Peggy version 2.0

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life

Today we’re releasing an update to our “Peggy” open-source LED Pegboard project. Peggy version 2 has been redesigned from the ground up. And it looks… almost exactly the same. The changes under the hood are substantial, though, and we think that it’s a big improvement in many ways.

First and foremost, Peggy 2.0 still does the same darn thing: it provides efficient power to a 25 x 25 array of LED locations. Peggy is designed to take some of the sting, complexity, and mess out of playing with LEDs. It’s a versatile and powerful light-emitting pegboard that lets you efficiently drive hundreds of LEDs in whatever configuration you like, without so much as calculating a single load resistor. You can install anywhere from one to 625 LEDs, and Peggy will light them up for you.

bluepink   Greenblue   BrightWhite LEDs   Resist3

 

Peggy can optionally be reprogrammed to do much more, of course. The biggest change is that the Peggy 2.0 hardware now supports simple animation capability with individually addressable LED locations. Besides the microcontroller, there are now four support chips that help to drive the rows and columns of the display. Now, we’re not talking live video feeds or long movies here (speed and memory considerations will spoil that party), but you might be surprised how much you can do with a little AVR microcontroller.

The second improvement has to do with the programming interfaces. As before, Peggy supports programming through a regular AVR ISP (in-system programming) connection, such as the USBtinyISP. However Peggy 2.0 is now also Arduino compatible: it supports programming through a USB-TTL cable, using the popular Arduino software environment. (This is the same programming arrangement that you’ll find on some of the popular Arduino-compatible boards such as the Boarduino and Bare Bones Boards.)
Continue reading Peggy version 2.0 →

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Maker Faire Update

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IMG_6034

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We’re having a great time at Maker Faire! We’ve been pretty darned swamped, but did have a little time to get a few pictures. Some of them are in my flickr set, like the one above from early this morning at our display area. We were lucky to have John Maushammer, the maker of the Pong Watch, hang out with us.

One highlight of the day was when the editor of Make: Japan dropped by and brought us a copy with the CandyFab article in it! We also got copies of the brand new Maker’s notebook to play with. There are lots of Maker Faire pictures up on flickr now– check ’em out!.

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Headin’ to Maker Faire!

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The lab staff is busy boxing stuff up for Maker Faire this week, so our publishing schedule will be rather arrhythmic this week as it has historically been during such things. We have a huge backlog of new projects to talk about, and we’ll get a chance when things calm down a bit. We’ll also write up a few reports from the show floor this year.

Coming to Maker Faire? Find us at the southeast corner of the Expo Hall. We look forward to seeing you!

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Electronic Phyllotaxis

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Electronic phyllotaxis

Many electronic components are available on spools that can be used by machines for counting them out or placing them on boards. These capacitors were once on such a spool, but since we didn’t need quite enough for a full spool, they were counted out, rolled up and shipped out to us. They exhibit the opposite spirals of phyllotaxis that are probably most familiar from the face of a sunflower. Who knew capacitors could be so lovely?

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Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories and CandyFab at MakerFaire!

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Attention SF Bay Area folks: Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories and CandyFab are coming to Maker Faire! Space-time coordinates: San Mateo, CA, May 3-4, 2008.

We’ll be there in force with (amongst other things) a tabletop BristleBot Arena and great progress to show off on a lot of our upcoming projects: Next generation interactive LED coffee table panels, the debut of Peggy 2.0, and the brand new design for the CandyFab 5000, all of which we’ll be writing much more about this summer. Find us in the south hall, past the Tesla coils.

Great things are coming to Maker Faire, and you can come visit, get a sneak preview and chat.

We’ll sure hope to see you there. Advance tickets are on sale at a discount through Friday April 25.

This entry was posted in Electronics, EMSL Projects, Engineering and tagged , , . Bookmark the Permalink.

Another oddity of lotus roots

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Lotus Rootlets 2

Nelumbo Nucifera, also known as the Sacred Lotus (amongst other names) is a magnificent oddity of a plant. It roots in the mud of shallow lakes and ponds, growing leaves that float on the surface as lily pads lily pads or rise up above the water on hard stalks. The lotus flower itself is the model of a classic and gracefulwater lily flower, where both the flower and resulting seed pod have a characteristic pattern of holes.

 

Lotus Rootlets 1   Lotus Rootlets 3one rootlet   Thin Section

The hole patterns continue throughout the plant, showing up in in the stalks and underground stems (rhizomes) of the lotus plant. The rhizomes, usually just referred to as “lotus root” are prepared as vegetable in many types of asian cuisine. Typically you’ll find them served as thin slices through the root (a couple of inches in diameter), showing the distinctive pattern and prepared in many different ways– I’m partial to tempura. (If you haven’t had them, the taste is a bit like a more substantial and nutty version of a water chestnut.)

Another way that you can sometimes find lotus root prepared is as pickled lotus rootlets, which are immature and more tender lotus roots in brine (pictured here). You might find these in a salad or Vietnamese sandwich— they are tasty like their bigger friends.

Appearances aside, the first bizarre thing about the Sacred Lotus is that it’s one of only a handful of known plants that displays “warm-blooded” behaviour: It actively regulates the temperature of its flower to be at a near-constant temperature, even as the ambient temperature varies by a much larger amount. (

The second thing, which I haven’t seen written about anywhere, has led me to ask: how can a lotus root be like a spider?

Continue reading Another oddity of lotus roots →

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Linkdump: April 2008

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Sierpinski Cookies

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Sierpinski Cookies-11

A few months ago we showed you how to make beautiful fractals in polymer clay.

Take that idea, run with it, and where do you end up? In the kitchen, making Sierpinski cookies! These cookies, made from contrasting colors of butter cookie dough, are a tasty realization of the Sierpinski carpet, producing lovely, edible fractals.
As with our earlier project involving clay, you can make these by using a simple iterative algorithmic process of stretching out the dough and folding it over onto itself in a specific pattern.
Continue reading Sierpinski Cookies →

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