Zendulums for Japan

Inspired by the Ice Bulb published on Instructables, we decided to create our own version. Ice bulb suggests that we use a balloon to shape the ice and before it freezes, add an LED so that it can glow. Since we decided to use a whole bunch of LEDs (on a string), we opted to […]

"Project Monday"? What the heck is that? We're giving our news postin' habits a bit of an overhaul. Here's the plan: instead of one massive newspost once a week, we're going to break things up a bit. Monday's we'll post a cool project or tutorial that might be fun to try. Wednesdays, we'll post some […]

It's once again Friday, and you know what that means - new stuff! And, on this particular Friday in Calgary "Cowboyland" Alberta, it's the start of the 100th Calgary Stampede. This is a pretty big deal, or so we hear, judging from the rampant "yee-haws" that are shouted into the July air with surprising frequency […]

Unlike Sparkfun, who actually manage to find fake Atmel ICs, we just get strange batches. The Atmel ATMega328 is the power behind the Arduino/Freeduino/*duino, and we have to set up a programming system to burn the venerable Arduino Bootloader into these chips. We normally use an AVR STK500 in HVSP (high voltage serial programming) mode, […]