This was my last take on a circuit to drive the Sawyer Star, an 8×8 LED array that I have spent more than three years adapting from work from more than a dozen people — before I gave up. This schematic is basically the one drawn by Mike Ardai (N1ist) for his Color Stick project. I changed [...]

It’s been a few months since I last posted here … I don’t think there are any constant visitors who’ve been bummed out about the lack of activity, but I apologize nonetheless. Since we last spoke I threw the LED matrix project out to the Do It Yourself Christmas community to see if I could [...]

So, I’m going to use Henne’s transceiver for an LED matrix. You coulda probably guessed, if you’d thought about it for a minute or three. Anyway, I fell back on my – ahem – process: first, draw the circuit in Adobe Illustrator and then build it on a breadboard. (I have been asked in the [...]

If you’ve visited my automated Christmas lights page, the letters DMX won’t be unfamiliar to you. For those too lazy to click, it’s an electronic lighting protocol. Two wire. Used extensively in stage shows. And, in recent months, adopted by the DIY Christmas lighting community. So, I’m working on an idea (I’ll post more when [...]

In 2007 I played around with the PICAXE, a microprocessor sold by a non-profit in the United Kingdom that comes loaded with a BASIC-like interpreter (you can read more about it here and here). I built some lighthouse beacons and a railroad crossing light using the device. It had one drawback: I had to write [...]