Would you like to get rid of multiple remote controls at home? Why buy one if you have some brain. As housing an old Nintendo GameBoy could be perfect choice where you already have buttons and Graphical LCD in place.

Only simple add-on made of IR transceiver and ATtiny44 has to be attached to GameBoy port that converts received IR data in to serial that can be sent (and received) to GameBoy Advance. Adapter is compatible with all 38 and 36KHz devices. Remote signals can be sampled directly from original remote controls and recorded in memory. Then commands can be sent via nice Graphical interface. Is it convenient enough – you decide…

There are several complete and free AVR boot-loaders around internet, but this one can be great choice as it has nice and intuitive graphical interface. It seems that it is tested on very few AVR’s, but should work on other too.

Boot program for chip is written using codeVisionAVR where free evaluation copy should be enough to compile. And another part is a Windows (works on Win 7) application that is available as Academic Free License. Bootloader itself is capable in programming Flash and EEPROM files and talks via COM port.

For this project you need a light tower with red, yellow, green and blue color lamps and Wavecom GSM module. All this stuff can be bought on ebay if needed. Anyway this is a great project to make cool effects by switching lights remotely by sending simple SMS.

Light bulbs are controlled via Opto22 board with 12V optical switches that allow controlling of 12V bulbs safely. Relay board and SMS terminal is controlled by obsolete AT90S2313 microcontroller board that can be easily replaced by ATtiny2313.

I bet remotely controlled submarines are really fun stuff as you can explore underwater world without getting wet. Jason’s built underwater ROV submarine is very original solution as its layout is based on PVC pipes.

It seems that design is still under strong development. Despite its first successful tests under water submarine will be upgraded to more flexible platform with things like leak detector, temperature and pressure sensors, air lift balloons,  torpedo, sonar, grabbing arm, artificial horizon, compass, joystick control, AVI video recorder. All these add-ons will require a MCU to controls all bunch of sensors and parameters. But while project is in development, you can see current version of sub in action here. Let’s hope we will see finished version it.

What is good about WiFi radio? Actually it removes the limits of location. You can listen to the radio channels from around the world in pretty high quality. Regular radio is limited to some range from transmitter antenna, this way you can hear mostly local broadcasts. Internet radio isn’t new thing – even wireless radio boxes have been around for a while. You can easily get one for less than $100.

If you are a little bit geeky just build one. In this project various parts from different electronics are used like WL-520gu router, USB audio adapter, VFD display and ATmega8 which ties things together. When put everything in nice black box – it seems that you couldn’t get better looking from store.