Tindie

If you’ve been following along or browsing Tindie for any length of time, you know there is no shortage of unique items here. Whether it’s a new way to use WiFi, a fun robot, or something that simply can’t be described well in just a few words, Tindie has it. On the other hand, sometimes you just need a simple light. We’ve got you covered there too, and here are three items to help keep the dark away!

USB Light

The simplest light on this list, this device is simply 3 LEDs on a board that you can plug into a USB port. This could be very useful to carry around on a keychain to plug in when you need light and there is a USB port around. On the other hand, it could be paired with a portable USB power supply, or even the same store’s 18650 battery accessory to act as a flashlight.

Light Detecting LED

This interesting light design detects a lack of light, and turns on to compensate. After 60 seconds it shuts off, and if you need more time, you can press the reset button for a “fresh clock.”

Light-Up Minecraft Sword Light

If you like Minecraft enough to start building real-life props based on it, a sword is an obvious choice. A sword with lighting effects is even better, and this kit will help you make that a reality. Of course you’ll still need the actual sword, and you can find more info on the build here on Thingiverse.

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This project is pretty cool. Normally having a big LED array is challenging enough to get working properly considering how much power it can draw. Making it flexible adds another layer of complexity but the payoff is worth it considering all of the novel applications it opens up. One such application this project has been used in is a Major League Soccer match.

This LED array was placed under a players jersey and displayed information like the current score and other match statistics. This was an exhibition match, but shows off but one interesting application if you can make the state of the art more amenable to the softness of our bodies and the garments surrounding them.

There has got to be loads of other cool stuff that can only be done (or made easier) with flexible LED panels. Have you considered wrapping the entire light post in your front yard with something like this rather than just having one bulb on the top? What about gathering multiple flexible displays to replicate Megascroller Mario? If you have a project that uses one or just have something in mind you would use one for , tweet us at @tindie

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This device, first of all, is not a crab that uses the Bluetooth low energy protocol for communications. It is, in fact, a “crab table.” Based on Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest walker, this much smaller version stands at around seven inches tall, and has a clear acrylic table mounted on top. This might not be big enough for a dinner table, but it might make a great substitute for a lazy Susan. Perhaps several of these could march around a larger table, sending food anywhere needed!

The table uses Jansen’s ingenious method of linkages to act as a set of wheels, with two DC motors in the center to power everything. You can see the design process in the video below. Interestingly, two differently-sized crab-bles are shown stacked on top of each other around the 2:15 mark, as well as a rendering of a full-sized table a littler later. Perhaps we will see more versions from the Mectok Store in the future!

Though a derivative of Janson’s linkage method, I can attest to the fact that it takes a lot of work to adapt something like that to your own purposes. It’s neat to see others keep running with this concept!

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When you hear music or other noise, generally people’s ears are the receiver, but it can be somewhat difficult to really classify just how loud something is. You could use a sound level meter for tracking the decibel level, but for a quick visual look at how these levels are changing, this meter from Nightfire Electronics could be quite useful. It gives you a line of LEDs that show this level in yellow, green, or red. The range is adjustable, so you can make it suit your needs.

Though the meter above includes a microphone to measure noise from the environment, if you’d like something to use as a VU-meter for your custom stereo, that store has you covered as well. The unit seen below features dual level LED displays and accepts an RCA input to allow for the audio signal to come from nearly any electronic component.

While you’re checking out these two items, the Nightfire Electronics store is worth browsing through. They have four pages of products, including several noise generators and other audio equipment, as well as more general-purpose electronics like relay boards and LED kits.

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A developer by the name of Brian Kane has made millions of people feel slightly unsettled by hooking up Amazon’s Alexa into an animatronic singing fish called Billy The Bass. No details as to how this was actually done are provided with the video but you can see some kind of development board in the lower left part of the frame indicating this is probably a legit hack as opposed to just syncing Alexa’s voice to the fish movements manually. The question is, does this simply process audio in real time for lip syncing, or is it precalculated?

Precalculated methods have been used in the past in the form of text-to-speech readers. But this is using the voice of Alexa and it’s more difficult to figure out how a precalculating method would work. Modern microcontrollers are powerful enough to analyze audio on the fly, and that may be what’s going on here. You just need some type of WiFi dev board and an Amazon Dot for input, using it the microcontroller to flap the jaw as necessary.

A more refined version might make the Billy Bass its own Alexa device and for that you have to go through the Alexa Skill Set. It is a set of APIs providing access to a whole host of things ranging from playing music to setting an alarm. You can also write your own ‘skill’ which is how the interface with a microcontroller is built. Communication with Alexa is done over HTTP requests so you could probably use any development board with a WiFi chip on it for this type of project.

Amazon Echo

One of the main attractions of the Amazon Echo is the seven microphones it has mounted on its rim. This lets it pick up sound from any direction even if there is music playing. There have been some attempts at a voice based home automation service for the Raspberry Pi, Jasper is one example. Whatever microphone you hook up to a Pi still probably won’t be nearly as good as the Echo. Picking up normal speaking level voice from across the room is tricky and the Echo seems to have cracked it.  For clarification, the Echo is the physical device containing the microphones and speakers. The echo streams your speech to a server where the web service ‘Alexa’ analyzes it and can respond and perform tasks etc.

While the Echo and Alexa are still in the early stages of the whole IoT and home automation scene and the whole thing is riddled with Amazon specific terminology like ‘skills’ and ‘lambda functions’, it is a step in the right direction. By making it easier to hook up a microcontroller to these types of services, it will hopefully be fertile grounds for new types of projects we’ve not seen before.

