I received an Allegro AC756KCA-050B from my friends over at Element14 (Newark.com) and I wanted to see if this little gadget would make it easy to sense when the doorbell was ringing. As it turns out, it’s completely overkill for the task, so I won’t use it for my remote brass marine bell door chime thing (mentioned in previous articles). BUT, I did want to experiment with it to see what I could get from it. This is the true story of how I got something useful out of it and how I manage to have fun playing with electronics while being a complete hobbyist.
First of all, here is a picture of one:
Picture of Allegro ACS756KCA-050B AC Current Sensor
At the office, we decided we were going to have a stocking decorating contest for Christmas. The rules were pretty lax, so I immediately thought of interactivity and electronics and blinky lights and whatnot. Well, that, and there was no way in you-know-what that I was going to hot glue glitter and spongy letters to a stocking with electricity being involved.
Here is a video of the final product to pique your interest:
How did I do it? Easy. Some AVR programming (through my usual Arduino hackery) and some simple electronics and BOOYAH! Motion activated stocking with a Santa sign and some jingle bells.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I was working on a project that would help us to hear the doorbell out on the back patio. The problem is that the doorbells themselves are upstairs inside the house and difficult to hear. No matter how many times we tell guests to just walk in and come to the back patio, they still try to ring the doorbell and we don’t hear them.
This is also another write-up on a product for the kind folks at Element 14 (Newark.com). What item did they send me this time around? The 12-volt solenoid (Newark SKU: 20M1816) that’s going to ring my bell! This solenoid is powered by 12 volts DC. It’s super-easy to hook up: Just two wires and BOOM! They’re inexpensive and quite rugged. The hole through the center is large enough and the coil is long enough that I was able to stick a spring inside. I think I’ll be ordering some more of these. They will come in quite handy on other interactive projects.
This project is going to be remotely fire a solenoid under a 6″ brass bell mounted on the wall outside the back patio door. The solenoid will be triggered by a simple 5-volt pulse from an AVR microcontroller that will receive commands remotely over Xbee wireless from the doorbell (the doorbell side has yet to be worked out).
Here is a video of the solenoid and the bell triggering from a 5-volt button push:
I threw together a video of the warp core’s control circuit and eight stupidly bright white SMD LED strips for the rings. The original rings were going to be through-hole bright LEDs, but I realized how much soldering and drilling would be required for that. That is dumb and painful. So, factory-built strips of LEDs, complete with self-adhesive backing, resistors, and snap-on wire ends ready for 12-volt DC power it is!
Here it is in action:
There will be more to come as we start to construct the body of the warp core.
I LOVE my iPad 2. To protect it, I HIGHLY recommend the DODOcase (http://www.dodocase.com/products/dodocase-for-ipad2). My only complaint would be the lack of a magnet in the case to activate/deactivate the iPad through its little magnetic sensor, which is used by other cases, like the foldy-flippy one from Apple (http://www.apple.com/ipad/smart-cover/).
What to do? Hack, of course! But, first, I emailed the DODOcase peeps and suggested the feature to them and even sent them links to my source of delicious rare earth magnets, K & J Magnetics (http://www.kjmagnetics.com/). There are thin little rectangular magnets that can easily be embedded into the cardboard cover underneath the backing.
For now, my magnet sits on top of the inside cover:
Well, we’ve moved into a new and larger space at the office and we sit at these massive wood and steel desks as teams. Our team decided we needed more “flare” at our desk, so, of course, a big-ass warp core was the first thing that popped into our heads. How hard could that be?
The rings of the warp core will be clear-ish fiberglass. The original master, over which we’ll make a fiberglass mold for all eight rings, is made of a giant laminated wood block we need to turn on a big lathe.
Laminating 2x6 pieces of pine for the ring master mold
EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve attached PDF files of the pentagon PCB and the motherboard PCB. If I had time to label them and make them pretty, I would, but this was never designed for mass production or consumption. Use at your own risk and frustration.
For those with a short attention span, I give you a photo of the completed project (my biggest to date):
Completed LED Mood Lamp
If you’re interested in the story of this things, continue reading…
This idea came about randomly as a gift idea for my wife. I’ve built useless machines, clocks, etc. for other people (and myself), but hadn’t built anything for my wife. I’m not sure what she’s going to do with this thing, but it’s the thought that counts.
For those of you with short attention spans, like me, here is a quick and lame video I threw together in iMovie:
I am building this for the new awesome bed I will be building this winter for our bedroom. There will be two of these lamps, one for me and one for my wife on either side of the headboard. The LED head will have a metal (or whatever I end up finding) shroud on it to keep light pollution down to a dull roar for the other person who might be sleeping.
OK, I am not making one of these and I did not make this one, but I consider this to be super-swanky and a must-show-off piece in my collection of strange old things.
I inherited this from my grandmother who passed away around Christmas of 2009. It’s plastic, but my grandparents purchased it for-real in Hong Kong when they lived over there. It’s dirt-old and reminds me of the leg lamp from the movie A Christmas Story. When my parents brought it down to me and my wife saw it, all I could say was, “It’s frah-jee-lay.” It’s awesome is what it is.
This will be the first thing filed under, “Swank-n-Funk.”
It’s been a little while since I updated the site. I’ve had a lot going on. There are a number of new builds I will be posting in the coming weeks. This is about the latest.
Problem: At night, when I read in bed and my wife is trying to sleep, the lamp on the night stand is kinda bright and obnoxious and, even though she says it doesn’t, the light disturbs her. I had been using a little USB-powered LED lamp that I bought for my laptop on long night time airplane rides. However, I can’t charge my iPhone while I’m using that light. Only one USB cable available at the night stand. Also, that light isn’t quite bright enough for my liking. What to do?
Build a reading lamp out of stupidly bright and nearly stupidly tiny LEDs.
Here is the proof print for the light’s PCB which will be mounted on the end of a flexible “gooseneck” that will extend from the night stand or from the headboard of our as yet unbuilt bed:
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