Category: less is more
Deconstructing Kitty
“Google called, and josh.com needs more cats.”
So today we look inside these amazing cats that can somehow keep on wavin’ using less than 15 microwatts (!) of power. If you are into either ultra low-power or extreme design-for-manufacture, the you will want to see what is inside of these guys!
“What I can not create with an Arduino, I do not understand”, so we then proceed to recreate a lucky cat under Arduino digital control.
Make your BeagleBone Black am355x magically turn itself on with the built-in alarm clock
The am335x ARM chip in the BeagleBone Black has a Real Time Clock hidden inside that you can use to have the board spontaneously turn itself on anytime in the next 100 years.
Here I present a new utility to manage that built-in clock from the Linux command line, and explain how to use it to keep time, shutdown, software power cycle, and more!
Challenge: Can you figure out how this single part boost converter works?
If you think this is easy, then I think you are missing something. This is hard. You need to know your hardware intimately to figure this one out.
Free Less Is More Hacker tee-shirt to the first correct answer in the comments. More details and demo video below…
Blinking Blue- Powering a 3.7 volt LED from a 2.4 volt coin cell with a $0.02 charge pump
Everyone loves blue LEDs and everyone loves coin cell batteries, but if you want to power a blue LED from a coin cell you will need some help. Here is a super-cheap and easy way add a to boost your LED voltage with only an additional capacitor & diode, and a little software.
Capacitive Coupling Casestudy: Programming The Public Radio without removing it from its sealed shipping box
You’ve probably heard about the refreshingly simple Public Radio (TPR). There is no tuning knob needed since your TPR magically knows your favorite station straight out of the box.
Like most magic, this illusion of simplicity involves a lot of work behind the scenes. Each TPR has to be custom programmed by hand, assembled, and then lovingly packed before being shipped to your door. If only there was a way to program an assembled TPR without opening the sealed box…
Bigger is better: Build an Arduino-powered monster scrolling LED sign for about $15 a foot
Would you do with a massive full color animated LED display? How about…
- Read your Tweets in giant 140 char gulps from a block away
- Add English sub-titles to the Eiffel Tower
- Display a live-updating, 45 digit long countdown of the number of atoms left in the known universe
What if you could build the display however long you needed it, for only about $15/foot?
What if it was really easy to build and used everyone’s favorite low cost micro-controller so you could easily change the software to do whatever you wanted?
Well you can! Read on for details and perfunctory video!
Parallel Processing Arduino Style – Make Massive NeoPixel Displays With Nanoscale Concurrent Computing
We’ve already seen that it is possible to drive thousands of WS2812B NeoPixels with a lowly Arduino using careful bit-banging. But what if we could bang out 8 bits at a time rather than sending them single file? Could it be possible to drive 8 times as many strings (or get 8 times the refresh rate) from our Arduino by processing bits in parallel? It would be like having a tiny pipelined GPU render engine inside our Arduino!
Read on to find out the results of a quick proof-of-concept test!….
New GE C-Sleep Smartbulb Teardown- Part #1
Making a smart color-changing light bulb is not that hard, but making one that is cheap to mass produce is hard. At $10 per bulb (delivered!), the new GE C-Sleep bulbs are amazingly cheap, especially considering they include a Bluetooth radio.
For Part #1, let’s look at the physical design and construction of these fancy bulbs!
Inductive power on the cheap – Philips Imageo Tea Light Teardown
How can Philips sell a set of 6 inductively rechargeable LED lamps with charger and glass holders for less than $80 retail? It takes some careful and clever value engineering. Let’s crack one open and see if we can figure out what tricks and techniques they used!
Plates vs Coils – An alternative approach to wireless power transmission
Inductive power transfer is all the rage. There are now easy chips that do all the hard work for you. It even came built-in on my new phone!
But what about capacitive power transmission?
How come I’ve never seen a product that uses plates rather than coils? Is capacitive power transfer possible? Practical? Let’s break out a roll of tinfoil and find out!