Do you know why this project named as “Mini Lighthouse LED circuit”? It’s because the LED circuit has a shape like a lighthouse and that’s the reason it got the name here!

Basically, this is a simple “lighthouse” that when it’s powered up, it will rotate the beam around the 12 LEDs. This Mini Lighthouse LED Circuit is a very useful tool, especially for a model railway.

For your information, this Lighthouse has several interesting features. The first feature is a full size ICSP connector, while the second is a socketed DIP version of the PIC12F683.

Those 12LEDs is the maximum numbers of you can charlieplex from four tri-state pins. The PIC12F683 is an eight pin device that has five GPIO plus the MCLR pin, where it can be used as an input. You can keep one GPIO spare, GPIO four where it also happens to be an analog port that allow you to add a light sensor that turns the lighthouse on when it gets dark.

Furthermore, this version has an LM317 regulator on the back so it can be driven from 12V or whatever.

Are you nterested in MP3 Players? Ok, would you like to create a portable and cute little Daisy MP3 player, if you’re giving the chance here?

Don’t be fooled about the size of this Daisy MP3 Player, as this Daisy is a multipurpose sound player for embedded applications. As a result, it can be used as a standalone personal music player, as the sound for any art projects, as a museum tour guide (if only you have the chance to involve yourself in this job!), in a toy or whatever embedded audio that required high sound quality.

Since it uses MMC or SD flash memory cards, thus the storage size is unlimited. Meanwhile, it also has several interface modes for human or machine control purposes!

For your information, this Daisy is based on the Microchip PIC 18F45j10 and it’s a new family of PIC microcontrollers. Although this PIC18F45j10 is a new microcontroller but it is capable of running at a full 40MHz at 3.3 volts. Furthermore, most of the pins are 5 volt tolerant, which it will ease the interface with other microcontrollers.

The other chip on this board is a VS1011 and it’s an combination of MP3 and .wav decoder chip, a DAC and a headphone amplifier all in one 28 pin package!

Do you feeling bore and would like to have some interesting thing in your life? Well, you will be amazed and pleased if you’re one of the fans of this Firework ignition system!

For those of you that never seen a firework ignition before, it is an enclosure with a set of light switches that could be used to set off fireworks by simply passing current through a strand of nichrome wire.

Basically, the fireworks ignition system can be used to control over 30 unique channels and each of the channel will consist a transistor circuit that switches the power source on and off easily. If the system not in use, there is a DC input jack mounted that allows for recharging through wall wort.

Beside that, an arming key was also has been incorporated as a safety mechanism by a serial port set at 38.4 kbps. By going through this port, the user can freely set the state of any of the channels, check the status of the arming key, and get the voltage of the battery without even a hassle at all!

By the way, don’t forget to put the whole thing into an stylish aluminium suitcase… and be careful when using

Does anyone here the ping-pong lovers? Well, do you know that playing this game is no an easy task, as you need to have the speed, skills and sharp mind if you want to beat your opponent off!

If you one of the ping pong fans but you just don’t want to sweat a lot here, then would you mind to build a PingPong-CDC?

This PingPong-CDC project is a very simple USB frequency hopping spread spectrum RF modem or also known as FHSS. Basically, the modem is based on the PIC18F2550 and the Semtec XE1205 RF module. However, this module doesn’t include any MAC or protocol layer like other modules did!

The main purpose of this project is to demonstrate the correct ways to write a FHSS MAC layer and use the USB feature to interface it with a PC through CDC and WinUSB. It might sounds complicated to you but it wasn’t!

For your information, it’s easy to change the software to experiment with different protocols, since the protocol is not a hard-wired type. In addition, a utility for pairing and configuring modems also has been included as well for your own ease!

So, after you’ve done with the project, it’s time to have some serious fun with it.

What is your reaction, if somebody tells you that with only $30 and a little bit of patience, you can have a complete set of open source and hackable MP3 player? Didn’t it sound interesting to you here?

Instead of the low cost, this open source MP3 player can either be modified to accept any serial commands, be embedded in an art project, being used as the voice of your next smart talking robo-sidekick, or it can be simply filled with music!

Furthermore, you can put it in whatever size card you want and it’s up to the theoretical limit of the MMC format.

For your information, this MP3 player is features a shuffle mode, basic track navigation, volume control, FAT32 support, fragmented file support, an unlimited number of files on the root directory and high quality playback! Beside that, all of the files at 256kbps can be played without even a hitch and the variable bitrate files are fully supported with peaks up to 320kbps.

Although it also supported the WAV files, but it has to be less than CD quality except you put a faster oscillator in the pic.