The last time I worked on this project was two years ago and it ended up in a box after I tore one of the pads off. I’ve had some spare time recently so I decided it would be fun to solder 120 LEDs on a fresh PCB.
(more…)LEDs
PCB Pin Badges – Clamps SAO

I’ve been wanting to revisit my original Clamps pin badge for a while and replace the 5mm through-hole LEDs with reverse mounted SMD LEDs like my more recent Skeletor and Roberto PCBs.
Despite getting pretty close to sending the design off for fabrication, I was concerned that the product just wasn’t different enough from the existing Clamps design. So I decided to create my first Shitty Add-On!
(more…)DIY Ambilight – Update
I’ve been working on the Prismatik code to get it ready to go back onto the main branch so I thought I’d post a little update.
(more…)DIY Ambilight

When I moved house I disassembled my bookshelf lighting and my Mote kit has been sitting in a box since. I’ve been looking for something to do with them and it struck me that the Mote sticks are the perfect size to be mounted behind a monitor for a DIY Ambilight setup.
(more…)Xmas Fireplace Ornament PCB

Inspired by seeing Xmas-themed-PCBs all over Twitter, an idea popped into my head. Two days later, I’d sent off a new PCB for manufacture.
(more…)PCB Pin Badges – Skeletor

In previous posts I’ve talked about some of the difficulties I’ve had converting vector drawings to PCB layouts in Eagle. After discovering a video by Twinkle Twinkie where he shows off his workflow I thought I’d follow along and see what came out. The result is the Skeletor “Myah!” badge.
(more…)PCB Pin Badges – Clamps 2.0 (Part 2)

Just in time for the weekend all the parts for version 2 of my Clamps badge arrived!
Here’s a look at the bare PCB from OSHPark – annoyingly I had issues with the front ENIG finish on two of the badges, and the front soldermask on all three to varying degrees. OSHPark have sent some replacements off for fabrication but I decided to press ahead with the best of the bunch.
(more…)PCB Pin Badges – Clamps 2.0 (Part 1)
After my first batch of Clamps badges sold out on Tindie, I was lamenting that I didn’t have any spare boards to put rainbow LEDs in. Jon Raymond suggested that I could go one step further and add an ATtiny85 and some RGB LEDs. Not one to turn down a challenge, I started work!