There are so many moments that you can’t take a picture off because of pretty slow human reaction. You hit button too soon or too late. In this project you will see how to take photos just in time when event occurs.

To trigger camera device catches a sound. And this gives pretty good results, for instance braking glass, bursting balloons or other activities that emits sound. Project is built around Picaxe microcontroller to control LCD and minimal interface. So it seems that you don’t need a high speed camera to take these great moments smart solutions work well too.

In summer time it is easy to get burned by sun especially on the beach. It is hard to track when sun is too active or when to stop sunbathing. To keep things right it is better to use a sunburn alarm which measures sunlight UV intensity level.

Prototybe is based on Propeller Platform SD along with LCD UI module. There is no need for some expensive UV light sensors – they used simple UV LED connected backwards – this way sensed wavelength is equal to generated light. Alarm also encounters skin type, sunscreen if used – these are entered before starting device. Be safe and have fun!

If want some serious fun with MIDI music, take a look at this serious looking midi sequencer built under STM32 processor with 512k Flash memory. This is a MIDIbox v4 – that means that it is an evolutionary product with more improvements and more power.

MIDIbox SEQ V4 Teaser #2 from Thorsten Klose on Vimeo.

MIDI box has a long list of features that should satisfy any of you if you decide to get hands on it. It has USB connection that gives an alternative to traditional MIDI interface and seems that Ethernet is also coming. It is quite complex project so be sure to check documentation carefully before decision to start. Listen to teaser sounds in video – sounds sweat.

PICAXE 08M is a small 8 pin microcontroller that can be programmed in BASIC like programming language. So this is really easy chip to start with microcontrollers. This project include a Mini-Flash device that is capable to control 4 LEDs and can be programmed from PC based program with Graphical User Interface (GUI).

All you need is to select 50 events for each LED in intuitive PC program and click Download to make it work. Besides that Mini-Flash also has a R/C servo output as a switch control, where each LED channel can be controlled regarding to servo control input. This is quite fun project on such small microcontroller.

Do you like play video games? So what about making one by you? This can be done if you know some C or BASIC programming language. You don’t have to care about hardware as you can use Open-Source Videogame Console that is based on Propeller Platform that is based on Paralax Propeller microcontroller that is clocked at 80MHz.

El Jugador module sits on top of Propeller platform and is equipped boot loader that sits on internal EEPROM, PAL or NTFS NTSC Video output with audio, and of course two game controller ports. Fun part is that it can be over clocked up to 200MIPS. With this power you can make lots of great games. All you need is to write program to SD card and bootloader takes care of the rest. Project is well documented so it should not be hard to start with. And of course kits are also available.