This trinket may seem insignificant, but let’s take a closer look. I saw this in Big Lots for $10, a set of acrylic dragonflies that changed color as shown here. The middle unit is turning yellow. This is the same principle as the acrylic ornament mentioned last day, and ties in with what I’m saying about this type of product hitting the market. These are majorly different than what came before, which I’ll proceed to explain.
While it would be possible to build the same thing with existing parts, it would cost too much. The Shack sells those bulbs, called a RGB LED, for $3.19 apiece. The capacitors and assembly time ensure nobody could sell one, much less all ten, for the price quoted above. The difference is the bulbs are controlled by a microprocessor costing pennies. Exactly like the ones I’ve already programmed. Develop the code and the rest are clones.We are quite aware those with both electronics knowledge and an Arduino are moving twice as fast as we can. I saw several products, all of which I could build since they are nothing more than a circuit and some plastic. I even suspect the manufacturer and I have the same Arduino booklet, which favors projects that involve variable resistances. Another product was a plastic flower floated in water. As long as the contacts under the flower sensed water, the bulb inside lit up the flower.
It’s basic, but leading edge in “newness” and somebody is paying attention to the big picture. The processor may not always be Arduino, but it was Arduino that opened the door to having a computer to do more than sit there and compute. We haven’t heard much on the Arduino here lately simply because it has been pushed to the background. I have already programmed 99% of what it can do but I was already a programmer. I need to learn the electronics the Arduino will control. Then look out. I have few to no qualms about using advantages for personal gain. This is America. First you make your millions, then act Mr. Nice Guy, “Can’t we all just get along?”
The latest club project is stalled by lack of a laser printer. Nobody wants to shell out for one before we know what we are doing with the etching. It must seem comical that the nine-year-old on Maker is better funded than we are. Sensors and pieces we treat like jewelry, she often wears like jewelry. She likes to tell the viewer all you need is the Arduino and “a few basic tools”. Like, for instance, a hazmat laboratory, machine shop, and bio-hoods. For those who don’t know, that person is Super Awesome Sylvia, entering her precocious second season.
She is already using the Uno R3, which we don’t have. This Arduino has an SMT model, meaning “surface mount techonology”. The chips are soldered on the surface of the board, rather than pins through holes to the reverse side. It costs only $19. The Arduino kicks American engineers square in the byuu-toks. I can imagine the mounting panic at MIT’s pin-assignment department, “Good God and Bloody ‘ell, Edgeworth, they’ve made the thing user-friendly!”
[Author’s note: that’s a gag over the non-sensical patterns of input/output pins used on ICs. Each IC must be examined via an accompanying data sheet before usage as there is no logic or consistent layout of pins, even from the same manufacturer. And a wrong voltage will destroy the chip. It is a system worthy of an asylum, not MIT. The Arduino kit is increasing available with break-outs, [which are] chips pre-mounted on small circuit boards which partly alleviates the problem.]
Say, you know who I ran across? That lady who lived next door to the old place, the one who with the nicer car than Wallace. She’s happy but not doing so well in the health department. We talked for over an hour. Did you know that she’s the one that let me run an electrical cable between the buildings from September 2010 to the day I moved here? Was that sneaky? Maybe, but look who I was dealing with. What? Surely nobody actually thought I went without electricity, that’s not how the world works. Only an idiot underestimates my resources. (That’s why they call them idiots.)
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