Tindie

Addressable colour changing RGB LED’s are all the rage but what if you want to go big? Want to light up your house? The Pixelflood could be just what you need.

The Pixelflood is a fully assembled and tested driver board designed to drive 20W RGB COB LED’s enabling super bright lighting systems for your house or garden. As these driver boards are WS2811 compatible it means there are no end of examples of how to interface them with common micro controllers and other systems online. Looking around we see that people have successfully interfaced these driver boards with Bluetooth controllers for changing colours on the fly. It could be great fun to connect these to the global cheerlights project meaning that you and others can change colours with a simple tweet!

The driver board will fit into the enclosures of common floodlights, meaning that it’s pretty trivial to make a rugged and watertight floodlight that can live outdoors in all weathers and all seasons. Is 20W not bright enough for you? Don’t worry, the creator RobG has you covered with a range of driver boards from 10W to 100W.

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The GoPro hero 4 standard case is depth rated to around 40 meters and the gitup2 action camera standard case is rated to a depth of around 30 meters but what if you want to go to 1500 meters? Well, this Scout Case may be just what you need.

Milled from a single block of 6061 aerospace grade aluminium and smartly anodised, this case is rated to a water depth of 1500 meters. It’s therefore suitable for deep sea divers and for installation on underwater rovers destined for the deepest deep. Aside from handling extreme depth the scout case is bomb proof and small calibre arms proof making it suitable for a range of hazardous environments.

Fitting a range of cameras from GoPro, gitup, and other action camera makers, the case has multiple internal mount positions allowing room for additional items such as an extra battery, LCD or WiFi packs. Internally it also has multiple mounting points for the camera itself to help accommodate different camera field of views. It also features an external adaptor with a standard 1/4″ camera mount enabling it to work with all your existing camera kit.

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Many of the millions of geocache worldwide are simple affairs, plastic boxes or perhaps a fake stone but this idea for a unique geocache really caught our eye.

Geocaching is a global phenomenon billed as “the worlds largest treasure hunt”. Participants have hidden millions of cunning geocaches and using a free app, others use clues and maps to find boxes of interesting things (known as caches) and log what they have found. It’s a fabulous, healthy hobby that can take people to really interesting places.

This, simple to assemble, through-hole electronics kit creates a geocache that will only reveal itself when light from a torch (flashlight to our American readers) shines on it. The kit uses easy to handle larger components and would make an excellent kit to assemble for a beginner or a first time solderer.

Available in numerous colours this kit has various modes for both testing the cache and also how it acts as a beacon, ranging from flashing regularly to only flashing when a torch light directly hits the sensor. You can see the range of colours and the brightness of the beacon LED’s in the video below

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USB C is here to stay and if you need to top off a LiPo cell, a charger doesn’t come much smaller than this!

The Ant USB battery charger by Beast Devices is a tiny device barely larger than the USB C connector itself. Weighing next to nothing it comes in at a diminutive 13.5mm x 16mm. Based around Microchips MCP73831T-2ATI/MC charge controller, it pushes a charge current of 500mA and features a pair of LED’s acting as charging and charged indicators. There are a couple of larger tinned pads on the rear for you to mount your battery connector wires too and a pair of half holes which you can use either M2.5 or M3 size bolts to mount the device.

Limited to a single cell this is an excellent solution. However if you need capacity to charge multiple single cells you might like to read this post where we looked at a charging system capable of charging 6 single LiPo cells at once and powered by a 6V 3A supply.

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As someone who loves all the creepy decorations, artistic costumes, and haunted houses, Halloween is one of the best holidays. So if you’re a fan of all Hallows Eve, then check out all the Halloween Theme things on Tindie!

For #BadgeLife and SAO, we’ve got you covered! Add something spooky to your costume or daily attire.

A Killer Badge Kit:

This PCB Art piece comes packed with twelve LEDs and sound, powered by an ATTiny1604 micro. You can even hack it using the Arduino IDE.

Ghost Pin – “Ghost Hunter”:

I ain’t afraid of no ghosts! Ghost Hunters can grab this awesome ghost pin to add to their badge collection. These badges feature blue LED eyes and come in four different options.

Frankenstein Electronic Pin:

If you’re a fan of the classics, then check out this pin featuring Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. This pin has an LED animation sequence controlled by a microprocessor. Magic Stone Tech, the pin’s creator, also offers other awesome pins!

Skull LED Earrings:

These Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) LED earrings are available in seven different styles and three different colors. If you’re searching for unique and fun earrings, definitely check out the other products from California STEAM.

What better way to get into the spooky spirit than by enjoying some of these awesome badges and products!

