Author Archives: Jim

SD amp fix/upgrade

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Jim

The amp on the portable speaker I’ve been using for years for basement square dancing felt exceptionally hot after a dance recently.  Sound was still fine, but even after sitting for a few minutes with no audio input, the fan … Continue reading →

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Free invisible clips (and more Christmas LED repair)

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Jim

Another (now pretty routine) LED Christmas light repair.  The pretty blue snowflake LEDs that live around the living room mirror were dead.  I took the string down, pulled the bulbs, tested each (with the LED tester on the front edge … Continue reading →

Posted in Invisible clips | 1 Comment

Cheap USB charger

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Jim

A small wall wart USB charger I was counting on failed to charge my phone, looping in a charge-for-half-a-second/won’t-charge cycle.  When I got home and started to investigate, I was stymied by lack of a way to get my hands … Continue reading →

Posted in Miscellaneous | 2 Comments

HDR partial success

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Jim

After I hacked some pink/purple LEDs into some Christmas light strings and wanted nice pictures, I faced the usual problems of photographing lit LEDs. The ones I wanted were from outdoors looking into a window at night, making it even … Continue reading →

Posted in HDR | 1 Comment

New air stone for PCB etch tank

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Jim

I’ve been using my new Container Store spaghetti-holder etching tank with cupric chloride etchant for several months now, and I’m pretty pleased with it.  I can walk away and let the bubbles do the etching, needing only a visit halfway … Continue reading →

Posted in Cupric Chloride Etchant, PCB Etching | 2 Comments

Hacking pink LEDs into Christmas lights

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Jim

LED Christmas lights are cool.  Unfortunately, some older strings didn’t have the neat pink/purple LEDs.  We have some with with just red, green, blue, yellow, and orange.  The yellow and orange are quite close, and are the least exciting colors. … Continue reading →

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Luxeon Rebel LED

Posted on December 3, 2011 by Jim

I got three of these 3 W Luxeon Rebel cool white LEDs from SparkFun as possible sources of the flash in the RF starter’s gun replacement project.  I’ll run them at close to the 1A absolute max current, for maybe … Continue reading →

Posted in Luxeon 3W LED | 3 Comments

Getting ATtiny4313 to work with Arduino IDE

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Jim

I got hooked with how easy it was to get a Tiny85 running with the Arduino IDE:  Drop a directory of stuff (including core libs) in the “hardware” directory, hook a couple of wires up to an Arduino running ArduinoISP … Continue reading →

Posted in ATtiny4313 | 7 Comments

Protected: RF starter’s gun

Posted on November 26, 2011 by Jim

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ISP cable for Tiny 85 (and more!)

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Jim

I got the cute little 8 pin Atmel AT Tiny85 working with the Arduino IDE by following steps and hints in this post and playing with a couple of different core libraries. At under $3 each, this chip is a … Continue reading →

Posted in Tiny 85 stuff, Workshop 88 Stuff | 7 Comments