Getting back into the swing of things
I’ve been meaning to get back into documenting projects for a long time - about nine years, going by the timestamps on this website. A lot has happened in th...
Posts by Year
2023
2014
Photobooth Button: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 18
Still playing catch up, our next project is for those building a photobooth: a button to trigger it. Overview Photobooths are incredibly popular for wedding...
MouseMover: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 17
Due to illness I missed a few days. Now to play catch up… Today’s project is actually some software for a previous project - the Mouse Mover. Overview The ...
Pinbox: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 16
This one’s another project in progress - a controller for playing PC-based pinball. Overview Recently, we started playing Pinball Arcade - a really nice pin...
Spherebot Controller: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 15
Today’s entry isn’t quite done yet, but that’s only because I completely blanked on getting the rest of the parts when I was at the store on Saturday. Oops. ...
WS2812B Breakout Board: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 14
Apologies for the delay on this one. I knew that if I missed the schedule one day, it’d just cascade… This one is another building block for future projects...
Word Clock 1.0: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 13
Today’s late posting is brought to you by “unintentional napping”. It’s a project I finished a few years ago: a Word Clock. Overview A word clock is a clock...
Electric Imp Breakout: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 12
Today’s entry is a fairly simple one, but it’s a building block for a future project: a breakout board for the Electric Imp. Overview The Electric Imp is a...
AVR Pigrammer: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 11
Today’s project is a little thing I threw together to put together kits for the Christmas ornaments last year: the AVR Pigrammer, a device for programming lo...
DigitNet 2: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 10
Today’s project is another one that’s been waiting to be released for quite some time: a networkable 7 segment display that I call DigitNet 2. Overview Way ...
Black Magic Probe PCB: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 9
Today’s project is a rushed one, and part of our development effort for DIYPinball: our own PCB for the Black Magic Probe. Overview The Black Magic Probe is...
Light Paintbrush: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 8
Today’s project is a really fun one: a Trinket-based LED paintbrush for light painting. Overview The Light Paintbrush lets you do light painting in differen...
USB Bee: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 7
Today’s project is a handy little board for working with Arduino projects that use XBee radios. Overview The USB Bee is a small circuit board that can take ...
USB Shield: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 6
Today’s project is a safety device to protect against malicious USB charging ports. We’re calling it the USB Shield. Overview The USB Shield is a device to ...
USB Wildcard: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 5
Today’s project is more of a tool that I’ll be using in future projects: what I call the USB Wildcard.
Ringtone Doorbell: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 4
Today’s project is something new. Really new. Working as of an hour ago, new. It’s a customizable doorbell for kids to build. Overview The Ringtone Doorbell...
USBTinyISP alternate PCB: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 3
Today wound up being dominated by getting a parts order in for more interesting projects, so it’s another boring one for the day. This is basically just an a...
Mini I2C LCD Backpack: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 2
The second project in our Advent Calendar is a quick, simple, and old one - mostly because I had some phone repair issues today that wound up taking more tim...
Passcode Lock: Open Hardware Advent Calendar Day 1
Our first project in the Open Hardware Advent Calendar is the Passcode Lock. This is a project I recently completed for the Next Super Geek Challenge at Make...
The Open Hardware Advent Calendar 2014
When I was a kid, we used to get advent calendars, with a chocolate for every day from December 1 to Christmas Day. Often, the chocolate tasted terrible, but...
Playing with the PL9823-F5: a breadboardable Neopixel-compatible LED
A fun new part has recently become available - the PL9823-F5. It looks like a standard 5mm RGB LED, with 4 pins and a diffused plastic forming the body of th...
Ottawa Mini Maker Faire 2014: Badge Edition
The weekend before last in Ottawa (August 16-17, 2014) was the fourth annual Ottawa Mini Maker Faire. Mike, Chris and I exhibited the pinball machine - more ...
Trip Report: Mini Maker Faire Buffalo 2014
This year was Buffalo’s first-ever Mini Maker Faire, on March 1, 2014. I was able to visit the Buffalo Museum of Science to check it out. Getting there Buff...
New project: the PiMinder
We’ve started work on another new project, which we’re calling the PiMinder. It’s still a work in progress - don’t have any photos yet - but it’s coming alon...
2013
Introducing the 2013 Christmas PCBs
Two years ago, I made a snowman circuit board. It was a fairly simple board - white with black silkscreen artwork, and a bunch of LEDs for the scarf and butt...
Trip Report: Mini Maker Faire Ottawa 2013
Mike and I took the pinball machine to Ottawa for the Mini Maker Faire there this past weekend. It’s my third time attending, and second time exhibiting, at ...
Trip Report: Maker Faire Detroit 2013
This marks our third time exhibiting at this Faire, and fourth time attending overall. Our project this time was the DIYPinball system, which we’ll get to ...
Maker Faire Detroit 2013
We presented our latest project, DIYPinball, at Maker Faire Detroit this past weekend, along with collaborators Inventor’s Playground and Useful Robot. More ...
Update: Bluetooth Polygraph
Just a quick update on the Bluetooth Polygraph project. More description is coming soon - possibly full documentation before the Waterloo Maker Faire this we...
New PCBs are in!
We just got a bunch of new PCBs in, which means more projects are going to move forward.
NESVerter
Introduction The NESVerter is a conversion board to make an original NES controller into a USB gamepad. It originally came about after I made one based on th...
Project Vending Machine 1.0
Introduction The Project Vending Machine is a vending machine for digital goods - files, specifically. Vending Machine is a bit of a misnomer, actually - no ...
Project Vending Machine 1.0 Overview Video
In an attempt to document some older projects (as well as continuing to work on new ones!), here’s an overview video of the first Project Vending Machine: S...
New Project: 3D Printer
3D printers are the new must-have tool for people who make things. Personally, I want one for two reasons: designing and building custom enclosures for elect...
Trip Report: Mini Maker Faire Ottawa 2012
NOTE: This post has been sitting as a draft for the last few months. Rather than extensively edit it and thus postpone posting, I opted to make minimal date-...
2012
Maker Faire Ottawa 2012
Another update: Randy is on his way to Mini Maker Faire Ottawa 2012. The following projects are in tow: StatusLight Interro Christmas Ornament 2011 A ne...
Big Update
Hey there! We just updated a ton of pages to have actual, you know, content. We’ve added photos and made source code available from our Bitbucket repositorie...
Projects from Maker Faire 2012
Thanks to everyone who came out to visit us at Maker Faire Detroit 2012! More information to come, but for now, here are the links to our project source code...
Maker Faire Detroit 2012
We’re applying to exhibit at Maker Faire Detroit 2012, in conjunction with our friends at Useful Robot and Inventor’s Playground. Some of the projects we’re ...
2011
Download our projects from Maker Faire
We’d like to thank everyone for visiting our booth at Maker Faire Detroit, and as promised, we have made all the projects dispensed by the Project Vending Ma...