Stefan aka Noneus

I just printed some stickers for my Lenovo X200. I probably add more stickers to it soon and replace the ones that are on in the process.

First stickers for my Lenovo X200

I just got my Arduino I ordered at watterott (http://www.watterott.com/). Watterott is a german shop, which sells arduino and accessories for it. I orderd the standard Arduino board: a Duemilanove.

I also ordered a book for it. It’s called “Getting started with Arduino”. But this book is for people that never had anything to do with programming, electronics and programming. So it’s pretty much useless to me. I gave it to me father. Perhaps it will get him interested in electronics and microcontrollers.

But the board itself is pretty cool. You don’t have to know that much about the microcontoller for settings of special-function-registers and so like with the mikrocontrollers I tried at home or university. You just have to download the Arduino software. Then put in a sketch, which is basicly writing C++ with some addons for the mikrocontroller. Now connect the Arduino with an USB-cable and upload the sketch. As a first test I connected 9 leds to the arduino board. Each in series with a 1kOhm transistor. I wrote a short sketch, which now outputs predefined patterns to the 9 leds. For the full sketch take a look under the more link.

Here are some pictures and an animated GIF showing a pattern I display with my sketch.

Getting Started with Arduino by MAKE

Arduino with some LEDs

The patterns I programmed:

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I recently bought a cheap Logitech mouse for my EEE Pc. But the mouse came with a very long cable i didn’t really need. So I tried my luck shortening the cable. It’s pretty easy. Just open the mouse. unplug the usb-cable from the pcb and cut the cable. Strip the wires. Stripping the wires without a wire striping tool can be really hard, because the cables are really thin. Next I simply twisted the wires and put a bit of solder on there. Put on some electrical tape, so there is no chance the wires can touch. Put it all back together and tada!

A couple of weeks ago after my FMAX 6500 broke I decided to build my own dance pad. So after looking at several howtos involving metal I decided I just want to build a simple wooden pad with 4 arrows. Because I still have my Controller Box from the FMAX I “just” need to build the the frame with the arrows. This article will feature the first part of a series in which I hope to build a nice dance pad.

So to start I had to make a plan. I went to a local store and purchased the following items at first:

• 1000mmx900mmx19mm chipboard serving as the base plate
• 4 270mmx270mmx10mm mdf-board serving as the arrows
• 4 313mmx313mmx16mm chipboard serving as the edges.
• 2 270mmx279mmx16mm chipboard one serving as the center. one being cut in 4 39mm parts and used as arrow borders.
• 1 1000mmx500mmx0.5mm steelplate.
• Some different colored wires.

If you don’t know how a dance pad looks look at this site (click me).

I draw a picture of how the arrow will work:

First thing I did is glued the 4 edge-plates and the center plate on. the base-plate. Put on some glue. Spread it evenly. (I wouldn’t use a folded piece of paper again.) Put the plate on the glue. Check that it’s in the right position!!! Put wait on it and wait the time it says in the manual that came with your glue.

Next I cut the 1000mmx500mm steelplate into 8 parts. 4 200mmx200mm and 4 210mmx200mm. The smaller ones will be glued to the base plate later. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of that.

After this I drilled all the required wholes. I used a 10mm drill with a spike so I could easily drill the holes exactly where I wanted them.

That’s it for part 1. On the next part I plan to make in about 1,5 months (I have exams in a month) I will show you how it went with gluing on the metalplates and how I connected the wires and hopefully some first tests.