Hackable Microcontroller-Powered Valentine's Card 133
compumike writes "If you have a significant other to impress this Valentine's Day, consider putting your programming skills to use. This video tutorial shows how to build an LED Heart Valentine's card, powered by a microcontroller running C code, with a neat randomized 'twinkling' effect in an interrupt handler. Think about it: how many ladies can say that their Valentine's card runs at 14 MHz?"
pfftt... (Score:5, Insightful)
>"...how many ladies can say that their Valentine's card runs at 14 MHz?"
How many want to?
Make her a dinner reservation instead (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More Likely Responses (Score:3, Insightful)
More like
HimYeah babe, your Valentine's Day card runs at 14 MHZ!
HerI think we should see other people.
Re:Make her a dinner reservation instead (Score:1, Insightful)
And that attitude is why you can't get laid. Or maybe you just go for really shallow women so it has skewed your perception of the entire gender.
And yes, I'm female. Really.
No, really.
Re:Come now (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn, you mentioning 555's takes me back ... in 1981 when I was just 13 years old, I got a little project published in Everyday Electronics, on just such a premise ... an oscillator made from two gates of a 4001 feeding into a 1 of 6 counter (4022 ?) and 6 LEDs cycling in sequence. I'd abandoned the 555 in favour of the NOR gates as it was bloody unstable and used to do horrible things to the power supply.
I got paid 12 pounds for getting that published, which was like a kings ransom for a 13 year old.
Microcontroller pfft ... can you say overkill ?
Re:Make her a dinner reservation instead (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Submitter forgot to mention it costs $79.99 + S (Score:3, Insightful)
The kits are for people that are interested in getting started with microcontroller-based projects. Do you remember just how hard it can be to figure out where to start?
Well-documented projects, all the components you need, support -- for $80 that sounds like a steal!
Yes, you can get the parts much cheaper, but this isn't about buying the parts.
If you really do want something a little cheaper you can get started with an Arduino board and browse the various guides (disclaimer: I wrote one there) on getting started. However, you are still going to spend $50 including a decent breadboard, components, etc.
For an all-inclusive getting started kit, $80 seems very reasonable to me.
A little overkill... (Score:3, Insightful)
You can get the sequential LEDs pattern with a simple shift register (74HC574 can be wired for this) and a 555 timer. If you want to add randomness, you can add a few xor gates (74HC86) to make a linear feedback shift register. So far, that's less than a dollar of IC's, and no programming required.
I've done this! (Score:3, Insightful)
Three times. I did not exactly make a card- two times I made a board with a PIC and a 2*16 LCD, the third time I simply coopted a spare Renesas dev board. All I did was display some message on the LCD. And the girls LOVED it. You can never discount how much the girls will love something you take the time to make- girls do dig the geeky stuff.
Re:Make her a dinner reservation instead (Score:3, Insightful)
Politically Incorrect or not, I expect that I got modded up because most people (males, at least - which happen to form the vast majority of Slashdotters) can strongly identify with my statements.
but what I *do* know is that there are a large number to which this does NOT apply.
Oh, no doubt! Very few unqualified generalizations hold true universally; you'll get no disagreement from me on that point. But let's not play semantic games, you understood my intended point.
I don't even want to get to your misogyny here
Okay, there, you need to back up a bit. In no way did I claim females as inferior to males. In this particular instance, I don't even claim them as all that different than males (hey, I'll admit it, I care about results, not the process of getting to the result). As for the implied self-deception, we all have lies we tell ourselves; I merely pointed out a particular one that seems predominantly female in nature. If you believe that makes me a misogynist, well, you have a right to your own opinion.