The WingFly shield from Watterott lets you screw cables onto the Arduino instead of sticking them into the headers. This is very practical for prototyping.

 

WingFly Shield

Just soldered: compass modul LSM303DLHC, 3D compass and accelerometer. From Pololu, ordered at Watterott.

I will need this for my Steampunk outfit.

Next in LoL Shield history: a sort of “growth simulation”:

 

  1. Place a particle (say: light a LED) at a random place on the shield.
  2. start a new particle at (0, 0).
  3. move this particle randomly; north, south, east or west.
  4. if the particle hits a placed one, fix it at its last free place.
  5. repeat from 2. until (0, 0) is occupied.
  6. then blink the result, clear the screen and start at 1.

If the movement crosses a border then move to the other side. Mathematically spoken: we are on a torus.

 

 

First a short video

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For a long time I’m addicted to blinking LEDs, so it was only natural to buy a LoL Shield by Jimmie P. Rogers. I ordered it at Watterott and – as usual – they delivered very quickly. With trembling hands I unpacked the parts – and decided to wait until tremor disappeared. After reading some descriptions of the assembly and watching this recommendable video from Super Awesome Sylvia. I started to solder the 126 LEDs; a good exercise.

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This is a new version of the evil spider. I’ve replaced the LED in the head with two smaller LEDs in the eyes. This way the brightening is easier to see.

Some close-up photos are at the end of this post – if you fear spiders, scroll slowly down to the image with breadboard 😉

(BTW: at 00:10 you can see Daniel)

The source code is rather simple:

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Finally my birthday present arrived: the Cube4, a 4x4x4 RGB LED cube by freetronics.The assembly was rather simple due to the good instructions an the freetronics site and the detailed video. Because I’ve been a little impatient, the cube is not 100% rectangular. The first own skteches were no problem. It’s a lot of fun to view the colourful cube.
Unfortunatly I cannot upload sketches since yesterday evening. I’m in contact with John from freetronics. So a word concerning the support of freetronics: wonderful! Quick and competent.

The patterns are:

  • drops: falling drops in different colours;
  • lines: rotating diagonals;
  • loop: a sort of a fountain;
  • defColours: show all pre-defined colours;
  • fill: all LEDs white, then change to random colours;
  • plane: shift planes from bottom to top;
  • single: random LEDs with random colours;
  • RGBCube: show RGB values from #000000, which has coordinates (0, 0, 0) to #FFFFFF, which has coordinates (3, 3, 3). Red on x axis, green on y, blue on z;
  • defColoursBlink: blink whole cube with pre-defined colours.

If this intro has finished, the patterns repeat in random order.

If someone has an idea how to make a better video, please let me know.

The first Arduino project off the breadboard. The eyes begin to glow if someone approaches.

 

(Repost from my old blog, 2012-04-15)

 

Here is my second USB stick:

usb_stick_02_01

A close-up of the cooling system:

usb_stick_02_02

The back side:

usb_stick_02_03

Close-up of the little foot:

usb_stick_02_04

And finally the stick at work:

usb_stick_02_06

The glass lens is a light blue one, but the red LED of the stick is strong enough to outshine this.

 

(Repost fom my old blog, 2012-11-06)

One year ago I started to dive into Steampunk. My first Steampunk gadget was a USB stick. A part of a copper tube (18 mm diameter) and two end caps gives the following.

usb_stick_1_02 usb_stick_1_01

Looks a little boring, so I prepared some decoration:

usb_stick_1_03

And here is the result:

usb_stick_1_05 usb_stick_1_04

usb_stick_1_06

Additionally some details:

usb_stick_1_10 usb_stick_1_09 usb_stick_1_08 usb_stick_1_07

 

(Repost from my old blog, 2012-10-03)

 

Today (OK – last year – this a copy from my old blog) arrived the RedFly shield from Watterott. Here are some images of the soldering:

Image

Image

Image

The main difficulties of the start were:

  • Finding the MAC address. OK – the sketch WLANScan.ino gave the information.
  • Finding the admin password of the router.
  • Typing the correct password.
  • Allowing the MAC address to join the net (lost the documentation).

But finally the WebServer.ino sketch worked:

Image

 

(Repost from my old blog, 2012-04-27)