CUBE: Post 1 – Waiting and Coding

As I wait for the lights to come from China I decided to prototype the cube in lollipop sticks. Or at least the first 3 columns. This really helped me visualise problem 1 with the cube. The lights are all in one strip and each one is addressable. So I can write some code that …

CUBE: Post 0 of my RGB LED Cube

There are sooo many LED cubes out there I can't even remember which one I saw first. I just know I've always been excited by them and have wanted to build my own. But the pure scale of an LED cube has always put me off... I just don't like resistors! Then just like my …

Christmas Lights on the Raspberry Pi

DRAFT********** TBC Tuesday 4th December     A simple guide to connecting WS2812B strips to a Raspberry Pi You can control a strip of individually controllable RGB LEDs using a Raspberry Pi. The lights The lights are called WS2812B. Adafruit calls them Neopixels. They are individually controllable red, green, blue lights. Here is a strip …

Extension: Hacking the Bearables badge with a micro:bit

After my husband successfully hacked the Pimoroni Bearables badge with a Raspberry Pi: https://lorrainbow.wordpress.com/2017/11/18/guest-blogger-phil-underwood-hacking-the-bareables-badge/ I decided to have a go and try it with the micro:bit I'm in no way an electronics whizz like him but the words i2c and CLK sounded familiar! Turns out the micro:bit does have an i2c bus! How to hack the …

Guest Blogger: Phil Underwood hacking the Bareables Badge

Pimoroni are selling very cute flashing badges in a range called Bareables (get it??). You can wear them as a badge that flashes a number of patterns or connect it to a motion or light sensor. After buying one and showing it off on Twitter the conversation quickly turned to how we could hack it. …

How to connect wires to the micro:bit

Here is a rundown of the different ways you can connect wires to the micro:bit. This is something I've spent a long time working out and trying out different techniques Through the holes The micro:bit has 5 holes representing 5 pins: 3 data pins, ground and 3V. You can wrap wires and thread through the holes …

micro:bit RGB box

Last Christmas I taught my son's school algorithms by getting them to write an algorithm for some Christmas lights. The younger children had to colour in 3 boxes with 3 different colours. The older ones had to write down the time delays. The eldest group had a look at RGB values and loops. When a …

Updated: micro:bit sound sensing hoodie

After buying the MonkMakes sensor board: https://www.monkmakes.com/mb_sensor/ I decided to upgrade the micro:bit light up hoodie. The lights would now light up the louder it got around me! Here's the final result: https://twitter.com/LMcUnderwood/status/922583301059235840 Build The sensor board is very easy to connect using crocodile clips Using 3 different crocodile clips you connect Pin 1 of the …

Make: micro:bit Harry Potter Sorting Hat

When the micro:bit was first released to schools it came in a choice of 4 colours. On Twitter we talked about making a sorting hat to decide which student would get which colour. I've finally made it! But I've just linked it to the 4 houses of Harry Potter 🙂 https://twitter.com/LMcUnderwood/status/922196514235146244   Equipment Steampunk hat …

Make: Virtual Reality Controlled Camera

This is just a really quick blog post about how I created the virtual reality controlled camera... it's not a full guide, I'll update it soon! Hardware: A raspberry pi A pan tilt hat A raspberry pi camera A smartphone that has a tilt sensor and can access thternet A virtual reality headset (can be …