What Is Your Favorite Project?

RE: What Is Your Favorite Project?

rsc — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 14:26:06 GMT

In 1980 I purchased a Radio Shack Archer Programmable Sound Generator IC

The 40-pin DIP chip came with instructions for a test circuit that was rather complicated, however, I collected a bunch of switches and pots and built the test circuit. Then I added it to a small toy piano mounting micro switches under each key. Then I added a car stereo amplifier with equalizer to the machine and it became a portable synth. One of the coolest things I ever made. Of course my mom threw it away when I went off to college.

RE: What Is Your Favorite Project?

dang74 — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 01:49:31 GMT

The project I am most proud of is an FPGA based clone of the Intellivision that I've been working on. I've been toiling away on it since early 2020. Some days I would consider it my favourite project. Other days I can't even bear to think about it.

RE: What Is Your Favorite Project?

dougw — Sat, 15 Oct 2022 18:26:59 GMT

One of my favorites is the Electric Hula Hoop

RE: What Is Your Favorite Project?

genebren — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 21:34:28 GMT

Through the first 25 years of my career, full time work was my only project (that and raising kids). In the mid 90's my first marriage ended and I began a phase of self discovery. One of the things that I discovered is that I really missed building projects outside of work. One of my first projects was a simple Bi-Ped robot, which I called Walky. I built Walky in attempt to get my young son interested in electronics. It was a simple, rudimentary walker, that would just start walking forward when you turned it on. It was built with a simple Atmel Attiny12 processor and a pair of servos. The body/legs were cut/milled out of plexiglass. There were a pair of 2-AA battery packs (two cells each, wired in series for ~6V) mounted up high on the body to help it lean enough to lift the opposite leg so it could swing forward, then the process would repeat for the opposite side. If nothing else, Walky allowed me an opportunity to rekindle the joyful aspects of build something for nothing more than the joy that it brought you. Sure even simple project also taught you new things. Here is a look at Walky back in 2001:

Fast forward to 2018. Walky had became a part of my robot display that sat on a shelf in my home office (he even survive a move to Texas). I had been lurking around on element14 for a while (First blog in November 2017, followed by a few more over the next 6 months), when I saw an announcement of a project14 contest called "Movers and Shakers" in June of 2018. I saw this as a chance to try to improve on the Walky concept (he did move in a very shaky manner), adding sensors to protect it from falling off an edge or running into objects, along the radio control to test out various walking patterns (forward, reverse, left/right turning). It also allowed me to start a more active level of participation here on element14.

I achieved a lot of what I had hope to accomplish on this project, including the unexpected, actually winning the competition. The experience and acceptance of my peers was a real boost to me. I became a active member and found friends and a sense of belonging that I never thought would come from a virtual community.

RE: What Is Your Favorite Project?

robogary — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 01:56:19 GMT

Almost 10 years ago, our local robot club sponsored a robot parade at the science museum. I went a bit overboard and made a line follower into a model steam engine with a really load sound system with special effects audio. The coup de grace was a wireless FPV camera on the steam train robot with RC controlled tilt/pan. There was a ton of RF noise and audio noise in the room, but it was a ton of fun, especially with the robot videoing the TV station cameraman taking his video for the news.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMzie8LBRSM

RE: What Is Your Favorite Project?

cstanton — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 19:04:41 GMT

I enjoyed the practicality of /products/arduino/b/blog/posts/meet-bernie-a-pet-with-an-affection-for-arduino - mainly because it involved a lot of aspects that I found interesting, temperature sensing, motor/fan control, and mainly because it meant I didn't have to look after the crested gecko's enclosure manually anymore as it worked in tandem with the misting and heating system, so it was almost a full ecosystem.

Also, I wonder, this may have been better posted in the forum? /members-area/f/forum than as a blog post?

RE: What Is Your Favorite Project?

javagoza — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 14:32:36 GMT

The best memory I have is the organization of the cultural week of the last course of the institute. The year was 1982 and we built a local television station to broadcast the events, we also built several wireless FM microphones and a scoreboard system controlled by a ZX81 and connected to the institute's closed circuit television so that all students could follow the results of the competitions. It was a crazy year, we didn't have much idea about electronics but we had many electronics magazines with circuits and financing thanks to a fanzine with caricatures of the teachers that sold very well. Almost everything went well except for the recording of the final act in the theater. Due to a bad connector we missed part the video recording of our colleagues' performance. It always amazed me how we were able to do so much and so successfully with the little we knew. When I am faced with a problem for which I feel unqualified, I remember this story and move forward.

RE: What Is Your Favorite Project?

Fred27 — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 13:39:30 GMT

My favourite project isn't an electronics one. It's from when I first got into CNC machining. It's a reverse engineering of a toy I remembered from my childhood and the realisation that the consumer tools we have at our disposal now means we can make things we wouldn't have dreamed possible decades ago.

https://www.instructables.com/Custom-records-for-a-70s-toy-record-player/

I won a 3D printer for that project and ended up 3D printing a version too.