Get you some small, powerful and efficient AC-DC switching “power bricks” for easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy 3.3 volts and 5 volts DC power on your breadboard projects. These little guys provide up to 2.4A of current, 12W of power. Plug an AC power cord into one end and get clean breadboard-friendly DC power out the other end. Check out the MPM-12EPB line of cute little switching regulators from MicroPower Direct.

A few of my fellow meltmedians and good friends have a private little bourbon paradise speakeasy we’ve established near the office. We call it, “Halcyon.” If you visit, you can even get a shirt. It’s a quaint little place with fine furnishings, a stock of bourbon that approaches my own and a dozen or more flickering LED candles. Therein lies the problem: Light.

I decided to build a gift to Halcyon and its members. We needed a little more light in there at times (specifically, while preparing drinks before the very important conversations started). The candles were nice, but quite dim. We’d need a hundred to make it a well-lighted place. 😉 My gift? A dimmable, Bluetooth-controlled, battery-operated, custom-built bourbon bottle chandelier.

The control panel for the Office Chairiot Mark II is coming together quickly. It’s pretty much the most complicated piece of the the entire project AND probably the most complicated electronics project I’ve built to date.

Read all about the latest updates to the circuit board designs and the power routing and all that in this article. You can also find out similar (nearly identical) information on the official Office Chairiot Mark II website.