Houston Houston!! We have a problem!!

DIFFICULTY: INTERMEDIATE

Last night we decided to try out a new project. I put the little balloons aside a bit and made a rocket!! I'm very happy with it and now we have new ideas on how to make a completely new mobile and a sky full of stars and planets in Bruno's bedroom. Hold on for other news and photos soon ;)

A little video to relax

Primo - part 2

LEVEL: BOSS

We will presume that you read the original DIY instructions.

Instruction Box

Inside each command is a resistor. Putting a command in the Instruction box closes the circuit and based on the value of the resistor, the processor sends instructions to Cubetto. Simple and effective. Measuring the value of the resistor is done by means of a voltage divider: pair your unknown resistor with a known one and then measure how much of a voltage drop happens over each one. Basic math will give you answer.

Primo - part 1 (of many to come)

LEVEL: BOSS

DISCLAIMER: I have absolutely nothing to do with people from Primo. I have never met any of them and I have no financial reason to write about their product. But I can't help it because it is awesome!

This is a thing that actually jumpstarted my interest in microprocessors. A while ago (more than a year), there was a Kickstarter campaign for something called Primo (you can find all about it here). Being a proud physicist father (that loves programming), and having a lovely and supportive physicist wife (that also loves programming), I (we) embarked on a journey to make this thing. At the time, it was still unavailable, and even if you preordered, delivery time was estimated a year from then.
They provided a reasonably well documented DIY guide (you can still find it here) so it seemed like a reasonable little project. And it probably could have been...if I could make myself to stick to their instructions.

Traffic Light with ATtiny85

LEVEL: MEDIUM

We got a request from the school to provide a few traffic signs. The kids will start to learn about traffic: rules, how to behave, etc. We had 3 days and on the first day, checking up on the stocks of materials, we decided we will make a proper traffic light, with button for pedestrians and all.
This is also our first project using ATtiny microprocessor. You can program it using your Arduino Uno and Arduino IDE so it really wasn't very difficult.