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Features

Lighting Up the Season — Again!
by Jon Williams in The Spin Zone
I like this time of year. The air is clear (even in Los Angeles!), the mornings are crisp, and the evenings are brightened with holiday decorations that illuminate the insides and outsides of homes everywhere. My home is somewhat small, so my lighting projects are, too. Small doesn't make me wimpy, though, and my little 12-channel lighting board for the Propeller Platform is designed to be tough enough for applications that go way beyond LEDs.

Q&A
by Russell Kincaid in Q&A
Attic fan control, seven-segment LED help, a timer project, plus more.

Oscilloscope Probes and Probing
by Robert Reed
As you start probing higher and higher frequencies, often the results get increasingly odder. This article addresses the reasons for that strange behavior. The ultimate solution to the shortcomings of your 10:1 probe is a very expensive Active Probe — but here is one you can construct for $25.

A Universal Micro Design
by Fred Eady in The Design Cycle
When I’m not writing, I’m soldering. With that, I figure most of you are not looking down the sights of a soldering iron as much as I am. So, instead of subjecting you to soldering up my SERVO-inspired experimental micro-SD card interface, I decided to design a simple and super-low-cost microSD interface card that you can build on your bench.

The Canon Hacker Development Kit — Part 2.
by L. Paul Verhage in Near Space
Last time, this column introduced CHDK and how to load it on a camera’s SD card. Locking the SD card makes it bootable on a Canon camera and that allows you to write simple scripts that automate features of Canons that aren’t otherwise available.This month’s column discusses the syntax of the uBasic scripting language so you can begin writing your own scripts.The next article will cover when I gave a NearSys BalloonSat flight computer control of a Canon camera running a remote script.

Projects

Piezoelectric Film Speaker
Audio/Video
by John Iovine
Experiment with this unique piezoelectric material to see what kind of audio sounds you can produce with film and a little voltage.

Is Your Garage Door Open?
Home Automation
by Ron Newton
You’ll never have to wonder again with this handy device.

Columns

Techknowledgey
by Jeff Eckert
TechKnowledgey 2010
A new approach to solar, a new battleground in hacker wars, the world’s smallest 64 GB SSD, plus other stuff you’ll find interesting

Smiley’s Workshop
by Joe Pardue
Smileys Workshop: An AVR C Programming Series (Part 28)
Getting a Little Shifty.

Fundamentals For Beginners
FUNdamentals For Beginners
How a PNP Transistor Works