The Easy-to-build TV Remote Lightdimmer!

You feel like all the lightdimmer is too ordinary and you would like something even more special here? Hmm…, maybe this wireless controlled lightdimmer with TV remote function is what you’ve looking for!

The great thing about this lightdimmer is it built by a shaded lamp, where it can be switched on and off by the normal way, or you could control the dimming of the lamp more or less with your TV remote control! So, when you’re switching the power on, a soft-start will be happening until the lamp burns at the previously adjusted dim level.

If you want to dim the lamp, either to turn it more or less bright, you can get it done by pressing the ’0′ button in the TV remote control. When you pressed button ’1′, it starts to dim directly to the adjusted start-up level.

dimmer-tv-remote

With the TV remote control, you can adjust maximum level by keep pressing the ‘P+’ button from the remote control, or ‘P-’ button for decreasing the maximum level to minimum level. And, if you want to reset the default values, then just pressed the MUTE button continuously!

You should remember that no matter which systems on the remote control is chosen, the ’0′ button always worked in the TV-mode.

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Have Some Great Fun With This Remarkable Game!

You have an old Nokia 3310, where you decided not to use it anymore and keep it lying in your drawer? Well, it’s going to be your opportunity here to transform the cell phone into a splendid gadget: The Famous Pong Game!

In this case, the accelerometer will be used to measure the acceleration of the cell phone. It’s used in cell phones to flip the image or web page based on the recording device or digital camera. Normally, it detects the photo frame to the height or width automatically. Because of its availability, it’s totally the perfect choice to suit to the different electronic structures.

pong

Ok, you must join the accelerometer, the ATMega88 and the display screen of the old Nokia 3310 altogether. The design that you’re about to make here is using 3-axle accelerometer MMA7260 module. This 3-axle accelerometer is the ideal choice for those who cannot adjust the SMD components.

One 9V battery is more than enough to power up the whole circuit, since the board is a 5V stabilizer circuit with 7805. Therefore, it’s time to have some great fun with this interesting stuff! [page automatically translated from Czech]

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It is Fun to Hack Binary Clock!

Clock is use to show the exact time to the people and can you ever imagine the life without the existing of clocks? Yep, it must be a terrible and horrible situation indeed.

Today, you’re very lucky, as you’ll have the chance to get involve hacking the binary clock! Oh, I can sense some doubts here. Ok, I’m going to try my best to clear out the mystery here…

For your information, a binary clock is a clock that displays traditional sexagesminal time in binary format. In the very beginning, it only shows each decimal digit of sexagesimal time as a binary value, but it also present in true binary form in nowadays.

binary-clock

It’s nothing hard to hack binary clock. First of all, you have to use three pieces of acrylic, and cut a hole on each of them. The top piece has four holes for the mounting screws, where are holding the whole thing together and the “Time to Hack” etch.

The extra space on the square piece of acrylic is being used to cut out spacers that can be fitted between each of the layers.

For this project, you’re better to use LilyPad than Arduino Diecimila. However, if you do use the Arduino Diecimila, remember to use header pins and solder as well!

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The Advanced E-field Touch Keyboard

Would you love to try something different in your boring life? Then, how about take a few hours and create an E-field touch keyboard?

We all know that keyboard is one of the most important input devices of the personal computer. It mainly consist a set of keys arranged in matrix from interfaced with microcontroller to transmit proper key-press signal to the PC. Amongst the various types of keyboards, the mechanical type of keyboards is most popular.

Basically, the E-field touch keyboard is an interesting project, where it can be used to replace present keyboard having mechanical type switches with a “Touch keyboard”. This keyboard can reduce the strain on finger muscles and chances of any related diseases. To be honest, the probability of a key not working is very less, as no any dust or dirt can enter into it to interrupt the key’s function.

The best thing about this E-field touch keyboard is it eliminated most of the mechanical keyboard switches.

e-field-touch-keyboard

If you refer to the above figure, you can see that two thin triangular electrodes are connected together to form a matrix of nine columns and four rows. The electrodes are responsible to sense the presence of finger near a particular key and then, it sends signal to the E-field sensor board.

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Twitter Burglar Alarm – The Best Alarm You Ever Have!

Twitter, as the third largest social network and one of the most recognizable social networking and micro-blogging service in the internet world, have more than 6 millions of members. Most of the internet networkers are very familiar with the Twitter, as it has the service that allows the users to send and read other users’ updates from time to time!

Most of the updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Some of you maybe spend hours every day, just want to chit-chat or keep interacting with other Twitter users. Honestly, you might have spending more time on Twitter than on your real life (Your loved one is nagging and complaining about it).

twitter-burglar-alarm

Well, you can stop their nagging with this smart “Twitter burglar alarm”! For your information, this project is based on the Arduino, where it can be used to monitor a home burglar alarm and send out status messages when some burglar broken into the house.

The Arduino’s digital IO pins are directly wired up to the alarm’s output signals. Since the alarm control panel is a distance away from the nearest Ethernet hook-up, thus an XBee wireless module is added, so it can remote it in wireless mode.

With this Twitter burglar alarm, now you and your family can have a good night’s sleep!

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