Here is a quick build I did for this year's Christmas party. I decided to take a couple hours to hack together a pair of Steampunkish Christmas Goggles using an inexpensive set of Oxy Acetylene Welding goggles and things I had around my work bench.

This year's Defcon had a hardware hacking kit you could buy featuring the Parallax Propeller chip, a nifty eight processor microcontroller.

And what better way to test out that the board works than to solder up a nice vga/ps2/audio shield so I could check out the Turbulence Demo.

The Defcon 17 HHV Propeller Board

Adafruit has an updated version of their open sourced TV-B-Gone Kit, a universal TV off button. The Adafruit kit is a high power version of the TV-B-Gone keychain remote, and can extinguish TVs over 150 feet away.

I had the previous version of the TV-B-Gone, but the ATTiny85 microcontroller stopped working. Obviously not being able to turn off any TV was a problem, so I decided to order the updated kit and use a Vojo mint box to house the project.

I am hosting a very informal meeting at my place at 7:00PM tonight 7/29/2009.
My address is:
10449 Niagara Falls, Las Vegas, NV.

Obligatory Google Maps link:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&q=10449+niagara+falls+las+veg...

My latest project is a Knitting Row Counter, which helps you keep track of which row you are on when knitting complex patterns.

Morgan, my girlfriend, recently aquired the addictive hobby of knitting. She needed a row counter to keep track of where she was in multiple projects. Instead of paying up to $12 to $30 for an store bought electronic counter, I decided that I had enough parts laying around where I could build one for a fraction of the price.

I based the counter off the Parallax SX28 microcontroller, an I2C EEProm for data storage when the device is powered off, three seven segment LEDs for the display, and a few lego pieces for buttons.

Just a FYI, the Las Vegas Adobe User Group is going to have a presenter from Phidgets, Inc demo some Adobe Flex / microcontroller interaction.

UNLV Paradise Campus Room 511
851 E Tropicana Ave
Las Vegas, NV 89119

July 7, 2009 at 07:00pm

More info: http://groups.adobe.com/posts/c09b77c844

Today in the mail I got a sample from SchmartBoard. Not a real circuit board, but rather more of a key chain with some traces you can solder on to get a feel for the product.

They included a SMT quad opamp which could prove useful in a future project.

So I picked up the through-hole Bus Pirate kit from Fundamental Logic. The Bus Pirate is a neat little device that lets you interface with most serial interfaces (SPI, I2C, RS232, JTAG, 1wire, etc) and is controlled by a simple serial terminal.

Here is the picture of my assembled bus pirate:

I love the old analogue synthesizers, the Korg PolySix being one of my favorites. Had a great sound, has some nice features for an analogue synthesizer of the time, and is just fun to tinker with.

Each dorkbot is different and is driven by the needs and interests of people in the local community. But generally, the main goals of dorkbot are: to create an informal, friendly environment in which people can talk about the work they're doing and to foster discussion about that work; to help bring together people from different backgrounds who are interested in similar things; to give us all an opportunity to see the strange things our neighbors are doing with electricity.