LEAP#430 Driving Scavenged Linear Steppers
CD/DVD drives are a great source of interesting scavenged components - in particular laser units and stepper motors.
I pulled some of the head control stepper motors some time back. They are small 4-wire bipolar stepper motors with a worm drive for linear motion. Datasheets are non-existent(!), so this is a little project to figure out their specs and demonstrate driving the units with an Arduino and bespoke H Bridge control circuit.
As always, all notes, schematics and code are in the Little Electronics & Arduino Projects repo on GitHub
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LEAP#429 3x7 Pomodoro Timer
Over the years, I’ve become habituated to working in a Pomodoro style - make the day a series of tasks worked on in short blocks of time, with regular breaks. But I’ve never actually used a timer - just relied on my internal clock to work in roughly 1 hour increments.
As I was building the Boldport 3x7, it started to appeal to me as a very nice display to use for a non-distracting Pomodoro timer.
After breadboarding the idea my first thought was to make a PCB … but as there’s been a bit of Mohit Bhoite fandom in the Boldport Club recently, I was drawn into a another copper-wire sculpture. Not very ruggedized, but it does look interesting!
Now for the true test - is it actually useful? Well, I’ve started using it for real and so far so good.
Note: the two left-most digits are minutes, the last digit is tenths of minutes. This is actually why I built my 3x7 with the yellow digit on the right;-)
As always, all notes, schematics and code are in the Little Electronics & Arduino Projects repo on GitHub
Here’s a demonstration of a 5 minute countdown. Yes, that’s 5 minutes of your life that is non-refundable!
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LEAP#425 Look Inside a 7-segment with the Boldport 3x7
A lovely PCB and classic Boldport instructions(!):
This project is a challenge to construct.
The Boldport 3x7 is essentially a 3-digit common-cathode 7-segment display, rendered with discrete components.
Since it’s a chance to look inside the workings of a 7-segment display unit, I decided to modify my build to flip the lid and expose the internal wiring for inspection. Now it’s built, more projects to follow!
As always, all notes, schematics and code are in the Little Electronics & Arduino Projects repo on GitHub
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LEAP#423 The Maker UNO
I was recently shown an Arduino-compatible board made by Cytron in Penang, Malaysia called the Maker UNO. I gather it began life as a very successful kickstarter that aimed to produce a better board and associated teaching materials for K-12 education.
It packs some nice additional features in the Uno form-factor:
- LEDs on all digital pins
- a piezo buzzer on pin 8
- a push-button on pin 2
Aside from looking pretty spiffy, a really nice feature is the price - currently listing for RM15 (~$3.60 USD)!
As always, all notes, schematics and code are in the Little Electronics & Arduino Projects repo on GitHub
Here’s a quick demo sketch that exercises the LEDs, buzzer and push-button:
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