In this video I’m going to show you how to create a nice touch controller for your light setup. Using a voltage regulator to control the brightness and touch sensor to turn it on and off, you can build an awesome controller to turn on and off your lights or any other DC powered unit.
4 CommentsCategory: Projects
In this video I’m going to show you how to build a night light or ambient light for your room, but you can use the same guide to light up your media room, book shelve, display case or anything else that you want to. This project is quick and super easy to build so it’s perfect weekend project. Also, all parts are easy to get and available off the shelf and end result is… awesome!
Leave a CommentDigiKey Fetch Tool helps you when working on bill of material (BOM) for your projects. This simple Python script will fetch all relevant information about a part (Manufacturer, Manufacturer Part Number etc) and allow you to paste/type that information into any application using global hotkeys. This saves a significant amount of time by removing the need to do many alt+tab and copy&paste operation to copy information from your distributor’s website.
4 Comments
See it in action
In the video above, you can see first a power up sequence where all four dials go from zero to 100% and back to zero after which they start showing real time CPU, Memory, Network and GPU usage. After that we run a internet speed test to show how the real-time information is displayed on the dials.
Project update
I am very pleased to announce that this project has turned into a product!
Thanks to collaboration with Streacom, you can now purchase VU Dials.
First, let’s see it in action
It’s a bit hard to capture how this clock really looks, especially since my camera doesn’t really appreciate when there are sixty LEDs glowing into it. Trust me, it looks even cooler when you see it live.
Making a IoT LED dimmer that you can control via your PC, phone, tablet or any other device connected to the network is super simple, and I’m going to show you how.
I’m sharing my three channel LED dimmer that you can use to dim single RGB LED strip or dim three separate LED channels. I want to be able to control lights above my desk and also mix warm white and cool white strip to give me more flexibility over lighting while I’m working, taking pictures or watching movies.
This is going to be a very short and very simple project that if you follow steps below, you can build it in an hour (excluding lead time for components).
Making a BOM (bill of material) for projects and keeping them up to date is really important. But also it is a tedious task that few people enjoy.
In effort to improve workflow when creating new components or updating existing ones, I have create a Python script that will fetch all important data for a component that you might want to use.
This tool has greatly reduced number of alt+tab / copy & paste juggling from my creating/maintaining BOM workflow, and I hope it does the same for you.
Leave a Comment
This one is a very simple but cool project, something that I would recommend to anyone who is interested into DIY electronics, gadgets and learning new stuff in general. It is definitely one of those projects that don’t require too much time but you can learn a lot by making it and also earn a lot of credit by sharing it with your friends and family.
Below you can see a final product. It’s a heart shaped, touch sensitive, keychain for your loved ones. On the front side there is a smiley face drawing that has eyes and mouth. Eyes have two red LEDs that will start to pulse once you touch the keychain or place you finger on the smiley face (see it in action below)
9 Comments
Theory behind this project
Another weekend project that I’ve been working on is Wake-up light. Lately I’ve been doing more research on sleep phases and how to “hack” your brain to wake-up more refreshed and adjust your sleep cycle. There are many studies out there explaining this and providing scientific evidence, so if this is something you are interested in, I encourage you to go and get more detailed information on this subject. However I won’t go into too much detail, I’ll just try to give very simple explanation: When you sleep, you are either in REM or deep sleep (NREM) phase. When you wake up in REM phase you feel fresh, relaxed and full of energy. When you are woken up during the deep sleep phase, you feel like you’ve just been hit by a bus, and you take long time to actually wake up.
2 Comments
These PCB-s are a part of much bigger project that I am currently working on and I have been waiting for them waaaay too long. Boards are designed to house two I2C sensors, (almost any I2C sensor breakout board can fit onto dedicated headers), at the moment I am using Temperature+Humidity sensors, Pressure Sensors, Ambient Light sensors and few others on these boards. Also I am using PIC16F1829 microcontroller to do all the “magic” and nRF24L01+ for communication with the main unit that does storage, data analysis and communication with other parts of the project.
2 Comments