The ‘activation energy’ of new forums is always a bit tough, so I thought I’d ask a question to get people involved. I had asked a lot of people from the old CE forums to join this new one.
What are you building right now? Feel free to share links/pictures/whatever.
Currently I’m playing with LEDs on a breadboard, trying to figure out how to get them to be different brightnesses. Seems pretty basis, I guess, but I am enjoying it.
RepRap!
Must build extra sensors and make upgrades! It’s a compulsion!
I’m re-working my sprinkler controller to make it connected using an ESP8266
What kinds of sensors?
That’s fantastic. What kind of range are you hoping for on the system? (in terms of distance from a central node)
I’m trying to get my arduino controlling WS2812s. Having some issue, might be because I have too many in one line. The timing doesn’t work very well.
Yay, my first like ever in any forum, thanks!
Only 100m or so if I have to connect directly, should be within the range of the home wifi and my Wink, so I should be able to hook up OpenHAB and connect from anywhere.
Does the first one in line work? The number that you’re controlling shouldn’t make a difference because they pass the data down the line and they will actually correct the timing between them.
Oh wow, thought the Wink wasn’t active anymore. Would love to read more about that in a build log.
You would have been right to think that, it did look like the Wink was going to fade away, Quirky went bankrupt but sold off Wink and they were able to recover. Now it looks like Home Depot has doubled down and is running with Wink and Zigbee for everything. You can pick them up on sale for $50, they’re easy to root and you basically have an embedded linux computer with some handy radios built in.
Interesting article here on Wink surviving the fall of Quirky:
I’m currently building something for Bring-a-hack after Maker Faire. Need to see what I can cobble together before that happens.
I am working on my Stairwell Foot Lighting system. I have been on this a while but I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel (no pun intended).
I don’t believe that for a second, that pun was totally intended (but justified) 
I’m doing a bit of a one-off project. A friend of mine has loaned me a Commodore VIC-20. The deal is, I can keep it for as long as it takes to fix it and then return to him. Bargain! (?)
During diagnosis I decided that I suspected the RAM chips. But it’s only a hunch. There’s 11 of them, all soldered in, so no way am I replacing them all on a hunch. So I need to do some proper diag. The machine doesn’t run, so no options there. Only remaining option is to build a RAM tester.
And, after all that preamble, we get to what I’m building right now: a RAM tester for a vintage VIC-20 computer.
That sounds like a very cool project @BJH, I’d be interested to hear what steps you took to get to that conclusion. I don’t imagine it was as easy as BIOS beep codes. Maybe a summary in the start of a Build Log?
OK @ALeggeUp, I am actually doing a video on it so I’ll share the link with you later. I’m pretty bad at hosting videos unfortunately (everyone has their strengths, video making not one of mine), but the diagnosis itself is hopefully interesting.
Excellent, that’ll be great. I don’t imagine I’ll be any good at it either, but I’ll appreciate the effort either way. I’m going to see if I can figure out how to set something up to try and make a video myself, but I don’t even know where to start, so you’re ahead of me.
I am working on:
WIP - The Teensy Breakout/SensorBoard for CE
Wrapping up a bike location monitor. I am trying to address the age-old question of how not to nag to get bicycles put away at night. I am using an attiny85 to trigger a transistor that “pushes” a button on an Adafruit FM keyfob. That happens about every 25 minutes. I pick the signal up via a Raspberry Pi talking to the FM receiver. I started with perfboard, but have spun boards for both the TX and RX side. The project also required 3D printing a bracket that would hold a water-tight box to the bicycle seat brackets (for the TX). Finally, I wrote an app that runs on IOS/Android, using Delphi, which talks to the Raspberry Pi via JSON to show icons on my phone of where the bikes are - in or out.
Todo - need to come up with something interesting to add to a Halloween/Christmas lighting display - thinking about something along the lines of a motorized trolly/carriage that moves along a cable carrying a display which is lit up.
Getting back into CE after a roughly two year hiatus.
I’m looking at finishing my bike signals that are hooked up to buttons under the hoods. One variant is wireless for my bike and a wired version for the wife’s bike.
Also working on my wife’s steam punk outfit using LEDs and small servos.
I think LED projects are a great way back in. It’s all about momentum! Get one thing built (preferrably wired first for simplicity’s sake) and then move on to the next level of integration/difficulty. Have you started a built log yet, @mikef?