LadyAda sells a pretty neat kit to allow you to give your USB gadgets power from 2 AA batteries. To create the “Boost” (save for batteries) The capacitors, IC Socket, schottky diode, etc.. took roughly 10 minutes to solder onto the PCB using these instructions, and another 15 minutes and 2 Altoids gum tins to give it the “Minty” part. Note: I spent the better part of 2 days locating these gum tins in the midwest. Eventually I found them at CVS of all places.
Our son wanted to be an Imagination Mover for Halloween. He actually wanted to be all of them, but we chose “Mover Scott“. To re-create mover Scott, we need his famous “Wobble Goggles”. They are $20 from Disney, AND they don’t have lights and music. Crazy talk. I decided to make my own. Additionally, we needed a costume. Finding a “decent” one was tough. So my wife decided to make her own.
A neighbor gave us a Harley Cruiser power wheels. The only thing wrong with it? Battery fail. Well, technically that was the only thing wrong with it. In my opinion it was missing a few things. Time to mod this hog.
ax0n over at h-i-r.net inspired me to attempt and successfully build this project . His 3 part series (part 1, part 2, part 3) is Awesome (capital A), and he certainly deserves the all the credit for doing the heavy lifting and providing an excellent write up. I used it as my template throughout the entire process.
625 LEDs? 156 Giant RGBW Pixels? 1500+ solder points? Arduino programming? Check, Check, Check and Check. Sounds awesome doesn’t it? It sure does, but WHAT does this thing do? What are the applications? Why would someone want to build this? Keep on reading.