I recently picked up a littleBricks Droid Inventor Kit from a local person who was frustrated with it and the company. I can see now why she was frustrated with them. It seems that littleBits was acquired by Sphero, and it looks like they a...
I picked up a littleBits Droid kit today!I happened to notice it free on the local market-place, and only just 5 minutes from my house. Apparently she was frustrated with the kit and the company because the little servo doesn't work - a know...
Hello! I thought I'd share some random findings on CPU temperature on my Raspberry Pi mini-server. I have an older Pi1 (B+) in my basement that has been controlling my sprinkler system for several years already, and it seems to always r...
I think I now have my Raspberry Pi powered temperature logger working to where I wanted it to be. My hand-built temperature logging had a chart that tracked sensor temperatures over time, so that was the least I wanted to replicate using a...
I just took another step in a project that has been going on for over 3 years now: temperature monitoring using ESP-based boards. It started out with an ESP-001:Remote (Water) Temperature Monitoring Since then I've made a few updates, inclu...
In an earlier blog post, I mentioned my new tech toy: a relatively affordable little 7" digital microscope I bought on Amazon. A few people were curious as to how effective my new little digital "Koolertron" microscope would be fo...
I finally bought a little microscope to help out with the smd parts. I got it mostly to identify small parts, but it appears to be quick enough that I might actually be able to solder with it. In my quick bit of testing I didn't feel any lag...
I just received this care package from element14 Thanks element14! Of special personal note is the Arduino-Nano, as this type of board is what got me started with the Arduino system. Almost 10 years ago now I joined element14 for thei...
Have you ever had one of those moments where the data just looks out of place? The above chart is from 2 temperature sensors. The one shown in green is connected to my hummingbird feeder (insulated, with a small USB-powered hand-warmer heater on...
So, it turns out that the cheap Digispark clones do have a slight difference from the real thing - pin p5 is a "reset" pin by default. Imagine my surprise, when the project I was working on starting doing some seriously strange things ...
I'm working on a collaborative art project with my wife SuperArtGirl.It involves me needing to come up with lights and propeller control for a little airplane art. Luckily I still have some salvaged *cough* hoarded *cough* hard drive motors ...
Found this care package on my doorstep this morning! Totally unexpected, totally awesome! Thank you element14! I've been wanting to try out the Micro:Bit for a while, and the PocketBeagle had caught my eye recently too, so it was really nic...
The good news is: My little Wemos D1 based pump monitor works! The bad news is: The anomaly detected by my pump monitor was real and required physical labour to correct In a nutshell - You might recall that I had a WiFi temperature s...
I was lucky enough to win a shopping cart prize earlier this year in the Arduino contest, and element14 was nice enough to send me this lovely little CNC machine: Here is the link to it, by PCDuino: http://canada.newark.com/pcduino/108302018/cnc...
Hi all, I just kind of randomly came across a thread discussing using nail polish to cover electrical connections to avoid shorts, especially for the backs of home made PCBs.There are commercially available "conformal coatings" you can...
I've been working on putting an old ESP-01 module to use as a remote sensor, and it requires 3.3v power.It's a very barebones board, so that power needs to be supplied to it somehow. For the final project I want it to be battery powered, but in ...
Hello all! I just received a nice TI Wireless Bluetooth Digital Multimeter to try out, courtesy of Texas Instruments and Element14 - very cool! This is what was in the box (so hey, this is also, sort of, an unboxing blog post!).It came with...
Further to the Kitty Cam , I now have it all tucked away into one convenient tin (a Thule tin that came with my roof rack).One big advantage of this setup is that none of the lights show, making it much less suspicious looking to any critter that mig...
I’m getting closer to finishing the Kitty Cam. This is a project I started because a couple of people in my area have lost their kitties, and are hoping to catch them again to bring them home so they can give the kitties the pampered lives they ...
I finished* the cat treat dispenser today! Charlie gave it the once over to see how it works. Here he is demonstrating the part he's most impressed with (i.e., the food) Click the mouse button to get treats So far he just sits...
Charlie finds a use for the AREXX robot arm www.youtube.com/watch (ps, sorry for the poor quality - in my hurry I used the video capture of the text messaging app. Hopefully he'll pose for a better video in the future)
Inspired by Frederick van den Bosch's Forget Me Not Project I decided to build my own cat treat dispenser. For me the main challenge was in the mechanics of it all, so having fvan 's design to help me out made a world of difference. I picke...