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The Theremin, if you haven’t heard of this type of instrument, is a device invented in the 1920s that is played without physical contact, and makes a sound like the voice on the original Star Trek theme song. If you’d like your own, you can now have one, via the Open Theremin kit on Tindie.

This kit takes the form of an Arduino UNO shield, as well as other supplied components. You will need to supply the actual Arduino board, as well as antennas since they, per the product’s description, they are easy to obtain, and bulky to ship. Once assembled, this digital Theremin senses the distance of each of your hands from the two antennas, creating its characteristic sound, as seen below.

Besides its nominal use as a high-pitched instrument, it should also be noted that you can change the sound characteristics around via a wave table on the Arduino. This should make it possible to map very different sounds, perhaps for a sort of “bass Theremin,” or something even more interesting. For that matter, since it measures hand distance from the antennas as a digital value, there is no reason you can’t use this for other non-musical applications, opening up the possibilities even further!

Note that there are two listings for this on the Gaudi Store, which appear to be the same, and are priced as such.

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PCB Rulers are not only practical and useful things to have but most times they also look really cool which is more than enough reason to have one. Lets take a look at some cool rulers on Tindie and some from the r/electronics subreddit.

The Ultimate PCB Ruler:

This PCB ruler claims to be the PCB ruler. You’ve got to admit it’s definitely a pretty good one. You’ve got pad pitch, trace sizes, smt sizes, diode and transistor packages, via drill size and a whole host of conversions on the back side of the ruler.

This ruler gets a solid 8.5/10 for being so comprehensive but is it the ultimate ruler? I think not.

Maker’s Rule – The DIYer’s PCB Multitool:

This one gets some bonus points for being a bit mad. So it’s got the common stuff like IC packages, 0.1″ grid, via hole sizes and of course, a ruler. Also included is a continuity tester. You touch your probes off the battery holder which is ground and another point on the on PCB, touch the other end of the probes to the circuit to be tested, if there is continuity, an LED lights up. You’d need four hands to actually make this work but who cares. On the backside of the ruler, just beside the conversion tables, there is a strip of sandpaper glued on just in case you want to remove some rust or make smooth some other surface at a moments notice. There is also an LED tester included.

This ruler gets 7.5/10 for being original.

Rulers From Reddit

This ruler is made by Digikey. It’s a good attempt but too many numbers and not enough pictures. 5.6/10

This ruler was posted to reddit by user alexlitz under the title ‘pretty cool ruler’. We’re gonna have to agree with alex on this one, it is indeed a pretty cool one. The black PCB with gold-plated pads gives it a great aesthetic. 8.5/10 for looks.

Not sure who made this one but it’s got lots of RF black magic stuff on it like a “wideband dipole”, a “Directional coupler” and a “guard loop”. Don’t know what any of that means but it sure does look real pretty. 9/10 for looks.

Have a cool PCB ruler you made or bought? Tweet me a picture of it @shanebot3000 and it’ll be included in part 2 of the cool PCB ruler collection.

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If you grew up in the 1980s or ’90s, there is a good chance you remember songs from your favorite video games fondly. The creators of these songs were obviously working with limited resources, but came up with many catchy themes nonetheless. If you’d like to create tunes like this yourself on a syntheziser modelled after the NES, now you can with the 8-Bit Power Synthesizer from Handmade Electronic Instruments.

Although it may look vaguely like an NES or its controllers, the body is actually aluminum, and features inputs and outputs to help you work with other audio devices. Perhaps most important is the 1/4 inch audio output, which would allow you to plug in to an amplifier. This could mean entertaining yourself, or perhaps even an impromptu concert for passersby, apartment neighbors, or whatever public address system you happen to gain access to.

If you’re wondering what this device actually sounds like, be sure to check out the video below.

If you think that is cool, this isn’t the only device by Handmade Electronic Instruments. Be sure to check them out to see what else is available!

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Tiny FM Radio and More Audio Specialties

Currently, there are many, many options for streaming audio signals, but sometimes an FM radio is still the right choice. If you’re doing a custom enclosure build or something similar, you could buy a cheap radio and disassemble it, but which Chichomencho’s Tiny FM radio–for scale, note the size of the stereo plug in the above photo–you can cut out the middle man and just buy the board by itself.

Controls are simple, including a potentiometer for volume control, and buttons to adjust the station. Of note is the fact that control is accomplished using an ATtiny85 chip, meaning that it could, in theory, be reprogrammed to suit your needs.

Chicomencho’s store also includes several interesting and useful items, consisting mostly of “Tindiesque” audio equipment. Besides audio gadgets, there are a few other interesting items there. One that caught my eye is the Arduino Nano to Uno adapter board, which basically transforms the Nano into the form of an Uno board. This could be useful for prototyping, since Uno shields can be used with it, though they will need to have extra long header pins.

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These days, hackers have many choices of processors and development boards for their hardware projects. If you need something small and cheap and don’t require a ton of processing power, the ATtiny85 is a good choice, but for better or worse it comes as a chip with not much else on it. Although not exactly a fair comparison, something like an Arduino Uno can be easier to start with, since it has a programming port built in, and female headers for IO.

Well, now you can have the best of both worlds with this ATtiny development board kit, which includes an ATtiny chip. This board breaks out all the ATtiny85’s pins, and includes headers for power, like this coin cell breakout, also available from Bitkit.

One thing this board doesn’t include is a way to program these chips. For this, you’ll need to either make your own programmer, use a programmer like the Bitkit Little Wire Kit, or do something clever like using a full Arduino Uno board for the purpose.

Though you could cobble something together on your own to get started with the ATtiny, if you’d like a head start with the hardware, Bitkit has you covered!

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