Arduino and Television display

The best ideas come to me at 3AM when I'm trying to fall asleep.

In EDD our project involved using an ESP8266 WiFi module to communicate with a server. I realized how amazing this $3 module was that I bought a few for myself to play with. I was trying to think of cool projects to build with it when I found this:

http://fablab.ruc.dk/get-xmpp-protocol-on-arduino/

This person basically used the ESP8266 to act like a chatbot and display a message.

Recently in our school we sort of adopted the S A D B O Y vaporwave culture ironically. We bought bucket-hats and started spelling English words out in Japanese.

I observed that a key component of vaporwave culture is outdated technology and a hopeless nostalgia to return to the 80s-90s era.

At 3 that night I had an idea to turn a TV into a text display.

Imagine you're in a basement

and theres an old TV sitting there. No cable box, no antenna. Just plugged into the wall.

Suddenly out of nowhere a message appears on the screen. White text on black. It's speaking to YOU.

I think I'm gonna install a camera somewhere and observe the victim, while I type in something creepy and strangely specific based on visual input from the camera like "I like your red shirt".

The television will be receiving input from an Arduino connected to a chat box through the ESP8266.

I think it'll be a lot of fun to build.

I haven't completed it yet, but so far I am able to type text to the serial port and have it displayed on the TV.

I will walk you through the process of the build so far.

Take apart the TV. It should be unplugged of course. Use a screwdriver to short some capacitors if you're paranoid. CRT monitors use a flyback transformer which can do some serious damage to you.

I would recommend vacuuming out spider webs and dust before continuing. It would make the build a lot cleaner, and safer.

You should where the audio and RCA plugs are located on the TV. This is a pic of the circuitboard.

Solder 3 wires: GND, Audio, Video

This is just a fun artsy pic of the electronics inside of a television.

You can get a USB wall charger at Five Below for... $5.

You will need this so that you can power your Arduino inside of your TV without another cord. The idea is so that there is only one cord from the TV: power. The Arduino and all the circuitry will be inside the TV once it's done. The idea is stealth so that the TV looks like it has a soul of its own.

Cut the plug off.

Strip the wire. Cheap chargers like this only have + and - wires

Find where the wall plug power goes into on the TV.

Get two >=18 gauge wires

Solder them onto where the wall power comes it

Solder the other end to the phone charger. The charger is now in parallel to the TV whenever the TV turns on.

You will really want to wrap this well in electrical tape: maybe you even want to seal this off with glue.

When the TV is plugged in, you should get ~5v from the charger.

According to the TVout library, you will need two resistors for the circuit

Make sure you install the TVout library for Arduino.

Wire up the circuit

Upload the TVout example and turn on the TV.

It works!

I wrote my own code which I will publish later that writes to the TV whatever is inputted on the serial monitor. We needed to set a baudrate of 1200 because the TV is very slow.

The future goal is to implement this tiny $3 WiFi module.

lol

I hope you enjoyed!

Portable Bluetooth Speakers (fin)

I finally invested in a $20 heat gun from Lowes. They're not only useful for bending acrylic sheet but also for desoldering SMD components:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Heatgun-Desoldering/?ALLSTEPS

You want to work on a surface that will not be damaged by heat. In this case I worked on some ceramic tiles and newspaper.

This was the outcome of the first bend (crack is from the failure last time).

Turn on the heat gun to full heat and run it up and down the line until the acrylics gets all floppy.

When it's malleable enough, you can bend it to the correct angle and hold until it sets.

Doing the second bend

All the bends are complete! we have a nice triangle.

I bought a huge sheet of faux leather for $10. I will be covering the frame in this so it looks sweg.

Mark out the surface area of the triangle. Leave extra room for folding.

This part isn't totally necessary, but it's good practice. You will want to line the inside of your speaker enclosure with some sort of dampening material so it doesn't vibrate and sound crappy.

I used some material from an air filter. Here I measured out how much I needed.

Cut holes for the speakers.

I secured the material in place with hot glue.

I didn't have a great method of securing the leather onto the surface. I used a combination of glue stick glue and hot glue to secure the leather in place.

Simply wrap the leather around the plastic casing.

The downside of using some sort of solid glue is that it leaves marks.

After you're done wrapping, cut out the holes that were there with a knife.

This  next part is an overview of the circuitry inside of the portable speakers.

I took apart a portable phone charger for the 5v power source. This power source was a bit small and couldn't provide sufficient power for max volume. You would want to take apart a battery back that has more than 1000mAh capacity.

I removed the USB socket from the board to save space.

Soldered wires to the aux female connector.

Soldering the aux plug to the PAM8403 amplifier.

Here, everything is connected.

