Timothy Meyer helped his daughter improve her TARDIS pinewood derby car by adding light and sound to it.

Timothy used an orphaned micro speaker, a jiggle-switch motion sensor, and a blue LED to make the improvements.  The motion sensor allows for the TARDIS landing sound to be made when the car is touched.

The source code for the project can be found on the Nova Labs project page.

 

 

 

 

Doug Hoyte has made his own devise to assist with morse code transmission.

This is the keyer pared with a straight key

A dual-paddle (iambic) key is the preferred key for the project.

The guts of the box.

This keyer has a robust set of functions and can be built for less than $40.

The benefit of using an electronic keyer like this is that the keyer’s internal timing circuits determine the duration of the dots and dashes, and the spacing between them.

Be sure to check out Doug’s website and check out his detailed write up on the project.  He also made his code available on GitHub.

 

Fredrik Hübinette has made his own Teensy based lightsaber.

This awesome looking lightsaber features a Graflex 2.0 for the hilt, which is a prop made to look like the original Gaflex flash gun used for Luke’s  lightsaber in the original Star Wars.  WS2811 LEDs are used to light up one of the blades.  He’s also used SK6812 LED strips for another blade.

This video shows the light saber in action, including the different blades made for it.  The sound effects in his lightsaber are most impressive.

Frederick has documented his build on his web site and made his code available as well.  You can read his build log over on the fx-sabers forum.

We previously showed this similar but unrelated light saber project by the Firebrand Forge.

Jay Converse, The Tuba Guy, has outfitted his sousaphone with a sound activated LED system.  When he blows into his mouthpiece different patterned images come up.

Just one of his many very cool LED designs

He was at the Women’s March in Washington with his Sousaphone

This project makes great use of the Note Frequency tool in the Audio Library (see panel on right side).  The code was originally developed by Colin Duffy.

 

You can view more of Jay’s tuba projects on his Instagram page captainsousaflame as well as his Facebook page TubaGuyFairfax.

 

 

 

 

 

Kevin Bott and the Art + Technology +  Sustainablity Research Group at the University of New Mexico created a beautiful art installation, Skylight, at the Albuquerque Anderson-Abruzzo Balloon Museum in their famous balloon-shaped window.

Those LED runs are 24 feet long! Holy cow!

 

This video gives some information about the project and shows the LEDs in action.

The team has made their code available on GitHub.

Forum user Cyclist recently built a free pendulum clock.

The cool thing about a free pendulum is that it has no mechanical linkage, escapement mechanism, or direct mechanical power to keep it going.

A small magnet on the bottom of the pendulum induces a voltage on a coil mounted beneath as it swings past. The voltage is detected by Teensy’s a/d converter and triggers a propulsion pulse applied to the coil from a digital output pin. This gives the pendulum a tiny nudge to keep it going. The pendulum defies the senses, swinging in eerie silence.

Cyclist reported that the accuracy is all about the pendulum.  He had it going for about a week and it was running slow by a consistent 1 second per day. He’s working on trying to refine the pendulum  and pivot design for easier, finer adjustment.

Nick Metchalfe built his own audio spectrum analyzer that produces a detailed picture of what you are listing to in real time, showing the changing spectrum of live input signals up to 16 kHz.  By using 2 16×32 LED matrixes, the spectrum displays 64 bands.

This video show the spectrum analyzer in action.

Nick says that the Teensy Audio Library is at the heart of the design, providing audio capture and high resolution FFT routines. Audio frequency data is scaled and binned into logarithmic frequency response groupings and is plotted using a custom fast display driver into a spectrum that approximates the human auditory response for a balanced visual aesthetic.

Nick says that the Teensy Audio Library is at the heart of the design, providing audio capture and high resolution FFT routines. Audio frequency data is scaled and binned into logarithmic frequency response groupings and is plotted using a custom fast display driver into a spectrum that approximates the human auditory response for a balanced visual aesthetic.

He’s posted his spectrum analyzer code on GitHub.

Jeremy Gilbert made an awesome clicky toy.  The goal of the project was to create a toy that is fun to use, be tactile, light up, and make fun and satisfying noises.

After looking at different options to get the right “clicky-ness”, a 5V relay was used.  Jeremy discovered that you get get louder clicks if you overdrive the voltage.  While this probably isn’t so good for the relay, he felt that since the actual duty cycle is so short it was worth the risk.

The clicky box of awesomeness is  field programmable so that when new suggestions come up during user acceptance testing (performed by his 3-year old daughter) they can be implemented right away.

The write up on Jeremy’s Hackaday project offers a good narrative of how he approached the challenge of getting the right clicky sound and feel.

 

Ben Forta made a giant menorah, with spinning dreidels, to celebrate Chanukah.

This impressive display is over 20 feet wide,  6 feet high, using over 3,500 NeoPixels with animated lighting sequences.

This tweet from Ben has a little more info.  Hopefully he’ll have time to share more photos & video soon.

Keith Baxter made a hand held MIDI keyboard called The Kyub.  This device using capacitive sensing and has an internal accelerometer for controlling the volume.

This video from their Kickstarter campaign gives a good overview and explanation of how the Kyub works.

This is a pretty cool video demoing the Kyub configured as a set of drum pads.

The software and details about how to build and use the Kyub are available on the Kyub website.