Category Archives: tech

Things that are technical in nature

Thing-a-day, Day 7: Finished driver and demo software

Posted on February 8, 2008 by mahto

I didn’t like how the thing was working out under parallel port control, so I bumped it over to an Arduino clone that I had. I’ll post directions next; there is a really simple way to do the circuit that … Continue reading →

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Thing-a-day, Day 5: Tri-color LED matrix

Posted on February 6, 2008 by mahto

I ordered a bunch of these nifty three-color LEDs for no particular reason, and they happened to show up today. I ran out and picked up a protoboard from Radioshack, and assembled them into a grid as seen here. This … Continue reading →

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Thing-a-day, Day 4: Mailbox Flag for my Inbox

Posted on February 5, 2008 by mahto

Ok, this is getting ridiculous. I’m going to have to find some easier projects lest I run out of energy. Anyway, tonight’s project is a physical flag that attaches to my computer and goes up when I have new mail. … Continue reading →

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Thing-a-day, Day 2: Light Chaser

Posted on February 2, 2008 by mahto

I’m not trying to start an optical theme here, but this is my project for day two. Its a simple light-chasing circuit. It uses the 555 timer project we made at our workshop as a clock to drive a counter … Continue reading →

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Thing-a-day, Day 1: Light Record

Posted on February 2, 2008 by mahto

So, I signed up to participate in thing-a-day (my posts there). The idea is that you complete one (smallish) project per day, and blog about it. Since I am pretty close to doing that anyway, I didn’t think it would … Continue reading →

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Poor Man’s Jacob’s Ladder

Posted on January 31, 2008 by mahto

Here is a simple Jacob’s Ladder design that uses the transformer from a florescent tube. I fed it with 25V by putting a 20V supply in series with a 5V supply (its too bad the 40V one is out of … Continue reading →

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More fun with 555 timers

Posted on January 23, 2008 by mahto

I converted the blinky circuit we are doing at the workshop into a little Theremin-esque analog synth. There is an on/off switch (the photoresistors dont turn ‘off’ enough to modulate the volume directly, unfortunately), a frequency doubler switch (adds more … Continue reading →

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