I will create a new thread that won't be closed. I am looking for general project ideas. Perhaps this thread can be dedicated for people that have various ideas or want to use the thread as a resources.

Some of my current ideas for projects are.

Etchent agitator built from a scanner (this is my current project)

A couple of different POV clocks.

Remote for a tablet PC for volume, maybe even power.

Washer / dryer notifier that would plug into Kodi multimedia application and/ or a cell phone.

Land line caller ID that would plug into Kodi, assuming I still have a land line by the time I get to this.

A Skittle sorter. I really don't like Skittles but seems like a fun project.

A ball launcher. Mentioned in another thread by another member. I don't have a dog or kids but seems like a fun project.

OK so what are your ideas?

 

A Segway?.



I got interested when I built the Picmicro inverted Pendulum.
In the PIC AN964.
Max.

 

-Portable ultra-high current supercap bank for metal melting. If you do this, please take necessary safety precautions.

-Extremely bright RGB LED with precise color control with potentiometers. Made portable with batteries and necessary voltage/current amplifiers.

-Extremely powerful inductor for inductive charger. Maybe even plug the inductor into mains (or with high current transformer) and use a small resistor if necessary. If you do, make sure to be careful.

 

OK so what are your ideas?

This is my list (as of this week, anyway) of "electronics stuff to play around with some day":

• Differential capacitance sensor signal conditioning circuits
• Infrasonic acoustic sensors (e.g., 0.01 Hz - 10 Hz)
• VB6 interface for Omega OMB-DAQ-2408 data acquisition unit
• Precision current-limited power supply w/ hype-abrupt CV-CC transition
• Seismic vibration sensor
• VCVGA voltage-tunable filter circuits
• VLF/ULF receiver circuits
• White/pink noise sources
• DSP implementation of pinking filter w/ arbitrary -dB/octave characteristic
• Using dither to improve ADC resolution
• Hot-wire anemometers
• Techniques for data communication over house wiring
• High frequency DDS using AD9854 or AD9833
• Humidity measurement sensors and circuits
• Laboratory DDS oscillator with ultra-low distortion
• Proximity sensors (capacitive and inductive)
• MPX4200 Barometer
• Optical communications
• PIC controlled switching regulators
• PID control
• PLL experiments
• PRBS ultrasonic rangefinder using delayed autocorrelation
• PWM DAC resolution enhancement in software
• High-resolution force-balance accelerometer (& gravimeter) designs using DSP
• Static electric field sensor
• TE module controller
• Thermal barometer (sealed, temperature-controlled gas volume balancing external pressure)
• Ultra-low noise AGC mic preamp
• Ultrasonics
• WWVB receiver designs

In the "buyer's remorse" thread you said,

Any other ideas for cool projects? They probably should involve micro controllers since that is my strong suit. Not so big on the analog stuff but guess I am willing to learn there.

My opinion, for whatever it's worth: the more you can learn about analog circuit design, the more ideas for projects you'll be able to come up with.

 

Mine is still the one that got me into this electronics mess, around 9 years ago, an Electrical Discharge Machine (EDM). One that controls it's self, similar to the Charmilles "Isopulse" system. I'm not there yet but closer than I was even a year ago.

 

Mine right now in the works is an all transistor 64 bit RAM, to display any character on a grid of 64 LED's, each RAM cell would use an SCR to hold the data, the character would be displayed through pulsing each row at a time, and addressing each column by RAM inputs.

 

It is something how ideas just come to you.

I was salvaging an old video tape player for parts that also had a CD player. I got an idea to use the laser transport of the DVD player for a POV clock. Don't know if it is going to work but worth a try.

I was also researching using a hard drive for a POV clock and ran across measuring back EMF to calculate RPM. I have already designed and built an optical tachometer for my engraving machine. It was fun to build and works great but what I don't like about it is the wires for the sensor and sensor itself get in the way. I could eliminate all of that with back EMF.

 

I've got two fairly long-term projects that I would like to do someday soon. One practical and one just for personal learning and fun.

The first one would be a TV sentry that controls the amount of TV that my daughter can watch. Conceptually it is pretty simple since we don't have cable or over-the-air; it is sufficient to control power to the DVD player, so I just need to control a solid state relay to a power outlet on the control box. My thought is for everyone in the house to have an allowance of minutes per week. When you want to watch TV, you enter your code and it enables the system until you shut if off. If you walk away and leave it running, it keeps ticking down your minutes (that's to get my daughter to stop leaving the TV on when she goes off to do something else). The reason for applying it to everyone is just to lead by example. You can earn more minutes by accomplishing tasks or, in my daughter's case, purchasing time with money she's earned. In the initial version, we'd enter the time for each person probably after entering an access code. As I add features, we'd give her an authorization code to enter that we would generate from a computer that would encode the person and the amount of minutes along with a one-time use MAC. That's purely for my entertainment since our daughter isn't likely to even try to cheat the system. This seems like a good project for something like a Raspberry Pi, which would be a good excuse to learn that product line. It's probably within the reach of an Arduino, but I just really don't have the desire to dink around with them.

The second is a digitally tuned FM receiver. I'd like to keep this one as basic as possible. No IC's in the actual radio or audio portions and probably an FPGA for the digital side. Here the idea would be to build up to it in a series of smaller steps that could possibly be turned into lab projects.

 

The second is a digitally tuned FM receiver. I'd like to keep this one as basic as possible. No IC's in the actual radio or audio portions and probably an FPGA for the digital side. Here the idea would be to build up to it in a series of smaller steps that could possibly be turned into lab projects.

I have had a similar idea. I wanted to be able to create a DVR but for radio. A DRR I guess.

 

Too many projects.

One I'm half way through is a focus rail controller for macro-photography. I seem to get distracted from this too often. Made some progress on the mechanical side over the holidays. Stepper drives it pretty well. Will have 2.5 micron accuracy. Have two versions of the controller board one with buttons (red) and one with a quad encoder+button (green). SW needs the most work. Will be printing up a case for it, too.


Looking to make an integrating, logging ammeter. 2 or 4 channels. Connected via USB for download of the data and config. I want to be able to measure power consumption during tests. Use it as a tool to better design battery based projects. Still trying to nail down accuracy requirements. I'm also looking at figuring out how to make it lxi-tool compatible for automation - maybe use a raspi as the controller/hub.

Thinking about designing a number of ATTiny based boards that can be used in a number of ways. I'm really liking the ATTiny 161x family (20 mhz internal OSC, 3 16 bit PWM channels, DACs, <$1, configurable logic) and think it would be pretty easy to add support to the Arduino IDE for it. It would be awesome to have a jelly-bean like component that I wouldn't need to haul out the Atmel ICE to program.

Lots of LED toys. With an ATTiny and cheap accelerometer I have several designs that use motion and tilt to do interesting things with colors. I'm playing with the WS2812B LEDs - great way to add programmable LEDs to any project.

Building a manual pick and place machine so I can move up to using 603s, 402s, QFNs, LGAs and other really tiny SMDs. My hands just aren't steady enough anymore.

Thinking about building or hacking a reflow oven. Might not be necessary as I am getting decent results with a simple toaster oven that I run manually. Would at least like to have a built in temperature display so I don't need haul out the thermocouple for my DMM each time I want to reflow a board.

 

Building a manual pick and place machine so I can move up to using 603s, 402s, QFNs, LGAs and other really tiny SMDs. My hands just aren't steady enough anymore.

This is interesting. How would that work exactly?

 

Here's an example. There are several things I don't like about his design but it's workable. I've got an OpenBuilds ACRO mechanism kit that I think will be good for this. Got a decent HDMI microscope. Need to do the vacuum pen but that looks easy.

Video is a bit longish but gives a sense of it.

 

Why are we all toiling away, thinking of project ideas, when we could create a program to do that? That would be the ultimate project.

 

Here's an example. There are several things I don't like about his design but it's workable. I've got an OpenBuilds ACRO mechanism kit that I think will be good for this. Got a decent HDMI microscope. Need to do the vacuum pen but that looks easy.

Video is a bit longish but gives a sense of it.

This is very cool. Bet it would not be that difficult to partly automate. Maybe a manual pick and an automated place.

 

Yeah, I've thought about it. Will start with strictly manual and see where it goes. Would rather get this one done and not add to my "in process"
backlog.

 

Yeah, I've thought about it. Will start with strictly manual and see where it goes. Would rather get this one done and not add to my "in process"
backlog.

Defiantly a good plan but you should at least consider automation in your design if it does not bog the project down too much.

 

Here's an example. There are several things I don't like about his design but it's workable. I've got an OpenBuilds ACRO mechanism kit that I think will be good for this. Got a decent HDMI microscope. Need to do the vacuum pen but that looks easy.

Video is a bit longish but gives a sense of it.

o you have any links on ACRO? I found one here.

http://openbuildspartstore.com/openbuilds-acro-system-1/

Wanted to know if there is anything cheaper.

 

Yeah, that's it. I bought the smallest one when it was on sale. Think I paid 130-ish. OB runs sales at all the usual times. If you want to cut your costs, you could build it the way Vpapanick did. That's a reasonable way to do it but takes more time. It's a lot cheaper, though takes more time and fussing. For a manual PnP, it's pretty good. Super precision isn't needed.

 

I was looking at Diptrace pick and place export file. Looks like it is a simple CSV file. Should be fairly easy to convert to G-Code. The problem I see would be to make sure you used the exact part that you are using in the schematic so it places the part at the correct height.

But the hardest part would likely be calibrating the actually placer. Pick it up a bit off and it would be out of place. It would be nice to see how the real ones do that.

.

 

Defiantly a good plan but you should at least consider automation in your design if it does not bog the project down too much.

The ACRO is a reasonable platform to automate though I would replace the acrylic plates with 6mm aluminum ones if mounting steppers. Note sure how much weight it can handle - it was originally designed for a LASER engraver.