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Build a DIY Electric Scooter

With the influx of electric skateboards and scooters that have taken over seemingly every city, I started thinking it might be something to purchase for myself. Instead, I decided that I would try to build my own from scratch. Not really to save money, but to gain the experience of building something of my own. The primary purpose of this article is to show my design and manufacturing process, so that you can learn from what I built.

Microcontrollers, Software, and You — Part 4

We ended our Part 3 article by giving you an assignment that emulates the card game, often called In Between (but better as known Acey Deucey). Recall that the objective of the game was to have the “dealer” turn two cards face up and then have the player bet that the next card would fall “in between” the two face-up cards. Let’s see how close your code came to mine.

Hacking LEDs and Arduinos: Instant LED Projects

Most LED projects involve some wiring, some resistors, a solderless breadboard, and a bunch of jumper wires. Not this one! You can create bright, stunning colors by literally just plugging LEDs directly into the Arduino pins. No wiring, no resistors. Just your Arduino and a handful of LEDs. The is the absolute simplest and lowest cost way to get started manipulating light and color. I’ll show you how to do it safely in this article.

Microcontrollers, Software, and You — Part 3

While getting the correct answer to a programming problem is crucial when designing a program, it should not be your only objective. You also want to write it with sufficient clarity that someone else can read your code and easily understand what the code does. Let’s take a look at an example program to show the square of a number.

Build the Music Visualizer

As a final class project for our “Digital Systems Design Using Microcontrollers” course we all took last semester at Cornell University, we created a very unique device. We wanted to design something fun, aesthetically pleasing, and interactive, and since we all enjoy listening to music, we decided on a music visualizer. Our vision was to create a unit that listens to music being played, then in real time displays a dynamic and colorful visual representation of the music based on the volume and pitch of the notes. Additionally, our music visualizer provides an alternate avenue for experiencing music for the hearing impaired. Here’s how we did it, so you can make one too!

An Introduction to the Parallax Propeller 2

This article gives an easy preview and shows you how some of the neat new features in the long-awaited Propeller 2 can be leveraged in your applications.

The Dr. Duino Explorer — A Review

Stop spending hours fighting your breadboard! With the Dr. Duino Explorer, you’ll save a ton of time on your next Arduino project. Whether you’re a novice or experienced Arduino user, the Explorer offers an array of commonly used sensors and modules with the ability to connect and disconnect what you need at will. It has a novel mechanism for routing digital and analog I/O pins to wherever you need them.

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