Category: Making
These are posts about making in a variety of forms.
Since my last embedded project experiments in 2013, a lot has changed. Costs have gone down, size has reduced and functionality is way up. After researching some of the more current platforms, I selected the Particle Photon for its size, prize and capability. After successfully duplicating Clarissa San Diego’s ...
12/22/16 – The LED Panner is another fun circuit from the great book “Handmade Electronic Music” by Nicolas Collins. This circuit uses a single 74C14 Hex Schmitt Trigger chip, taking advantage of only a few pins (so you could to much more with this). LEDs paired with photo resistors create ...
12/9/16 – The Xmas Fly is a riff on the Black Fly, which is basically nothing more than a piezo element and a few parts in a nice box. The Black Fly includes springs, which cause interesting vibrations for the piezo to pick up. To make springs work you need ...
June 2016 – The Quad Oscillator below is a common beginner project, with surprising nuances depending on parts and configuration. In this case, I bought a kit online from GetLoFi.com. The kit arrived quickly, but was plagued by a few issues. First, my kit didn’t include the SPDT switch that ...
We’ve been wanting to create a raised bed for some time. Most of the time, I’ve done container gardening for my peppers. That’s done well, but the containers are hard to manage sometimes. They also don’t allow the plant to fully spread out, and I’ve had some plants stunted as ...
Just as 2015 was wrapping up I put together a MIDI drum trigger kit from Spikenzie Labs. The Drum Kit Kit – All Included (DKK-AI) comes with everything you need to set up six triggers using piezo discs. Programming is done via an Arduino IDE using the built-in ATMEGA328-PU chip, so you ...
Dec 2015 – The Nebulophone has been on my wishlist for a while, so when Makershed held their holiday sales, it was great to pick one of these for an even better price. Even without a discount, this is a worth while piece of gear and makes some great sounds. Build ...
December 5, 2015 After a long break from Arduino, and electronics in general, I wanted to jump back in with an easy/medium difficulty task or project. With the many holiday discount sales out there for companies like Adafruit and Sparkfun, I went ahead and got a few projects to ...
A friend of ours has a vintage Acetone Fuzzmaster. My father copied and made several versions it, and was researching different versions. This is one that he selected the parts for, and that I built into a holiday canister. I didn’t have quite enough room for a switch, and I ...
In January 2015, I finally got brave enough to tackle the Synth in a Box project that I picked up from Michael Victor at EM2014. This proved to be quite challenging because it was the most involved electronically, with lots of wires. I opted for solid wire because I generally ...
I’ve always been interested in brain/computer interfacing, but never knew much about the field. When the OpenBCI open source platform came out on Kickstarter, I supported the campaign and signed up for one of their first boards. I thought with my Arduino experience up to that point that it would be ...
Tayda Electronics (where I get many of my parts) calls this their “Super Hard On” circuit. I used a loose tea canister for the case. My brother helped me with the drilling since he has access to better tools. It looks nice, though in terms of practicality, it’s not exactly ...