Jun 212015
 

It’s Fathers Day and mine recently created something pretty darn poignant regarding the treatment of the U.S. Flag. You should watch it.

There is a lot of lip service about patriotism these days, and very little genuine understanding about America as a people, a nation, a government, or even just a freaking geographic area for that matter. Fortunately we still have a solid foundation that we could pick ourselves back up from and maybe one day- learn to stand tall and be proud of ourselves as Americans for the right reasons. I know we still have a chance because I can still love and publicly criticize America right here within it.

We’ve got a lot of work to do to make this place anything near worthy of how well we market it to ourselves, but in the meantime, we can at least show respect to those who helped build America’s legitimate foundation by doing what my father suggests in this video, just doing the darn housekeeping for crying out loud.

Happy Fathers Day Dad, and Pop and DeeDee, I know they appreciate this video a lot. I think this video is kind of a fitting fathers day gift for them too. I know this little diatribe doesn’t quite fit with the simple purity of your message in the video, but I don’t think you’ll mind me stepping up on my soap box for a minute, you did kind of help teach me about the whole free speech thing and using my brain and whatnot, can’t unring that bell- lol.

God Bless America, and also teach us to share ALL of our blessings with the whole world, like our fathers shared their blessings with us.

Jun 142015
 

So here’s something I should have posted quite awhile ago. This is a ‘breakout board’ I made for controlling LED strips with Arduino over bluetooth or USB.

PCB

It’s a little PCB for an Arduino nano, bluetooth chip, and (3) 4-pin terminal blocks with PWR-GND-SN-CK, and a 2-pin block for PWR-GND input. It can be used with 3 or 4 pin LED strips, or anything really, servos, sensors, whatever. I designed the PCB using Fritzing and had it printed through OSH Park. If you’re interested in one let me know via the funkboxing contact form. I’ll offer just the bare board or a pre-soldered and tested version with a nano, bluetooth chip, and terminal blocks, or any variation thereof. I can’t really come up with a price that makes sense, so if you tell me what you’re planning on using it for and I think it’s cool I’ll probably give it to you pretty much at-cost.

And here’s an LED array I made with it.

Array

It uses (64) WS2811 LED’s in an 8×8 array, an Arduino Nano, bluetooth chip, and a USB battery pack. It’s a double-decker sandwich of (3) 1/2″ thick acrylic plates so the whole rig is excessively large and heavy, but I kind of meant for it to be that way. I wanted something as a little testbed for 2D effects, of which I’ve only made a few so far. I’ll post the 2D array code at some point, but I should clean it up and make sure it works with the newest FastSPI library first.

Jun 142015
 

***EDIT*** Now available on Etsy – https://www.etsy.com/shop/funkboxing

So here’s a redesign of the Levitube things I made awhile back. It’s essentially the same, just slightly more aesthetically pleasing with the wooden base and cork stopper and spade thumb-screw. That link above is super old and I don’t feel like updating a super old html page, if you click it just ignore the parts that contradict this post, like the part saying they’re no longer for sale- They ARE for sale again. That’s probably unnecessarily confusing… but anyway. Look! Here’s the new design!

LeviTube

It’s an acrylic tube with a little magnet that levitates between two bismuth pellets. Basically it’s thing to stare at occasionally. I’ve also had fun making it spin and shining a laser on it so it flashes the laser around, I’m easily entertained like that. I’m sure there are practical uses for the effect, but the levitubes are really only good for the staring bit.

It’s either an ‘educational demonstration’ device or ‘desk-toy’ thing. When people ask you about it you can tell them about the principle of diamagnetism and they’ll think you’re all smart, or more likely they’ll just think you’re tragically nerdy. Optionally, you could tell them you’re doing it with your mind or you bought it at a shop in Diagon Alley and it’s enchanted, your call.

If you want one, let me know via the funkboxing contact form. I’m going to ask you to send me $30 via Paypal and that’ll include shipping within the U.S. If you live somewhere else, just ask and I’ll find out what the shipping is to there. If you live in Iceland or the Netherlands I might ask if I can come stay with you for awhile because I’d really like to go to those places but I don’t have a lot of money. I also might need to borrow some warm clothes because I don’t have anything for cold climates, I’m from the south.

I’ve only got about a half-dozen ready to go at the moment but I can make more, it’ll just take a little while longer to get one to you. They also include a cool stamp with the funkboxing logo on the bottom of the base so you can remember where you got it.

-Me

 

*The dime in the image is for scale, it’s not included. I guess if you ask me I’d send you a dime too, but you can probably source one locally. It’s not a rebate thing. If you absolutely insist I’ll just give you 10 cents off the price instead, but I’d probably make fun of you for being so insistent over 10 cents. I’ll give you a whole dollar off if you read my ‘Hello, World’ short story and tell me what you think since I really spent some time on that and I don’t think anybody’s read it yet. If you’re Limor Fried and you request one I’ll send you a free one since you’re so totally awesome and I love Adafruit Industries.