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With retro games getting rare, backing up your cartridge is a great way to ensure you can play the game and the accompanying saved games for many years to come! The YAGB – Yes Another Gameboy Dumper is a USB reader & flasher for Nintendo Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges, to do just this. Boot up the worlds most popular dot-matrix console and let’s see what it can do!

With the YAGB connected to your computer, you can interface between them using the required software, which is compatible with a range of modern operating systems. The board’s microprocessor uses its own native USB transfer protocol which means even the biggest games (up to 16Mb) take only a moment to transfer. With Nintendo not allowing backup ROM images on third-party websites, this is a safe and legal way to back up your collection and vital save points from any cartridge!

All the additional software, firmware and bootloader are available from the product page – and it works for the original DMG Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket and Color Game Boy models. Backup your entire collection for future generations to carry on where you left off!

The YAGB is an open source project sold by Sega4Ever who are based in France, and offer a couple of ROM dumpers for retro consoles in addition to this one!

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Looking for a budget way to get started with LoRa? This RFM95 breakout board can get you up and running in no time.

If you are within range of a LoRa gateway a node may be all you need to get started experimenting with LoRaWAN and receiving data from your node via the internet. Combining a Hope RFM95 radio module and a micro controller is a very quick and budget way to build a DIY LoRa node.

One challenge with the RFM95 module is that it has a slightly non-standard 2.0 mm pin pitch which can make it difficult to use with electronics breadboards or prototyping board. This breakout PCB solves this by converting the RFM95 to a standard 2.54mm (0.1″) pin pitch and adds a more robust though hole mount for a monopole antenna. It also has the footprint to add an SMA edge connector for really robust antenna connections.

There are stacks of tutorials online about interfacing the RFM95 radio module to micro controllers. One common recipe is to use the RFM95 with an Arduino using the LMIC libraries which have been ported to the Arduino environment. A good tutorial for getting this budget LoRa recipe up and running and connected to The Things Network can be found here.

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Do you want your UAV to make amazing autonomous landings? This laser interface board from Avionics Anonymous may well be just what you need.

Laser range finders can be useful on UAV as altimeters and can make autonomous landings easier to perform. However adding a laser range finder to your UAV can be a little tricky. You might want the laser to be positioned far away from your flight controller, meaning you don’t want to use I2C, and you might not have a serial port to spare. This interface board uses the robust CAN bus using to connect a range of popular Lightware lasers to the common Pixhawk autopilots and others.

The laser altimeter is utilising UAVCAN which is an opensource, MIT licensed, lightweight protocol designed for resilient intra-vehicular communications. The CAN bus can also be used to re-flash the firmware meaning if you change out your laser model you can still use this board. Supplied preconfigured for a laser of your choosing, this adaptor board is compact, lightweight and has numerous screw mounts designed to be easily removed if space is short and you want to mount it directly with double sided tape.

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These lockpick earrings are the ultimate in geek chic! We think anyone would cut quite the dash wearing these to any event, with the added bonus that you can amaze people with a quick display of your locksport prowess!

Beautifully acid etched out of stainless steel with stunning patterns in the handles, this is a fairly complete pick set. For single pin picking approaches there is a short hook, a single ball pick, and the classic half diamond profile. For raking there’s a nice C rake and an S rake (also sometimes referred to as a ‘Bogota’) and the set is nicely rounded out with a flat tension wrench. If you are new to locksport, a great starting guide is MIT’s guide to lock picking.

Importantly it’s worthwhile checking local laws around carrying lockpick sets before purchasing these. Finally as a quick reminder of good locksport practice, only ever practice on locks you own and never practice on a lock you depend on.

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Limitations are often the mother of invention when it comes to making music – the restrictions of early equipment for pioneering music makers never deterred them from creating great things! The 4-Step CV Sequencer may at first seem limited to anyone familiar with modern music making, but given time and inventiveness this can become a very useful studio gadget.

The 4-Step CV sequencer outputs CV voltages at a tempo set by the internal clock speed or an external signal – meaning you can synchronise rhythms between multiple units or a computer! Set each of the step knobs to your desired position, and it’ll output a CV voltage based on their position – perfect for notes, parameter settings, and other modular details. Alongside the sync input it offers two sync outputs which emit a pulse signal on each step and a pulse signal per complete loop; making it useful for triggering beats and samples.

There’s a switch to start and stop the module, as well as a handy button to play through the step values manually. It can be powered by battery for on-the-move music making, or via a 9V centre negative DC adapter.

The 4-Step CV Sequencer comes in a rugged aluminium case, and is sold as a completed unit by Handmade Electronic Instruments who are based in the USA.

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