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The weekend before last, at the urging of some colleagues at North Point, I decided to make a real-life version of the Inception button. (If you haven’t heard of this website, you should visit the link and give it a push. :) It basically makes the same intensely epic sound popularized by the movie Inception.)
In order to give the Inception button a physical existence, I, once again, turned to Arduino. The next logical step after that was to use Adafruit’s Wave Shield. It really was pretty simple to build once I figured out what needed to be done.
I used Sparkfun’s big red dome button and housed everything in an enclosure I bought at Fry’s.
Here are the inner workings of the button. I drilled a hole in the top of the enclosure for the button to fit through and wired the button to the Wave Shield, which sits on top of the Arduino. The Inception sound is stored on the SD card, which fits into the slot built on the Wave Shield. Super convenient. Audio is coming from an 8th to 8th” cable out of the Wave Shield.
I had originally planned to have it be battery powered, but after realizing that it probably needed to have a long life, I ended up powering it with a DC adapter.
The final product:
And here is the button in its new home at the North Point Media offices!
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Over the last year I have been learning and playing around with Arduino, an open source electronics prototyping platform. It’s pretty amazing how much you can do with an Arduino. Just about anything you would want to make, you can make with an Arduino. It brings the concept of DIY to a whole new level.
I’ve made a few things with it in the past year, including a MIDI controller, but my most recent project was a clock I made for my bf, Nick, for Christmas. He is also into Arduino, so I thought it would be fun gift to give him.
I based the idea off of mrnick1234567’s Pong Clock Instructable and code with a few modifications to the code and design.
Here’s the protoshield I built for all of the electronic components. It connects to the Arduino beneath it.
Here’s the interior of the clock and the back side of the LED displays. I used two LED Matrix displays from SureElectronics.
I built the case out of black LEGOs because Nick is a pretty big LEGO fan, and I thought it added to the DIY-ness of the gift.
The clock cycles through different ways of telling the time and date.
And gives messages. :)
It was a fun project, and I have more in the works. Stay tuned!
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Word.
(via michellenotmarie)
“The hardest part is doing something interesting, yet simple. It’s incredibly hard to show restraint.” — Eric Anderson, Digital Kitchen
Bon Iver and I spent all morning at the farmer’s market listening to the banjo boy, whose talent was an unexpected delight. While we listened, Bon Iver made a friendship bracelet from reeds, grasses and thin strips of bark he found. When the boy took the second of his scheduled 15-minute lemonade breaks, Bon Iver placed the bracelet in the boy’s overturned cap with a flourish. ‘I’ve been that boy, and I want him to know the banjo’s not his only friend,’ he said.
Science: Coffee Drinkers Live Longer -
As I’ve always known.
(Source: newsweek)