Mandy: The periodic table (teaser)

About six months ago, I started working on a project I like to call my piece de resistance. It combines a number of maker skills that I’ve learned over the past few years.  I call her Mandy, and she’s a laser-cut periodic table that has a bunch of three-color LEDS, an Arduino that controls the individually addressable LEDs, and a Raspberry Pi that stores information about the elements.  To make it stand out from being “just another bright periodic table”, I added a voice activation component, so Mandy is able to display different periodic trends at your verbal command!

I’m getting ready to move to a different part of the country, so I do not have time to provide more information about Mandy.  In the meanwhile, I created a teaser-trailer for your (OK, my) personal enjoyment.

 

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Introducing OMIS

I’ve been a little quiet lately; some of that was end of the semester and family activities, but part of it was that I’ve been trying to put the finishing touches on a new project.  I now think that OMIS – the open millifluidic inquiry system, is ready for display.

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Packet radio example

I received an Arduino Uno for Christmas this year, so my Dad and I spent some of the holiday time doing some projects.  His job was to get a circuit built implementing a 74HC595 Shift Register and my task was to set up some RF communication.  Dad completed his project before I did, but as I’m on vacation all this week, I was able to finally get something up and running.

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