Piano, one of the most popular musical instruments, no matter from the past and recently, have been set a high reputation for its on class. Most of the pianist has to go through a very tough examination, from the absolute beginner (Grade 1) to advanced (Grade 8).

Honestly, it’s not an easy task, but you can quit whenever you want.

By the way, for those who interested on the piano, but you don’t have the budget to purchase it, then this coolest sensor piano keyboard can be a very good option for you!

Basically, the project utilizes an array of LEDs, which is working as light sensors. It helps to generate a musical tone and simulating a piano keyboard.

For this project, the LEDs are being used as both emitters and sensors. Hence, you need to use 63 LEDs, where nine of the LEDs for each of the seven natural keys!

For your information, when the key was pressed, the middle LED served as photodetector. It absorbs light from the other LEDs that reflected from the finger. An audio amplifier is responsible to pass through the tone. By connecting headphone or speaker to the audio jack, the tone can be listened easily with it!

For the music lovers, especially the pianists, it’s your chance of the life time to build an outstanding LED sensor piano keyboard.

In general, people would like some privacy. If you’re living in an area, especially there’s a nosey neighbor who always wondering what you’re currently doing, by sneaking through your house’s windows, then the best option is to install the Window Blinds system!

Well, some of you might say, “I didn’t want to waste my time, standing beside the window, turns the window’s curtain on and off all the time!” Ok, in this case, maybe a fully automatic Window Blinds or Servo Blinds is what you need here!

Before you’re starting the project, there are some important components that you have to prepare first:

• Picaxe 08M Starter Kit

• 38Khz IR detector

• Futaba S3003 servo

• Some wires

The Window Blinds device is totally depending on your own needs. If you want to use it to be controlled from your computer, rather than a clock radio, then the infrared is the easiest way!

For this project, they didn’t want to use the Arduino, as the Picaxe 08M Starter Kit is much suitable, due to its simplicity and price. Of course, their built-in infrared command is one of the biggest reasons, why we should use it in this project!

Believe it or not, the total cost for the project is under $20. Instead, it’s one of the cheapest and simplest projects of all! So, there’s no reason why you didn’t like it!

Many home hobbyists like to try something interesting and different. If you’re one of them that love to take on a challenge, then it’s the perfect time to get into this TV-based Oscilloscope projet!

Hold on a minute! You’re thinking, “TV-based Oscilloscope? I’ve done the similar project before and I don’t want to waste my time on this stuff again!” Come on, guys. This TV-based Oscilloscope is slightly different from the others, as it based on a LPC2138 microcontroller application. It can be used to convert a standard television into a high-functioning oscilloscope.

This means, with only a single chip solution, it able to turn your TV into a digital storage oscilloscope with a sampling rate 160 Ksps. This feature allows you to monitor five different voltages on the five analog inputs simultaneously!

The main purpose of the project is to implement a high-resolution video generator inside the ARM microcontroller, LPC2318. In this case, the video generator is able to operate in the background mode, even though with a very low CPU loading!

It supports two different standards, American NTSC and Europe PAL systems. The best thing about this project is no additional video-controller and video-RAM is needed. Therefore, it definitely helps us to save a lot of money!

Every person has his/her uniqueness and this makes the world becoming even more fantastic. Some people are great in the hardware parts, while other is experts in the software. Well, it would be a plus, if you’re mastered both the hardware and software parts!

Our today’s project, the ECE 576 UDP Hardware is quite challenging, as it requires a lot of advanced knowledge in the internet protocol suite. For those who didn’t realize, the user datagram protocol is one of the core members of the Internet Protocol Suite, which is a set of network protocols used for the internet.

Technically, with UDP hardware, a computer is able to send out messages in datagram forms to other hosts on an Internet Protocol network. In this case, there’s no need to has a prior communication to set up special transmission channels or data paths!

Most of the time, UDP hardware also being called as the “Universal Datagram Protocol”. David P. Reed was the father of the protocol, when he discovered this method in 1980!

For this project, you’re going to build the ECE 576 UDP Hardware on the DE2 evaluation board, which is interfacing with the DM9000A MAC/PHY chip on the board. Make sure it includes the full IPv4 protocol and the ARP protocol for MAC address resolution.

Lastly, the UDP hardware interfaces with the DMA9000A, by using the DE2_NET software.

It’s a good thing living under one roof, as we can help and take care each other. Sometimes, it could be a hassle as well, especially if you’re sharing the a bathroom with several housemates (Gosh, it reminds me of the horrible moment, where I rented an apartment with three college classmates).

Let’s say, you’re reading or doing paperwork in your bedroom. All of a sudden, you’re having stomachache and you got to go to the bathroom immediately. You rushed out from the bedroom and find out that the bathroom is occupied! Gosh, this is not the first time you’ve this situation, where it keeps repeat and repeat…

Hence, isn’t it good, if you can install a light in every room, which is light up whenever the bathroom is occupied? In this case, you don’t have to waste your time anymore!

Frankly, it’s quite easy to build the device. First of all, an electrical switch is attached to the bathroom’s door’s lock. Once the door is locked, the switch is closed (Closing a circuit) and ignites the lights in the rooms. The information flows to a microcontroller that registers the status change and writes the information together with a timestamp. After that, the file is being read into a database, while the web application server is connected to evaluate and report the desired information!