• Speakers connected to respective "left" and "right" outputs of the PAM8403 amplifier
• TRS female connected to respective "left" and "right" inputs of the amplifier
• Power source connected to switch, connected to the amplifier.

We almost forgot to add bluetooth!

I bought a USB powered bluetooth module for ~$5. These are extremely useful if you want to add bluetooth audio to your car.

We just need to take this apart, connect it to the speaker power, and connect the audio output in parallel to the existing plug.

I asked a friend to cut out the endcaps for this project. The outcome was beautiful.

After all the electronics were finished, I shoved everything into the speaker box and glued in the end caps.

I have the recharging circuit board poking out so I can charge it 

Suggestions for the future:

• Use a 10,000mAH power source. with more power, your speakers will be louder, last longer, and have exceptional range for bluetooth
• perhaps have a circuit board in the future so the inside isn't a messy nest of wires.

That's it for now! Hope you guys enjoyed.

DIY Apple Clock

In honor of my recent watch obsession and in obligation to post an old project, today I'll talk about my DIY Apple Clock.

Ever since I started tinkering with electronics I always wanted to build a clock of some sort. I feel like that's a sort of rite of passage for a lot of tinkerers.
Building a clock tests your ability of learning how to use seven segment displays
It also tests your understanding of keeping in your program and how to handle interrupts

For me, I finally decided to build a clock because I wanted to build something beautiful and elegant. Most of the time I leave my projects as bare circuit boards... because I think it already looks nice. This time I decided to at least have an enclosure.
I also had these bubble displays lying around, and I thought they looked pretty damn nice.


I also just came back from a summer program and got over my fear of reading datasheets. I took the opportunity of summer to test my datasheet reading abilities and use something outside of the comfort range of Arduino.

The full Instructable is in that first link: I'm only going to give a digest of the project.

This is a picture to show you how the completed product looks. More photos at the end.

Here is a layout of the parts we need. 

1x PCB (not shown)

1x Apple earbuds case (not shown)

1x 74HC595 shift register

1x ATTiny44 or ATTiny84

1x 16MHz crystal oscillator

1x 1N4001 or 4007 power diode

1x USB B mini port

1x Li-Ion rechargeable battery

1x bubble display

These two bags of nuts and bolts I bought at RadioShack and I don't know what to call it but its in the pictures

2x pushbutton switches

3x 10 kohm resistors

4x 330 ohm resistors

This is how the working circuit looked like on a breadboard. Most people who build clocks go ahead and use the ATMega328... I wanted to challenge myself and make the design as cost effective as possible, so I used the ATTiny44. It was fun reading the datasheets to get the most out of the chip.

I explain in heavy detail in the Instructables how I used Pin Change Interrupts (PCINT) instead of External Interrupts (INT)
Here are good reads:

• http://thewanderingengineer.com/2014/08/11/arduino-pin-change-interrupts/
• http://thewanderingengineer.com/2014/08/11/pin-change-interrupts-on-attiny85/

Also featured in this project is multiplexing. How did I control 28 segments with only 3 pins???

This is just another shot of the circuit. That green circuit board that has the light on is a voltage step-up. You can see the whole circuit being powered from one AA battery.

After the circuit was verified, I designed a PCB

This is a second layer of the PCB for the power circuitry (charging and regulating)

Printing out transparencies and cutting out fiberglass board.

Exposing the board for 7.5 minutes.

After putting the board through developer, this is how it turned out :D

Throw it into some etchant.

I don't recall if I ever mentioned what etchant I use... This is a mixture of HCl and H2O2

Expose and develop the second board!

Ayy

After a really long process of waiting, this is how the boards turned out.

Drilling the holes.

Upload the code.

Featuring: ATTiny44 and the $5 USBTiny programmer

Sadly RadioShack is going out of business... I bought these nuts and bolts out of pity.

This is how the finished power supply board looks like. the Li-ion battery is glued onto the board, and the leads soldered to the board. I also soldered the green board directly on. A USB port is added to allow charging.

Finished main circuit board. The button on the left decreases time, the right increases.

Adding the screws onto the power board.

Soldering the power wires to the main board.

It's alive!

After it's wired, I mounted the main board on top of the power board.

It looks like a beautifully made sandwich.

The next objective is to fit this device into an Apple Earbuds case.

I had to cut this groove for charging.

Drill 4 holes for the screws.

Everything mounted on

I had to cut the screws down in size using a diamond cutting bit. I covered the circuit with masking tape so metal dust wouldn't fly into the circuit and short everything out.

Two holes were drilled so that you can change the time by pushing the buttons.

Charging up.

And it's finished. 

That was the DIY Apple Clock.
I should be up to speed now with all of the projects that I posted on I'ble but not on here. It's time to think of something new...