NerdKit

[Dave Nelson]

I am looking hard at this NerdKit http://www.nerdkits.com/kits/ as a way to get a little deeper into the Arduino and ATmega, has anyone had experience with it?

I really like their videos.

[Isaac Dover]

i'm interested in the same kit... are you able to find that they offer the book by itself? I've only seen it as part of the kits that they sell. I already have a lot of the things listed in the kit.

 

There are other videos that directly target Arduino. If you see the make magazine blog, they'll have them posted. You can probably find them at youtube as well. They are "101" introductory vides.

 

Isaac

[Dave Nelson]

I have not seen the NerdKit book/pdf offered by itself. My desire to buy the kit is pretty high.

I jumped into the Arduino with both feet recently after a lot of reading on Make, Instructables, ladyada, and Arduino.cc. I bought an Arduino, prototype shield, motor shield, some servos, and a handful of bit and pieces. I also got the Getting Started book and did all of the examples except the last.

My original intention was to build an 8x8 lightcube but now I am working on a two servo toy to point a laser on the ground to entertain our cats.

I learned basic electronics in the Navy years ago and have forgotten most of what I learned there but my interest in electronics and building things is stronger than ever. Hope to see everyone at the July meeting, maybe I will have something together by then to share.

[Isaac Dover]

Dave, Keith and John (both are group members) would be a great resource to ask about the LED cube.  I've seen both produce projects involving such things. John's project is on the group front page. It sounds like we're near the same level of knowledge. I've been a software guy for a very long time, and the hardware aspect seems to escape me at times.

If you don't mind sharing, what part of town are you in? I'm in Smyrna near Atlanta Rd and Paces Ferry (Sminings!). My summer semester ends this week (thank God!) and I'm looking to dive back into my "Pimp My Doorbell" project.

If you can make it, our meetings might be of interest to you as well. They're always the last Saturday of each month. We've been meeting at REV coffee for the last few, but we're willing to move around to accommodate others.

Isaac

[Dave Nelson]

I plan on being at the July meeting, looking forward to it.

I live over near Powers Ferry and Delk Road, not to far away.

What are you pimping about a doorbell?

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 10:53 AM, Isaac Dover <isaac...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dave, Keith and John (both are group members) would be a great resource to ask about the LED cube.  I've seen both produce projects involving such things. John's project is on the group front page. It sounds like we're near the same level of knowledge. I've been a software guy for a very long time, and the hardware aspect seems to escape me at times.

If you don't mind sharing, what part of town are you in? I'm in Smyrna near Atlanta Rd and Paces Ferry (Sminings!). My summer semester ends this week (thank God!) and I'm looking to dive back into my "Pimp My Doorbell" project.

If you can make it, our meetings might be of interest to you as well. They're always the last Saturday of each month. We've been meeting at REV coffee for the last few, but we're willing to move around to accommodate others.

Isaac

<snip>

[Isaac Dover]

Good to hear that we'll meet you then!

I'm planning to use a doorbell to binary encode information. The first iteration will be simply the temperature. Inexpensive doorbells have two tone bars and a resonator for each. It's the grandfather clock idea applied to other areas - audible indicators for information. Temperature will generally be far too high to simply ding once for each degree, so binary is a more reasonable encoding scheme.

high tone = 1, low tone = 0

there are other types of doorbell mods i've seen online, but i've never seen what i'm trying to accomplish. For a more elegant, future implementation I hope to use musical wood blocks and mallets. Sort of a steampunk thing.

 - isaac