Electronics-Lab.com Blog

thingm is just about to release BlinkM! -

Have you wanted an LED that can fade from deep red to bright purple? Flash like a police light? Turn on with the subtle fade of an incandescent bulb? Flicker like a candle? That’s BlinkM.

We’ve attached an ultra bright wide-angle RGB LED to a microcontroller. Using BlinkM Sequencer, our software that fuses a color picker with a drum machine, you program BlinkM to be any color, and blink and fade in virtually any pattern.
When you’ve programmed your BlinkM, you unplug it and pop it into your project. Apply 5 volts, and it does its thing, whether that’s glowing your favorite pinkish purple, or pulse like an old neon light. All for under $15.

BlinkM: The smart Led – [Link]

Wireless servo controller allows to control two servo motors remotely. It can be used for wireless camera tracking or simply in any robotics project. Receiver and transmitter uses a Laipac TRW-24G 2.4GHz wireless modules.

Any standard servos can be controlled with this device. RF controller controls with a very little latency, which is mainly depending on servos latency. Receiver uses PIC18LF2550 microcontroller with firmware written by using CCS PIC C compile. If put manual joystick control, this could be really powerful remote tracking system. [via]

PIC based wireless servo controller - [Link]

   jordi writes:I made an autopilot for my RC helicopter (Sabre, i bought it in Hobbie People USA) with acelerometers extracted from the NunChuck of nintendo Wii. Now i just a beta, i will change the Arduino Decimila for the mini version, you know, for weight reasons.Arduino just control the Axis X and Y of the helicopter, but i able to read signals coming from my RC, an order to arduino to move my helicopter, easy and smoothly in that axis (X & Y), i only have to control the rotation and altitude, the rotation is not a big deal because the heli is stabilized by build-in “Gyros”. I recycled the joystick axis of NunChuck, to adjust the servos with out touching the code. To se more pictures enter here http://www.flickr.com/photos/18257187@N08/

Arducopter: Arduino helicopter control - [Link]

Duxtech writes -

“10bulls decides to invent to world’s greatest battery powered, stepper motor driven, PIC controlled, CNC built mouse trap to rid himself of a pesky rodent. A much Better mouse trap – The little Bugger Noel (Rhymes with Vole) even gets a special treat in the end…”

PIC controlled, stepper motor driven mouse trap - [Link]

Neat adjustable voltage regulator, Rason writes -

Many amateurs have stopped by their local Radio Shack store and have noticed the famous LM317T adjustable voltage regulator. But, did you know that all voltage regulators are adjustable? Yes, any IC voltage regulator can be adjusted to a higher voltage than its fixed voltage by just adding a couple of resistors.

The adjustable voltage regulator - [Link]

 

The Voltaic “Generator” solar panel laptop bag can generate up to 14.7 watts, not bad! [via] + [via]

Photovoltaic solar bag – [Link]

 

Is it really economical to salvage parts for “free” that you can buy for pennies? It depends on your perspective, but for me there are two main factors:

•  Having a wider assortment of parts on hand, ready to grab when I’m in the middle of a project, than I would choose to order and stock up from a catalog

• A sense of responsibility to save perfectly reusable components from going into the landfill

So with the goal of getting through-hole parts that are easy to experiment with on a breadboard, let’s look at a few common items and what you can salvage from them….

Where to Salvage Electronic Parts - [Link]

This video showing how to make a vacuum tube by hand. The page and captions are in french, but it’s pretty interesting to watch. A small spot welder, some fairly basic glass working tools and a vacuum generator are required, but the technology is definitely within reach for the dedicated hardware hacker. [via]

[Video] How to make a vacuum tube - [Link]

 

If you want to measure temperatures of remote objects there is the only way to do this – get wireless. This particular project explains how to build simple wireless RF temperature transmitter which uses TXM-433 module and Atmega8 while receiver (SILRX-433) is connected to PC via RS232 port.

RF Temperature transmitter sends six bytes of data at fixed interval. Module measures three temperature values, light level at photocell and battery voltage. Small Visual Basic program collects data and displays it in a table view. As author (Don Carveth ) says – he can monitor temperature and the light went on of three compost heaps in the back yard by sitting in the room. But this is pretty universal device to use it for other purposes. Program code is written for GCC compiler. [via]

Wireless temperature transmitter - [Link]

This is really great project that can be built very easily. There are two ways on getting this board on tour table – order a kit, or build your own, as all necessary schematics are available.

The core of this project is a 5×7 LED display assembled by using distinct LEDs. This allows you to generate primitive graphics and other display effects. Board also has 3 programmable buttons, piezo sounder, and RS232 connector. Most valuable thing for PIC starters here is that there are quite a bunch of well documented projects with detailed explanations and animations. The whole project description with examples takes over 20 pages. Have fun. [via]

Great project for learning PIC microcontrollers - [Link]