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Here’s a cool review of Make Controller and peripherals from MakingThings.com. Thanks Ann for the video!

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This is sick! Check out the servo snakebot using an Atmel Atmega32 microcontroller and bunch of Futaba servos!  You can see more videos of the snakebot here.

The robot consists of nine cars connected with eight Futaba servos controlled by a microcontroller. All wheels are passive, the locomotion comes entirely from lateral undulation, which is wave movements in the plane similar to a snake.

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Here’s a cool little DIY on how to run an AVR MCU on battery made out of lime!

Some of the fruit and vegetables we eat can be used to make electricity. The electrolytes in many fruit and vegetables, together with electrodes made of various metals can be used to make primary cells. One of the most easily available vegetable, the ubiquitous lemon can be used to make a fruit cell together with copper and zinc electrodes. The terminal voltage produced by such a cell is about 0.9V. The amount of current produced by such a cell depends on the surface area of the electrodes in contact with the electrolyte as well as the quality/type of electrolyte.

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Wow, check out this cool audio spectrum analyzer you can make using an Atmel AVR MCU! Well, I’ve always wanted to make one of these but finally found it at HackedGadgets!

This is an experimental work to monitor a spectrum pattern in radio band, and is a continuous project from Audio Spectrum Monitor. To analyze the spectrum of an input signal, I chose an Atmel AVR microcontroller that used in the Audio Spectrum Monitor to process FFT. When think it easy, it can be thought that sample an input RF signal directly and analyze it will do. However, you will able to recoginize that there are some techinical difficulties from following reasons.

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Here’s a cool DIY on how to build your own laptop using a microcontroller and an LCD. Well we should really call it, “MCU Laptop” but it’s a great exercise for anyone learning computer hardware.

Ever thought to yourself, “Hey, I could probably build my own computer if I really tried.” Or maybe, “Man, I really need a laptop with an embarrassingly low-resolution display, a processor that goes at 256 Instructions/sec, and I’ve only got $50 to spend!” Well, that’s how I got here! It took me about 4 months to complete, with a number of pauses when school and life intervened, but I’m now mostly finished with my first real DIY project.

Check out voltmeter and ammeter LCD panel you can make using an Atmel8 MCU. Tight!

This multimeter was designed to measure output voltage and current in a PSU, where the current sense shunt resistor is connected in series with load at the negative voltage rail. It needs only one supply voltage that can be acquired from main PSU. An additional function of the multimeter is that it can control (switch on and off) an electric fan used to cool the main heatsink. The power threshold at which the fan switches on can be adjusted using One Touch Button Setup.

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So we made the MP3 player and it works freakin’ great! The sound quality was as good as an off-the-shelf MP3s.
We plan to hack it using a CuTOUCH CT1720 and make some cool touchscreen menus for it.

Here’s some pictures of how it will fit in the touchscreen enclosure: (It fit perfectly!)

The only hurdle we face now is changing the firmware of the MP3 player a little bit so we can grab the MP3 song titles.

Cool propeller clock you can make!

How this clock works:
A motor spins the “propeller”, and a small microprocessor keeps track of time and changes the pattern on seven LEDs with exact timing to simulate a 7 by 30 array of LEDs. It is an illusion, but it works nicely.

If you want to build this clock, you will need a few things, including:
Skill with motors and mechanical things.
Prior electronic experience.
A dead VCR or floppy drive or other source of a suitable motor and miscellaneous parts.
A programmer that will program a PIC16C84 or 16F84 microprocessor.

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You gotta check out CMUcam if you haven’t yet. It can be controlled via a serial communications