Shiny LED Panels Run Hot

LED panels are great for grow lamps and all sorts of other purposes, but they are liable to overheat if the back surface is bare aluminium. Simply painting the top of the panel could almost double its thermal capacity, allowing you to run it at much higher current.

Source: Brompton Technology

Valentine's Day Wearable

Recommended attire for Valentine's Day. Please note the electronic accessory, held in place with a barrette ;)

February Swag Bag: Noritake VFD

Noritake recently offered samples of these impressively bright 16 x 122 pixel graphical vacuum fluorescent displays. Their GU7000 Arduino library is easy to set up and use: it took just a couple of minutes to get out this message. I like!

Lo Fi Blinky Card

Snow day project with 4 year old Rachel: a greetings card with flashing illuminated LEDs.

Valentine LED Chaser

The object of your desire will not be able to resist this heart shaped kitsch-o-tron, lovingly hand-crafted on perfboard with a CD4017B decade counter and 555 astable. But you probably can't go wrong with flowers and chocolates as well. Just to be on the safe side. Kits now available from Tindie!

Pedal Powered Menorah

Exercise bike + magnets + LEDs = festival of light. Devised by T.J.Hunt with specialist engineering expertise from Rabbi Shena Potter Jaffee. Come along 3rd December to the Mayerson Jewish Center of Cincinnati. Pop a beer, grab a latke, and take a spin. Happy Hannukah! 

LED Dimmer PWM Hack

This cheap dimmer is designed to blink LEDs with a variable duty cycle. The default frequency can be altered by swapping out a single capacitor. 20 kHz makes a whine-free speed control for a DC motor, 1 Hz gives slow PWM for high power resistive heating loads.

I2C LED Display From Hacked Voltmeter

LED voltmeters are a cheap source of 7 segment displays and can easily be repurposed. Using the I2C protocol, a master microcontroller such as an Arduino Uno can govern multiple displays with just 2 I/O pins.

February Swag Bag: ITead Studio Xmas gift

ITead studio sent Christmas gifts to followers of its Twitter feed. I was thrilled to receive a blue 20x4 LCD display and PCB test card. Thanks guys — and Happy New Year!

Old MacDonald Hacked A Farm

My kids have a plastic farm toy. It neighs, it baas, and frankly, it grates. But since I tricked it out with a microcontroller brain, at least it can play Simon.

Animated LCD Name Tag

While we are on the subject of calculators, this one has been ever so slightly -- what is the word? -- doctored for use as an animated name plate. The perfect desk toy for a nutty scientist.

Flickery LED Bar Candle

Perhaps the world has no need for another blinky LED candle effect. But with Halloween coming up, I was still in the mood for repurposing logic chips.

Hacky Random Number Generator / Cat Toy

For my entry to the Dangerous Prototypes 7400 Contest, I decided to make a true random number generator. In particular, I wanted a latching RNG — not merely a continuous stream of numbers, but a continuous stream which I could sample at intervals. The circuit would be made up of a minimal number of digital logic parts. And deliberately inducing noise into the digital circuit would involve breaking all the usual design rules, which is fun.