I just met Josh who is teaching this series of micro-controller hacking classes at 911 Media Arts Center. He'll be using the Arduino micro-controller and scavenged parts from ink jet printers!

SDK download for the BugLabs modular device I won (to arrive in late November).

Win a BUGLabs open-source gadget platform (worth $600) by proposing a great gadget idea. At least one will go to a Gnomedex attendee - but the contest is open to everyone.

John Torode's company makes and LED lighting controller!

Quoted: EZ-Color?High-Brightness LED Controller Revolutionizing Lighting Design. Design with no C or Assembly code with PSoC Express? Control up to 16 LED Channels with up to 32-bits of resolution. Flexible Analog and Digital resources allow you to go beyond just color mixing design. PrISM Modulation Technology.

DIY instructions to convert your electronic drums to be used as a Rock Band drum controller (via a MIDI-to-relay converter).

Convert MIDI to 8 independently controlled relay outputs. Can be use to interface an electronic drum kit to connect to a video console by simulating the buttons on a the rock-band drum controller.

What product am I excited about this year? My Tivo Series 3? My new BlueRay player? No. It's a tiny little cooling fan from Middle Atlantic. When I first had equipment installed in my living room, we had it all nicely hidden away in a built-in cabinet. DVR's (e.g. Tivo), Satellite receivers, and DVD players can all generate a significant amount of heat. When placed in an enclosed cabinet they are unable to stay cool enough to prevent the heat from damaging the components.

After frying a couple of pieces of equipment, we had Home Technologies install the CAB-COOL fan in the side of the cabinet. What I love about it is that it has an integrated thermostat that lets it spin slower and keep the fan noise to a minimum. Installation is simple and self-contained and our equipment now stays nice and cool.

This seems pretty clever - controlling N*(N-1) LED's from just N available output pins from a micro-controller (as opposed to N led's for direct drive, or (N-A)*A for row/column addressing).

However, with a decoder, seems like you can get exponentially higher than this: 2^N is possible for a clocked circuit which can latch the LED address (but the chip count goes up).

So for 5 pins:
Direct: 5 LED's
Row/Column: 6 LED's
CharilePlexing: 20 LED's
Decoder: 32 LED's

Finally, you can can an "infinite" number of LED's driven through a serial interface. So - with "1 pin" you should be able to drive a clocked shift register to control a very large number of LED's (e.g., with 1 100 element shift register, full the registered rapidly in burst mode, and then pause to let a capacitor charge next to each LED).

I wonder if you can buy 3-wire modular LED's with built-in shift register and capacitors so you can hook these up like fully controllable "Christmas tree" lights.

Watch and control your home entertainment system from anywhere via the internet. This high-end Slingbox let's you watch your TV no matter where you are.

When Blue Dot was on KOMO news, we watched from the office via Jigna's Slingbox at her home.