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!

$1 Lithium Coin Cell Charger

Got a buck? Make a charger for LiR2032 coin cells. It could hardly be cheaper or easier.

Magic Mote Thermostat and Wireless Temperature Sensor

A homemade thermostat up in the basement rafters controls the heating in my home. The smart bit is the radio frequency communication that connects it to a remote temperature sensor.

Magic Mote Wireless Sensor Node

This compact PCB interfaces a low power MSP430G2553 microcontroller with a Nordic NRF24L01+ 2.4 GHz radio frequency transceiver module. It's well adapted to serve as a wireless sensor node, but has enough I/O options to be put to use wherever a small microcontroller is required. PCBs now available from Tindie!

Home Grown Bhut Jolokia Peppers

Hannah and I made chili sauce from the devilishly hot Bhut Jolokia peppers that I grew this year.

12mm Rotary Encoder Breakout

0.925" x 0.925" breakout board for 12mm rotary encoder with switch. The PCB has enlarged holes to fit generic encoders.

Booting Linux Live USB on a MacBook Air

I have a MacBook Air with an Intel i7 core running OS X Lion 10.7.5. Booting linux from a flash drive was not straightforward, to the point that when I finally got it working I laughed with surprise. Evidently doing such things is not part of the one true Apple way. The instructions were cobbled together from from here and here with a fair bit of trial and error. Needless to say, the procedures documented on the Ubuntu website did not work for me.