You know they love you when during spring cleaning they save the vintage Popular Mechanics magazines and ship them to you. They must really love me because I got twenty-one pounds from the 1960’s in the mail! I can’t wait to read them all, but so far I’ve only made it half-way through July 1962, which contains “Your Complete Concrete Guide” and “The Desperate Flight of Airtransit 13” among other treasures.
For all of our different AVR microcontroller based projects, we seem to find ourselves continually wiring up minimalist target boards; little circuit boards that fit both the AVR and a 6-pin header for connecting to your in-system programmer. And, when you find yourself hand-wiring the same circuit over and over again on a protoboard, that’s really just life’s way of telling you “just lay out a damn printed circuit board already.”
Coincidentally, we needed a new business card.
Continue reading Tiny portable AVR projects: Business card breakout boards
Even the font size has gotten smaller.
What can you do with a busted (or merely obsolete) chip? Well, you can always make a trivet or even chip bugs. But here’s a new one: Alejandro Gonzalez found that you could make a BristleBot by bending the pins of the
chip. Clever!
[Flickr photo set]
[YouTube video — blurry but you get the idea.]
Tomorrow (Monday 3/3/08) at TechShop in Menlo Park, CA, I’m giving another AVR intro class. These classes have been big, lively, engaging and interesting, with a lot of good questions– two sessions are scheduled this month:
Monday, 3/3/08, 6:30-8:30 PM, and
Saturday, 3/22/08, 1:00-3:00 PM
Seminar: Introduction to AVR Microcontrollers
AVR microcontrollers are powerful and versatile single-chip computers that cost only a few dollars each. You may have noticed that a number of our interesting projects are based around these, using them to make smart little toys and machines.
This class is aptly billed by TechShop as “How To Use AVR Microcontrollers in Your Projects.” Indeed. We’ll be bringing along a number of our cool AVR-based Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories projects from to show off some of the things that you can do with these little marvels, and how you might go about doing it.
Formal class description: “AVR microcontrollers are powerful, versatile and inexpensive single-chip computers that are remarkably easy to program in C, using entirely free and open-source tools that run on Macs, Windows, and Unix-like operating systems. In this practical introduction to AVR microcontrollers, we’ll take it from the beginning so that you can get started using them for your own cool projects. Some topics to be covered include: different types of AVRs and how to pick one for your application, getting a programmer, installing software tools, how to get started actually programming them, and how to download and run your code on the microcontroller. Class format is a one hour lecture followed by show-and-tell demonstrations and ample time for questions.”
Sign up here.
Seats are still available in one other microcontroller project class:
Soldering Project: Build a Micro Readerboard
A fun little soldering class, where you can customize the phrases in and build your very own LED Micro-Readerboard. It’s a cute little toy that spells out a preprogrammed messages (e.g., your name– for an LED nametag!), one letter at a time, on its display. In the class, you get to choose what messages to put on your readerboard, solder it together and take it home. It’s a neat, self-contained project that’s a great example of what you can do with a little AVR microcontroller; a perfect “my first microcontroller” project for anyone who hasn’t played with one yet. This is an intermediate soldering class; some prior soldering experience is needed. Other than that, no prior knowledge is assumed, so this class is great for kids too.
Next Classes:
Sign up here!
Oh great. Now how am I supposed to measure the current?
Building a Peggy of your own? This neat Peggy planner by Mike Biel might come in handy.
Thanks to Kaden‘s recommendation, we get the Lee Valley & Veritas catalogs. The February 2008 edition arrived not too long ago, reminding us of what a good catalog is all about. Lovely photos and clear, tempting descriptions are are often augmented by illustrations. Sprinkled throughout are tips on how to choose and use various tools.
The catalog is forty pages plus an insert. There is a nice assortment of items from their hardware, woodworking and garden catalogs. What more could you ask for in a catalog? How about a fold-out cable tie spread and a technical bulletin? Your wishes are granted.
On page four there is a fabulous two-page spread of cable ties. The “Master Set of 1550 Ties” includes basic, heavy duty, and specialty ties. Specialty ties? Mounting ties, label ties, and releasable ties! One can never have too many cable ties.
If you can make it past the cable tie spread, you’ll get to the tools and hardware. I just don’t get tired of looking things like planes, picture screws, and drawer slides, and there is a truly impressive selection of the drawer slides. Right now I’m drooling over the double edged flush-cutting saw, which is used “to cut off a projection without damaging the surrounding or adjoining face.” I’m certain I will need one someday. I might have to come up with a project specifically for it, but I’m sure it will be worth it just to have an excuse to use the flexible yet rigid blade.
The center insert had an added bonus beyond the usual order page: a technical bulletin. With articles on whittling utensils and using food-safe finishes it contains lots of interesting information and useful tips. The bulletin ends with this note: “These bulletins are intended as keepers, thus the three holes. We will publish them as often as we have something to say and as we have time to put it to paper.” I look forward to the next time they have something to say.
Nothing makes us more gleefully happy than taking things apart. On the table today: a pedometer. Lots of gory pictures after the jump.
Can’t figure out what to do with all of your leftover conversation hearts after Valentine’s Day? It turns out they do a passable impression of sidewalk chalk, even without being a significant source of calcium!
Not that we would know anything about having too many candy hearts. The giant melted together heart ought to work like those multicolored crayons. That could actually be a good use for it.
