Science Projects

Tutorial: Adafruit Color Sensors @ The Adafruit Learning System. Your electronics can now see in dazzling color with this lovely color light sensor. We found the best color sensor on the market, the TCS34725, which has RGB and Clear light sensing elements. An IR blocking filter, integrated on-chip and localized to the color sensing photodiodes, minimizes the IR spectral component of the incoming light and allows color measurements to be made accurately. The filter means you’ll get much truer color than most sensors, since humans don’t see IR. The sensor also has an incredible 3,800,000:1 dynamic range with adjustable integration time and gain so it is suited for use behind darkened glass. We add supporting circuitry as well, such as a 3.3V regulator so you can power the breakout with 3-5VDC safely and level shifting for the I2C pins so they can be used with 3.3V or 5V logic. Finally, we specified a nice neutral 4150°K temperature LED with a MOSFET driver onboard to illuminate what you’re trying to sense. The LED can be easily turned on or off by any logic level output. For more flexibility, we’ve made two different versions of this board: A breadboard-friendly breakout, and a wearable version designed to work with the Flora wearable platform. Stay tuned, on Wearable Wednesday we’re going to have an amazing project you can build these color sensors and FLORA!

Check out Dramatic Robot by n7corp a short 6 second film for the Adafruit #adafruit6secs electronic film festival (Youtube playlist here for all the entries on YouTube).

The LevelOne security conference is fast approaching and [charliex] is doing his best to put the finishing touches on this year’s conference badge. Around the perimeter of the badge is 48 LEDs driven by two LED drivers. This allows for some crazy hardware hacking to create anything from a TV-B-GONE to a bulbdial clock. There’s also a few extra switches and sensors that can be hacked to do some interesting things, but where this badge really shines is the addition of an OLED display, allowing it to transform into an XMEGA Xprotolab, a small oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer, and frequency generator. Yes, this badge can be hacked, but it’s also a tool for hacking. There’s an impressive amount of work that went into this badge, a feat even more impressive given the fact that the LayerOne conference is this weekend and the PCBs for these badges won’t arrive until tomorrow. We’ll be the first to say we’re masters of procrastination, but [charliex] really cut it close here. Filed under: hardware, news

This circuit is a Fuse status indicators for power supply 12V. If a fuse is normally, the LED is going to lights all the time. But when it lacks, the LED will be blinking. The value of this equipment in the circuit is suitable for a 12 volt power supply. However able to change the power supply 6 volt or 24 volt, By reducing the value of the resistor to half or increasing. The display section consists of a stable multivibrators (Q1-BC547, Q2-BC547). And the driver LED section (Q3), All circuits except for the R5 connect before the fuse. The output of the multivibrators is going to work all times there are power supply, by passed through the diode D2 to the input of the driver LED section (Q3‘s PinB) If the fuse is intact , the base current of Q3 has still always, by passed through R5 and D1,the [...]

Architectural photographer Ezra Stoller photographer the American skyline as it was being inextricably altered by geometric modernist towers rising in from its centers. In the midst of color photography’s rise, Stoller insisted on shooting in black and white. via butdoesitfloat: United Nations, under construction (note the smokestacks from a now demolished manufacturing plant). Seagram Building

Artist Tom Beddard meticulously rendered 3D fractals shown below.  We can’t tell whether they’re real, imaginary, or well, in the matrix…so why should you and why does it matter?  via butdoesitfloat: …and from Beddard himself: I have a fascination with the aesthetics of detail and complexity that is the result of simple mathematical or algorithmic processes. For me the creative process is writing my own software and scripts to explore the resulting output in an interactive manner. The best outcomes are often the least expected! Via Beddard’s fractal explorer on his website, subblue:

We’ve seen a fair share of carputer builds involving a Raspberry Pi in the last few months, but even the power of a Raspi can’t compete with the awesomeness of this Arduino-powered scooterputer. Like all awesome projects, this build is the product of a massive case of feature creep. Initially, [Kurt] only wanted a voltage monitor for his battery. With an  Arduino Duemilanove, a voltage divider, and an evening of coding, [Kurt] whipped up a simple device with three LEDs to indicate the status of the batter: either low, good, or charging. The project was complete until he ran across an awesome OLED screen. Using a touch screen display for just battery monitoring is a bit overkill, so [Kurt] made a trip over to Sparkfun and got his hands on a temperature sensor, real-time clock, accelerometer, GPS sensor, and even a cellular shield. The resulting scooterputer is a masterpiece of in-vehicle displays: there’s a digital speedometer and GPS unit, and the cellular shield works as a tracking device and a way to download real-time maps of the scooter’s current location with itouchmap. While the majority of the electronics are hidden under the hood of the scooter, the display of course needed to be out in the weather. To do this, [Kurt] found a nice enclosure with a rubber boot that perfectly fit the OLED display. The display is connected to the Arduino with a cat5 cable, and everything should hold up pretty well as long as [Kurt] doesn’t drive through a hurricane. You can check out a video of the scooterputuer below. Filed under: Arduino Hacks, transportation hacks

Check out that beefy electric motor hanging out where the swing arm connects to the body of this motorcycle. It’s the muscle that makes this recently completed electric motorcycle ready to race. [Jackson Edwards] has been hard at work building this from the ground up. His goal was to make it competitive with production line motorcycles and his most recent test runs are pointing to success. The film shows off a couple of problems with the rear suspension. This actually led to him dumping the bike on a turn. He was unharmed but the control panel on the handlebars was unfortunately trashed. A bit of work fixed the handling and he was able to ride with confidence. We’re struck by how quiet the thing is as it tears past the camera at the very beginning of the video. Sure, we’ve seen other electric motorcycles before. Those were all conversions from gas. Designing from the ground up really opened up a lot of choices not possible with a retrofit. Make sure to dig through all the posts on his blog to get the full picture. Filed under: green hacks

New Products 5/18/2013 (video): Xively Jumpstart Kit: ARM® mbed Edition (0:05)  Raspberry Pi Camera Board (0:30)  BeagleBone Black (2:01)  Budget Pack for Raspberry Pi (Does not include Raspberry Pi) (2:18)  SEGGER J-Link EDU – JTAG/SWD Debugger (2:47)  BlinkStick – Smart USB-Controlled LED Pixel Kit (5:35)  Parallax Propeller Activity Board (7:30)  Fabric Ribbon 4-Channel Wire – 1 yard (9:14)  Standalone Toggle Capacitive Touch Sensor Breakout (11:10)  Standalone Momentary Capacitive Touch Sensor Breakout (11:10)

We have a massive update on Cats of Engineering, we’re caught up and have added the latest rounds of cats. If you’d like to add your cat just scroll down to the bottom and send a photo (link) in! Pictured above: Missy guards her Arduino fireflies prototype.