Derby Mini Maker Faire 2013

Here are some short snippets of video i shot at the Derby Mini Maker Faire 23rd November 2013

It was different to last years event. The building was newly refurbished and looked in cracking condition. Lots more stalls and an abundance or Raspberry Pi to be had for all the RP fans.

Given me inspiration to go to the main maker faire in Derby next year.

Funny Carrot

Not quite sure of how nature got to this solution but a totally awesome result

Remembering Derby Maker Faire 2012

Here is a small video montage of some of the things at the Derby Mini Maker Faire 2012. I had a brilliant day and I am looking forward to the next one on the 23rd of November 2013.

Hope you enjoy it and maybe I will see you there.

EDC Update

I decided after carrying a rucksack around as my edc that it was really not practical on a day today basis. I have now placed the options in the car, more on that in another video.

Instead I have devised a more compact solution that i can just pick up and go with.

My choice of microcontroller

At this point in time there are a shed load of options for picking a microcontroller development board. I had 3 criteria when I was looking to pick my first controller board

1   ease of use

I wanted something that was easy to program and offered a good variety of ports and pins and would give me some flexibility in expanding it for future projects.I love to protoype and the ability to swap and change configurations of hardware and software is really important to me.

2   support

support is very important. I like support were the provider of the device are approachable and have a good community to ask questions to and get examples and tutorials.

3. Price

I'm not rich and I needed something that I could maybe buy multiples quickly of the device quickly and cheaply.

The choice i was considering was between a raspberry Pi, Arduino and Basic Stamp. I discounted the basic stamp almost straight away as it is expensive to get a basic setup going and the bsic stamp is very underpowered when compared to my other choices. The Rasperry Pi is a highly powerful device but what made me bend towards the arduino was the large number of addon boards (called shields) available. For me the Arduino platform is the best I have found if you are an eternal tinkerer.


I love my Arduino it comes in my top the favourite things (the other 2 been the wife and kids and my dremel ).

I started by buying an Arduino Diecimila. this i use for prototyping. I have recently purchased a Arduino Nano. This has a really small footprint and is designed to plug into a breadboard.If i ever get past the tinkering stage i will use the nano as my distribution board. 

Specs for my arduinos are as follows:

Arduino Diecimila

Microcontroller    ATmega168
Operating Voltage    5V
Input Voltage (recommended)    7-12 V
Input Voltage (limits)    6-20 V
Digital I/O Pins    14 (of which 6 provide PWM output)
Analog Input Pins    6
DC Current per I/O Pin    40 mA
DC Current for 3.3V Pin    50 mA
Flash Memory    16 KB (of which 2 KB used by bootloader)
SRAM    1 KB
EEPROM    512 bytes
Clock Speed    16 MHz

Arduino Nano

Microcontroller    Atmel ATmega328
Operating Voltage (logic level)    5 V
Input Voltage (recommended)    7-12 V
Input Voltage (limits)    6-20 V
Digital I/O Pins    14 (of which 6 provide PWM output)
Analog Input Pins    8
DC Current per I/O Pin    40 mA
Flash Memory    16 KB (ATmega168) or 32 KB (ATmega328) of which 2 KB used by bootloader
SRAM     2 KB (ATmega328)
EEPROM    512 bytes (ATmega168) or 1 KB (ATmega328)
Clock Speed    16 MHz
Dimensions    0.73" x 1.70"

If you want to find out more about the Arduino platform go to the main webpage at  http://arduino.cc/

Scooter Death - so proud of my son

Well again it's happened. Every so often I get home and find my teenage son sat on the chair, dejected and fed up holding a broken stunt scooter. Scootering is his life and I have seen him grow with confidence to do stunts I would never have attempted as a teenager.
Its an ideal hobby, he spends hours outside doing a quite physical sport and it keeps him from being glued to the X-Box.

He doesn't ask to be changing scooters every 5 minutes like some of his friends who are less able and who have parents who give in to every whim their kids have. He is a very level headed and unspoiled and I am so proud of how he has turned out as I am for both my sons.

I find it quite refreshing to find a kid that doesn't expect to get things at every request and who has no interest in drinking, drugs or anything negative that you hear being levelled at young people today. He keeps out the way of trouble and is doing brilliantly at school.

So I guess my new glasses will have to wait a month so I can give him his life back, the least I can do for being such a good lad.

Light Following Robot

Here is my light following robot that I built from a kit of parts I bought from maplins. The robot uses a simple circuit using discreet components to make the robot track towards the light.

The circuit uses LDR (light dependant resistors) cells to detect the light source. The left LDR cell controls the right motor and visa versa thereby pushing the robot towards the light source.

This is a basic setup that needs some tuning