Monthly Archives: December 2012

Master ‘Shroom Starts a Cult

Posted by on December 30, 2012 1 comment

Master ‘Shroom may have been the most advanced of all my wooden mushroom models, featuring a binary computer that turned his LED eyes on and off (explained in this post).  Although this is commonly known as a “switch” or “button”, this was enough to make him feel elevated above all other wooden ‘shroom models made up to that point.  Check out the video below to see what happens:

As with many of my projects, it started off as something different.  I simply thought that it would be a cool to take a photo of this LED enabled, natural-edge wooden mushroom in the dark with the lights off.  At some point, I took the picture below, Read more »

Thanks for 2012, from Jeremy Cook and JcoPro.net!

Posted by on December 26, 2012 3 comments

jcopro.net logoI hope that all of you have had a great Christmas and are looking forward to an excellent New Year!  As 2012 comes to a close, I’d like to thank everyone for visiting and supporting this site!

Thanks first of all to the people that subscribe and read regularly.  As you can see in the subscription bar, I don’t have a ton of email subscribers.  However, if you add in Twitter (95), RSS and Google Reader feed subscriptions (around 80), Youtube (42), Facebook (20), and those that just check back a lot, there are around 250 of you.  I’m humbled that all of you decided to read about the various projects that I put up here!

ZTW CNC router kit

Zen toolworks 7×12 3D model

The companies that have given me free or discounted stuff to try out are obviously a big part of this blog.  Zen Toolworks is one of my oldest supporters, and has provided the equipment used for nearly every post in my “CNC” section.  They also sent me a Starbucks gift basket for Christmas this year and last, so that was really cool – Thanks Xin!

One sponsor that I’m sad to see go is “Buckyballs.”  After sending me two sets of magnetic balls to try out, they were essentially shut down by claims of being unsafe for children.  Although no one, including Buckyballs, would argue this, there were warnings all over the boxes to keep them away from kids and pets.  Sorry guys, enjoyed the little magnets while they lasted!

pyMCU has also been an important sponsor, and Read more »

The Birth of Master ‘Shroom with LED Eyes

Posted by on December 23, 2012 2 comments

After turning some mushrooms on my lathe, as explained in this post, I started thinking about how I could integrate some other ideas into my wooden models.  After some thought, I decided that if the head was large enough to accommodate a 3 volt coin cell battery and LEDs, I could add glowing eyes to it.

The video hopefully does a good job of explaining how it was made.  One thing that might not be obvious is why Read more »

pyMCU + Servos and Foam = Python Head Man!

Posted by on December 19, 2012 4 comments

python-head-onWhat do you get when you cross the glowing LED box with a RC helicopter and the pyMCU microcontroller?  A Python controlled glowing head of course!

This “Python Head Man” is capable of looking up and down in two directions, and lighting up “eyes” and a “mouth.”  This is possibly better explained in the video below.  The ‘bot uses the two servos originally meant to adjust the rc helicopter blades that this frame had on it.  I originally wrote about controlling these servos here, but this setup also has two sets of LEDS that can be independently switched on and off.  Control of the ‘bot is also enhanced with a simple GUI using the Tkinter Python library.  Diffusion of these LEDs is done with a foam cube, similar to the “Solar LED cube” that I made a few months ago.

If you would like to try something like this yourself, Read more »

Easy Breadboard Attachment for pyMCU or Arduino

Posted by on December 16, 2012 1 comment

breadboard-blued-back-of-pymcuWhat if you have an Arduino Uno, or pyMCU and would like to use a breadboard with it?  There are some solutions out there that allow you to build an Arduino on a breadboard.  What If you just want an area to prototype something on your existing board that doesn’t look like a rat’s nest?

Or at least a fairly neat rat’s nest.  This backwards breadboard mount fit really well in the “Python Head” robot I’ve been working on (more in a later post).  All you need for this simple hack is the following: