This project was in my backlog for a few years. I had all the parts for it but never got around to finishing it up. It consists of some mechanical key switches, an arduino pro micro, and a custom 3d printed case.
It is programmed to show up as an HID device and the keys are mapped to my most used Onshape functions key board shortcuts.
This was conceived after noticing my first son’s love of the microwave and oven’s displays. This was a project to get me back into building stuff after being out of the loop after having a baby.
This consists of an Adafruit esp8266 feather board with 4x 7 segment display and an spi accelerometer. The feather features an built in lipo charger which allowed a quickly implemented lipo battery in the build. Next I designed a case around the components and assembled it. Both of my kids loved it before it was lost under a couch and the battery died beyond revival at which point both of them were interested in bigger and better computers.
This was built as a gift to my wife for her birthday. She is a big space nerd so I found a small meteorite and purchased it as a gift. While a piece of space is cool, it wasn’t very easy to find an impressive way to display it. I eventually found a vintage film box an designed the internals to build a scifi-esque stone containment box.
The box consisted of the vintage metal box, a piece of walnut plywood, a 3d printed cone and display platform, some hand bent aluminum bars, an rgb led ring, an arduino, two vibration motors, and a 9v battery.
Using a small switch in the rear, I turned the box on before handing it to her fully gift wrapped. This started the vibration motors gently vibrating in a sinusoidal hum. The rgb leds also started gently cycling through the spectrum as it could be felt physically vibrating.
It was featured on Hackday shortly after I submitted it. She loved it and it is still displayed on a shelf in our home.
Justin Cole 