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Here is a cool Drumming Robot that can carry a tune. There is a long list of improvements that are slated to be added including voice control! We will have to keep our eyes on this one to stay on top of the build progress. “Robot Info
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If you have had your computer fall asleep at the worst possible time before you know how frustrating it can be. Todd Harrison from Toddfun.com has come up with a solution. He built a simple battery operated Keyboard Keep Alive Circuit that he stuffed in a cute candy tin shaped like a Wiimote. This circuit closes a relay contact every 25 seconds. Next he connected an interface jack to his keyboard to that the relay can “press” a key when the relay closes. He selected an arrow key but a shift key or something like that would have worked just as well. This circuit would be great to hide inside a keyboard and have it press the caps lock key every 5 or 10 minutes, that would be enough to drive someone mad! If you are looking to solve the same issue there is a device called the mouse jiggler that would do the trick, it is a USB device that slowly (or violently) jiggles the mouse, there is also a neat way to make a DIY jiggler using an optical mouse and a watch.
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This Autopilot for Aerial Photography slide show that was done for Barcamp Antwerp looks really interesting. “The autopilot has a built in mixer. On first use you need to tell the autopilot what the channel and mixer arrangement of your transmitter/airplane combination is. To put the autopilot in calibration mode, switch on the transmitter, put all sticks in the center and switch channel 6 to “ON”. Now turn on the airplane. View more presentations from kodel.
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This Coffee Can Clock is a nice piece of work, there is a good build log and tons of details here at the Wise time with Arduino blog. “The electronics is based on Wiseduino (Arduino clone with DS1307 real time clock on board), with a LED matrix shield sitting on top. The shield is built with 74HC595 shift registers that drive two bi-color (red, green, and orange by subtraction) 8×8 LED matrices.”
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If you live in a cold climate freezing pipes is a common concern. A frozen pipe is more than an inconvenience since most pipes are copper and the expanding ice can easily burst the pipe. So even after the pipe is thawed out you have a big job ahead since you now need to repair your plumbing. Viktor from Karosium has come up with a cost effective solution to dealing with the issue. His Microcontroller Temperature Controlled Pipe Heating System turns on an old computer power supply which powers some heat tape only when the pipe needs to be warmed up. Most people who run heat tape will turn it on when it gets cold and let it run all winter, this solution will certainly save lots of electricity. “I designed a controller from what I had on hand. An old ATX PSU and an ATMega8(overkill). The AtMega is powered by the standby voltage of the PSU (5VSB). PSON is connected to PORTB.0 so the AtMega can switch the ATX PSU ON or OFF depending on temperature. (The PSU turns on when PSON is pulled low). The heating cables are hooked up to a 4pin Molex Connector. The DS1621 was actually a thermostat IC and I was considering using it in a standalone configuration but sadly that can’t be done as the thermostat functionality doesn’t start until a “Start Convert” command is sent to the chip through I2c. That meant a microcontroller was mandatory, so instead of relying on the internal functionality of the chip I just implemented the thermostat function in code. This also meant I only had to run 4 wires from the temp probe instead of 5, and I had 4 wire telephone cable lying around.”
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Daniel Eindhoven has designed an interesting new Tesla Coil, this Double Resonance Solid State TeslaCoil has a new coil design which has the capacitor bank integrated into the primary coil. The new coil configuration has been dubbed the Eindhoven Primary. “A new composition of the primary coil for a Double Resonance Solid State TeslaCoil (DRSSTC). It is a combination of wire and capacitors. By making the coil like this you get rid of all the parasitic inductions of the capacitor bank, it reduces wire length and saves a lot of space. Calculating the resonance frequency also becomes much easier.”
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Chris Savage from Savage Circuits goes over the basics of Rotary Encoder and Shift Registers in the second of his new video series called Savage Circuits TV. You can see all three videos here. If you are wondering why there is lots of Parallax gear used in the videos, that is because Chris works for Parallax. To read more about Rotary Encoders have a look at the Wikipedia page that also have a good example of Gray Code. To read more about Shift Registers have a look at the All About Circuits page. “An incremental rotary encoder, also known as a quadrature encoder or a relative rotary encoder, has two outputs called quadrature outputs. They can be either mechanical or optical. In the optical type there are two gray coded tracks, while the mechanical type has two contacts that are actuated by cams on the rotating shaft. The mechanical type requires debouncing and is typically used as digital potentiometers on equipment including consumer devices. Most modern home and car stereos use mechanical rotary encoders for volume. Due to the fact the mechanical switches require debouncing, the mechanical type are limited in the rotational speeds they can handle. The incremental rotary encoder is the most widely used of all rotary encoders due to its low cost: only two sensors are required.”
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