SegBoard:
My segway skateboard I made for my power electronics class! Read my post about it.
Giant Leaf Planetarium:
Check out my post for more info/instructions!
My segway skateboard I made for my power electronics class! Read my post about it.
Giant Leaf Planetarium:
Check out my post for more info/instructions!
Double Rainbow Tron Shutter Shades:
Over IAP I wanted a pair of sunglasses that Kanye West and Lady Gaga would be proud of. As the good Internet citizen I am, I found a way to combine double rainbow and those shiny outfits from the new Tron.
This is all controlled by an Arduino Pro Mini, but quite honestly, you could probably run it off of any Arduino small enough for your pocket. I picked the Pro Mini because it's cheap and small. I also bought this EL Escudo which was basically useless except for the 8 high voltage TRIACs. Honestly, you probably could've just bought the TRIACs and made your own board, but if you want a pre-made board, then the EL Escudo works well, and it already has a place for your EL Inverter.
Note though, the EL Escudo has a floating ground from the raw EL inverter input. Soldering a wire between the the inverter's ground and one of the Escudo's grounds solves your problems. This will allow you to control more than one EL wire at a time.
Now here's another tricky part. If you bought the Arduino Pro 328 (or any of that shape), your Escudo would fit wonderfully. But as I bought the Pro-Mini, I had to make a conversion board.
It was quite honestly a game of, let's match the pins! Also, I put a power regulator as the 3V inverter really can't handle more than 3.3V. Hence, I took the power from the Pro-Mini (5V) and stepped it down to 3V. Hence the little extra part.
After you etch/order your conversion board, it's nice and lovely. However, now you have to deal with the EL wire.
El wire basically taught me to respect Disney, because man those Tron suits must have taken forever.
EL wire is really awful to deal with. It's got 2 strips of thin copper wire inside (for the + and - charge as it's basically a coaxial capacitor). However, the copper wires are so thin, they often break, so I tended to melt the plastic part of the wire off with a soldering iron to get that the copper. Regardless, these instructions are really good. You can solder without copper plating, but man did I wish I had some at the time.
Also, don't forget to add a tiny microphone to your sunglasses and connect it to one of the analog inputs of your Arduino. If you get an electret mic, you'll need to amplify the crap out of it. I suggest using an OPA34 as its voltage supply is only from 2.5V to 5V, perfect if you're powering it off of your Arduino.
Lastly, write a VU code for the mic and EL wires, hook it up to a power source (from 3V-6V), and yay! You've got baller sunglasses bro.
Double Rainbow Tron Shutter Shades (Electroluminescent Glasses) by Qiaodan (Jordan) Jin Stone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.instructables.com.
GC[hat]:
A little hat that lights up according to availability (like on gchat or either IMs). [Currently Altering]
Valentine's Day:
I like etching for the sake of etching. You can also add LED displays, but they're going to take a lot of voltage because hooking up LEDs in parallel scares me at times. That and this was, quite literally, a last minute gift during Valentine's Day. Things in series tend to take less brainpower.
Some unfinished business :P
Blind Belt:
A belt that replaces the role of the walking cane for the blind. [Currently Developing]
Thermo Fish Gill Jacket:
A jacket with thermal sensors. Opens flaps of fabric depending on the ambient temperature inside the jacket. [Currently Developing]
