This project is pretty simple but built with good intentions – to make a gift. Attiny85 based fountain lighthouse keeper that gives beautiful beam spinning effects along with PWM controlled dimming. It also has a blue Luxeon Rebel LED that lights lower lighthouse windows.

Definitely this is much greater gift than any other taken from store shelf.

Most standard graphical LCDs don’t have touch screen. But if you need one then check out this solution. Project uses standard KS0107 based graphical LCD attached to Arduino. As touch screen there is an iPod touch used that talks to PC via WebSocket which further sends data to arduino via serial link.

Sounds pretty complex and barely practical. But it’s fun and who knows – it may be useful for some purpose.

This might be great tool for makers and hackers. This STM32F203 based board is using a generic USB_TO_XXX protocol and is able to provide over 10 useful interfaces like JTAG, SWD, SPI, IIC.

Despite various direct protocols it also gives more advanced functionality like timing control, pooling, nesting and other high level functions. This is a great starting point for various devices like logic analyzers, probes, scopes, programmers – and even more with additional circuits. Project is open-source and is available in KiCAD format.

Power meters are great tools to measure power usage of any appliance at home. It may help to hunt down energy hungry devices and lower the usage by replacing them with more efficient. Why build an energy meter? The obvious answer would be – flexibility. When you build one – you can add as many features as you like. So here is one of solutions using accessible parts like Attiny85 microcontroller and several other parts like op-amps.

Power meter measures voltage, current and so power. Also it tracks frequency and power factor and is able to operate up to 100A loads. There is optional an RF transmitter which transmits data to displays or loggers.