Prototyping circuit designs are usually needed even after a circuit design has been developed in conjunction with a circuit simulator. Bruce Heran built this Vacuum Tube Prototyping Design Board to allow to test designs quickly and easily.

"I have frequently found that the models do not agree with the final build. Some are right on, but most are off enough to turn a good idea into a waste of time. Thus the need to quickly prototype designs. Now I could have created this board with many additional features - speakers, output transformers, LEDs… But what I needed was a simple way to test single stage tube circuits. So for simplicity I wired the tube pins together (pin 1 to pin 1 and so on). The leads from the pins are brought out to terminals on a “Euro” style terminal strip. I included several other “Euro” strips, a pair of RCA jacks, a 100 k-ohm variable resistor and solderless prototype breadboard. This solderless breadboard is available in various sizes from several sources."

A simple game is always much more fun when it is spiced up with some cool electronics. The wooden tilt maze game has been around for a long time. This Marble Maze that is Remote Controlled using an Accelerometer kicks up the original game by allowing the player to interact with the game using a controller that moves the real game according to user movements. Have a look at the project build details for all of the issues that were found during the construction.

Via: Trossen Robotics

"To control the servos I used a BOE development board with a BS2 microcontroller from Parallax along with a Memsic 2125 dual-axis accelerometer as the controller. The addition of the maze transforms this project from a electro-mechanical thing-a-ma-jig to an exciting hands-on game. For this project I choose to build a maze myself using balsa wood. This would allow me complete control of the maze difficulty and dimensions and also ensures the weight is kept to a minimum. I also found wooden balls to serve as the "marbles" for the maze. It just so happens that these balls and the balsa wood walls make a fun "thunk" noise whenever they collide."

PyroElectro has built an interesting motor Optical Motor Encoder system that allows a sled to move back and forth using optical feedback to know where the sled is. A L298 DC Motor Controller is used to drive the simple DC motor that is used to precisely position the sled. You may remember this CD-ROM Read Head Actuator Head Scratcher article from earlier in the year where I was wondering how a simple DC motor could be used to precisely position a CD-ROM read write head.

"The goal of this tutorial is to create a way to know where the ’stage’ is, accurate to about 1/4” using optical encoding. The stage is controlled via a 12v motor so we will use an L298 motor controller for controlling the motor via a 18F4520 PIC. The PIC will use hardware PWM generators to output the correct frequency & duty cycle. The PIC will also take the analog input from the IR detector diode to keep track of how far the stage has moved via an internal analog to digital converter (ADC)."

There are lots of Nerd Kits project examples available. Josh Davis used the LED Array Sign project and added a cool option for the sign to display voice messages left with the help of a Google voice to text service. Josh has documented the project here and has made the code available.

Via: Make

"On the software side of things, there are two python scripts that make everything happen.  The one called voice2led.py is a script that reads a text file and prints whatever is in it to the sign. The other python script, named checkvoicemail.py is where all the cool stuff happens.  Using the PyGoogleVoice module of python, this script checks my Google Voice account for voicemails."

Have a look at this beautiful Mini Acrylic Tesla Coil Project that our friend Daniel Eindhoven from Megavolts.nl put together. The build detail on this project might even rival the MV CoilMaster Mark1 Coil Gun!

"A small TeslaCoil fully made of acrylic plastic. The cool thing about this is that every part is transparent. This coil is driven by the power supply of my large DC Teslacoil. Total height 44cm, max output voltage +- 380.000 Volts (57cm arc length)."

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One way to learn lots about a protocol is by implementing a bit banged version. Openschemes shares with us his experimentation with the Arduino and the FT232 chip.

"We’ve been considering the synchronous bit bang mode of the FT232R for an upcoming project. The first steps towards something like this are always to build up a little debug board or test bench that can be used for debug and tweaking while the real boards are in fab. Luckily for us, the Arduino board contains an FT232R ripe for the hacking. For most users, all their dreams are fufilled by avrdude-jtag, which will allow them to reprogram the bootloader on the Arduino Atmega. As you may know, four of the FT232R’s GPIO pins are brought out to an unpopulated header on the Arduino board. The first (and easiest) job is to solder in a set of header pins for future connections."

PJMonty from SoCalHalloween sure knows how to rig up some great animatronics! The bird and talking skull are funny and spooky at the same time! This project was entered in the Halloween Project Contest, which by the way there is still time to enter.

Via: HG Forum

"The electronics consist of two custom circuit boards I designed. The bottom one (most of which is obscured) contains the micro-controller and memory. It talks to the host PC via a serial port and has animation moves streamed to it on the fly. The top board has another micro-controller and is responsible for handling the time critical work of controlling the actual RC servos. It also has some interface circuitry on it for things like the LCD. Partially visible on the right is the power supply which powers both the circuitry and the servos."

SoCalHalloween - "Small Candy" from SoCalHalloween on Vimeo.