Electronics

I just wanted to share a great find.

I read that the stk600 can program and debug any Atmel 8bit and 32bit microcontroller and is basically the USB replacement version of the serial stk500, but the stk600 costs over $200 :(. The great find is that I found a link to a promo at Arrow Electronics for $99. The description of the promo was for a stk600 kit, but when you add it to your cart the description changes to an “STK600 ADAPTER FOR SOIC DEVICE”. I called and they assured me it was the stk600 full starter kit. I ordered it and got it back in July. It was the full kit, nice. :)

(I will included some links for your convenience)

Atmel AVR STK600 is a complete starter kit:

Buy at Arrow with promo $99 (Data sheet)

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This is my honking pumpkin project to scare Trick-Or-Treaters. The little monsters will not be able to resisted pressing the red button on the pumpkins nose which will trigger the eyes to glow for a second and just when they think that’s it a set of 105 decibel car horns hidden in the pumpkin will blast and send them running.

For the most part my plan worked on Halloween 2008 but I built it fast and with some cheap parts. What follows is documentation of my re-build to remove some heinous false triggering and general improvements. Enjoy the below videos and photos.

Parts list is at the very bottom and here is a link to the circuit:  –>circuit

Special thanks go to my inspiration for this project by an original design posted by Marc de Vinck Oct 28, 2008 at blog.makezine.com

UPDATE 10/15/2009: Installed BIG RED button which is much more tempting don’t you think?

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Here is a cheap way to take super close-up photos using nothing more than a 5mega pixel digital camera (set to close-up) with some cheap magnifying eye loupes.  The first photo below is a super close-up photo using two loupes. The next photo is the stacked loupes which gave me this very nice zoom feature. The loupes cost $1 dollar each at Harbor Fright. Continue reading to learn more and what sparked this simple yet successful idea.

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