Considering my next project, I wanted to make an electromechanical display using magnets. I turned to the internet for inspiration and quickly came across Flip-dot displays; solenoid driven pixels. A good starting point for what I wanted to do, I looked further.

Nixie Pipe is my interpretation of a modern day Nixie Tube – the cold-cathode vacuum gas-filled tubes from the 1960s.

A need popped up at work for a data logger for various lab tasks. Quickly looking at the market, I failed to identify a lab tool for data logging (cheap, easy but powerful setup, remote access); something for researchers and scientists. I decided a Raspberry Pi with some input buffering would be ideal for the task. This is my roll your own data logger, put together on Saturday – showing what is possible quickly and potential with more development time.

We needed a coffee table for our new house but had yet to find the right thing. I found this tired black circular table outside a neighbour’s house and was inspired to create a nice top for it.

21/12/18 UPDATE: Hello to Hack a Day readers. This project was shared when I did it but re-posted recently. It is 2.5 years old and there are many things I would do differently. I am considering work on a IO board specific to the project (RS232 driver, GPIO break-out, proper RX/TX LED buffers and potentially internal LiPo UPS). Glad there is renewed interest in the project as I still use it day to day :).

My dad was impressed by my nixie tube energy meter project and expressed interest in his own. Unfortunately, the power inlet for his house was under the stairs and out of view, unlike mine in the corridor. Undeterred and with his birthday coming, I revised the design to be stand-alone with a remote sensor unit.

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I frequently find myself navigating ’round on my bike, juggling Google Maps precariously in one hand. I don’t appreciate the bulky handlebar phone mounts about so thought I’d make something to neatly integrate with the Garmin Quarter Turn mount…

Following on from adding support to wiringPi for the MCP4725 DAC, I wanted to add driver blocks to Simulink such that one could use them to create graphical models for the Raspberry Pi that could interface with the real-world – a workable alternative to expensive real-time targets.

My laser cut binary clock, Wooden Bits, originally had no means to set the clock, other than at compile time. I later added a tactile button and ISR to provide this function (increment the time until the correct time is shown) but I wanted a way to tap into the extra features of the DS3231 (alarm, temperature) and also to experiment in wireless control.

The Raspberry Pi lacks a DAC but using the I2C bus, one can easily add a device like the 12bit MCP4725. The GPIO library wiringPi provides support for I2C devices, however, getting the MCP4725 working with it isn’t a simple as one might hope. The device is 12bit but the I2C protocol works on bytes (8bits). To send 12bit data, the Microchip designed the message transfer like this: