Hobby

My hobbies and passions: Generally pretty nerdy stuff.

Christmas Countdown!

Sometime in 2016 I came up with an idea for a project: A Christmas ornament that counted the number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds until Christmas. But [...]

Weekend Project – Ghost Message!

Many years ago, I thought it'd be a fun idea to have an RGB panel that would display game sprites on demand, connected to the internet, so people could display [...]

Programming AVRs using a USBasp on a Mac

I loaned out my trusty USBTinyISP to a friend a while back and it was easier to go find an alternative than to coordinate schedules. So I bought a USBasp - [...]

Early Morning Project: RasPi Zero Roomba

I can't sleep. Instead of sleeping, I'm hacking robots. Last year during my winter holiday I wired up a Raspberry Pi to my Roomba, to drive it around and such. [...]

Programming an nRF52 on a Mac

  Several months ago, I went to promotional conference for a microcontroller on a whim. I'd heard about it the night before, and after some investigation [...]

Weekend Project: Wireless outlet control

I mentioned briefly in my post about controlling LEDs with my Amazon Echo that I have some wireless outlet switches that I wanted to control. At the time I [...]

Weekend Project: Amazon Echo LED Control

As I mentioned last week, I got an Amazon Echo for Christmas. The first time I heard about it I thought "Meh, I already have a phone that does that". Then I [...]

Roomba-ing with a Raspberry Pi

We've owned a Roomba for years. I wanted one for a few years before that and the thing that has been most attractive about it to me has been the ability to [...]

MakerFaire Project (2015) – Part 2

When last we left our hero, he had made sizable progress on his robot, only to be stumbled by it's devious brain!!! The Teensy 3.x is my Go-to embedded [...]

MakerFaire Project (2015) – Part 1

This started out as a "Project of the Week" post, but As it started to take form, and started to stretch beyond a week, I decided I wanted to make a more [...]