I wrote about using a ping ball as an LED diffuser in this previous article. One major issue with this idea was that the LED has a focused light that creates a bright spot on the ball opposite where the LED is. You can see problem in the picture here.
There were a lot of […]

Received my WiiChuck Adaptors today. Now I just need to buy a WiiChuck and figure out a neat project for an Arduino. I learned about the adaptor from this Make blog article.
The WiiChuck is an accessory attachment to the Nintendo Wii remote. This accessory has 3-axis accelerometers, a 2-axis joystick (thumb) and two […]

S1axter reports that Geeksinside.com is running a comment contest. Just leave a comment on a post or article and get entered to win a $25 gift certificate to SparkFun Electronics! This contest is open to anyone through February 29th, 2008.
Check out the contest rules: http://geeksinside.com/rules.php

Turns out that a Ping Pong ball makes a reasonable LED diffuser. Just drill a hole and insert the LED. Easy micro Locnar! With an RBG LED this could make a nice system indicator. Maybe build a strip of these indicators to make several status indicators. Each server gets a mini orb to show […]

uCHobby’s first electronics kit is a handy breadboard power supply. The power supply design is simple but just what I needed for my electronics projects. I have seen several similar power supply boards but none had all the features I wanted. This design was also a good first project to help me learn about […]

In this article Juan Mateos creates a PIC version of the Tengu companion. Tengu was originally developed by Crispin Jones as a USB controlled LED matrix that made faces and lip synced to music or other sounds it hears with a built in microphone. Juan created a PIC microchip version as an exercise to […]

In this article I describe the simple setup and explain the code to drive analog meters using PWM outputs from an Arduino and the LCD Smartie program. I also replace the meter face to show the proper scale. Replacing the meter scale is very easy to do with most meters and can really add some […]

A uCHobby reader informed us of a design contest Renesas is running with prizes of $15,000 in cash. Renesas provides a free $80 evaluation board to work with as part of the contest so no one actually looses. Thanks to Daniel Johnson for passing the news.
The theme of the contest is applications for their new […]

Daniel Joliffe has been updating the Freeduino site. One of the exciting changes is that he has free advertising for sites devoted to DIY and open hardware. I am honored to be one of the sites given this opportunity.
Featured sites include the main Arduino site, Libelium, Modern Device Company, NKC Electronics, PHAndeson, RepRap, The Shoppe […]

An adjustable current sink is useful for testing power supplies and figuring out how much current an LED might need. I built up this circuit to test a new power supply I was working on and revived it after seeing a couple of related post at Keith’s Electronics Blog. He wants to build a handy […]