24:18 +0000

Here’s a video I decided to toss up on YouTube just showing some of the results of some of the goofing around I’ve been doing with my Arduino board (it’s actually a Freeduino).

I had a lot of trouble getting the board to work at first, but once I ran it through an ultrasonic cleaner it seemed to smooth out a lot. Though, some times it still has a hard time programming, in which case I can just apply pressure to the FTDI chip and then it’ll program. I’ve tried re-soldering the pins on the FTDI, but that didn’t entirely resolve the issue enough. Not to worry though, it consistently works perfectly enough for me.