Calling all Processing peeps! It’s time for another meeting. This time it’ll be on Wednesday, October 22nd at 7PM @ NYC Resistor HQ. Everyone bring your projects to share.

I’ll be showing off the state of the Spooky Box, walking through how it works, and encouraging you all to get involved. It may be your last chance to get in on the spooky action before the big Halloween Party.

Hope to see you there!

SLED in Cyan color with diffuser

The “SLED” or, Second Life LED (just one L for clarity) is available as an open source, CC’ed design. It is a USB-attached, Arduino-based RGB “lamp” which can be used to indicate various information from the PC, or simply used to brighten a room with a little color.

My goal in building this device, in conjunction with my friend and colleague Andy Fundinger, was to provide a visual indication of activities within the popular 3D online world of Second Life. Many of our friends and peers had business activities within Second Life and wanted a convenient way of keeping an eye on trends or specific events without remaining logged in or while they were away from their desk. While SMS and e-mail notifications are easy to do, none were so reassuring as simply having a blinky light to tell them when something needed attending – such as a vendor or a shop proximity sensor.

The code for the Second Life component is under construction, but you can build this device today! Either grab the Arduino sketch below and load in your own Arduino developer board, or for a smaller design, run off a few of these customized PCBs and enjoy a little SMD soldering. In the future, I intend to build a batch of these for my less technically-inclined Second Life friends, but for now, I’d like to share it with the community. I’ll flesh out the information as time progresses, but the files provided should allow anyone familiar with Eagle, Atmega and Arduino to get their own done for whatever purpose.

The design is released under a Creative Commons license.
The schematic, board, and bill of materials are here.

The Arduino sketch is here.

(This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Arduino team, but they’re awesome!)

Lemon Battery - With Real Lemons

I had enough with all this making-lemonade-from-lemons chatter and instead just made some light. It’s so freaking easy (provided you remember to grab the wire strippers before you head to the kitchen). Copper and zinc etching plates are probably $7 at your local art supply store. If you want some detailed instructions, check Danger’s Closet, but the better way to proceed is (a) look at picture, (b) implement.

I spent the day today hacking on an RS485 circuit for the RepRap Project. It was successful, and pretty fun to boot. I managed to send serial data over a big long wire and had no noise problems. This stuff is going to form the basis of the 3rd generation electronics for controlling RepRap machines, and having a noise immune communications system. when you have motors and long wire drops is a major benefit.

Anyway, I wrote up a big long article about it on the RepRap blog if you’re interested in more technical details. Next up: SD Card reading and writing.

i’d like to start getting more group photos of this wild and crazy bunch.