Twit-o-tron!

[hirez]

A five-minute Arduino lash-up.

(When I get around to writing more code) Sending me a tweet will cause the pointy birds to rotate around the watcher. Anointy-anointy.

It uses one of the stepper driver boards that I was pointed towards here, and five lines of code. £1.50, some rubber bands and a small amount of soldering. Bargain fun, I think.

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Love it! Cute but sort of sinister at the same time.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

It's been sitting on top of a NeXT workstation for the past decade.

[neefsck.livejournal.com]

Thats kinda awesome. :)

I've been meaning (ie: wanting to, but not properly getting off my arse to do so) to do something along the same vein but with a Morse Code tapper.
Yes, I know its been done before - but I still want to do it. :)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Many things have been done before - it doesn't stop them being fun and worth doing yourself.

I have to say that Arduino hackery is splendid stuff. The problems are mostly Lego-sized and all quite fairly tractable. And if you need more grunt, it's a fine excuse to bag a Raspberry Pi...

[neefsck.livejournal.com]

I've not looked into the Arduino stuff at all.
The last time I was looking at a project of any kind I was trying to find a stepper motor of some sort that would do the job.
I wanted to build a proper 13 hour clock (not just a normal clock with a new face)

All the more reason to get the shed cleared out and turned into a workspace I guess!

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I recommend it. All the bits seem to come from eBay for cheap. You'll probably get them faster than I since they all originate in some robot factory in the Shenzen co-prosperity zone.

jarkman will be along soon to explain how he re-built a clock using an Arduino.

I'm generally a bit burned out from big projects of a weekend, so this sort of aimed tinkering is ideal.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Here you go:
http://www.jarkman.co.uk/catalog/robots/chronostochastigraph.htm

That used a regular clock geartrain, whereas I presume a 13 hour clock would need to alter the ratio between the minute & hour hands, so would be more easily done with a couple of steppers.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Also. One of the problems I have is over-thinking a thing so it either takes me an age to start it, or I never quite do because of some un-named fear. This sort of thing is ideal therapy for that, because it goes 'I'll just cruft up something to see... Oh. It works...'

[neefsck.livejournal.com]

Aye - There are times when after getting up the proper enthusiasm and energy to do something I'm left saying to myself 15 minutes later "Well..that was easy..." and somehow feeling disappointed.