Blog
Build logs, project notes, and write-ups from the workshop.
- How to Hack a TowerPro MG995 Servo for 360° Continuous Rotation Turn a sub-$10 metal-gear hobby servo into a high-torque gear motor that runs straight off an Arduino — no motor driver required. Full walkthrough of the physical mod, the resistor-divider trick, and the calibration step nobody warns you about.
- Arduino Nano Unboxing and Soldering the Headers (Meduino Clone) Three Meduino Nano clones arrive from eBay — same ATmega328P as the Uno, but small enough to live on the breadboard. Here is how to solder the headers so it actually stays there.
- Program a TI Launchpad MSP430 Like an Arduino with Energia The TI MSP430 LaunchPad costs $4.30 and runs on the same code as an Arduino — thanks to Energia, a community-built IDE that ports the Arduino framework to TI microcontrollers.
- Sainsmart LCD Keypad Shield for Arduino — What It Does and What It Costs You The Sainsmart LCD keypad shield stacks a 16×2 LCD and five navigation buttons onto an Arduino Uno in one click-together unit. The tradeoff: it consumes 8 pins and blocks access to D11–D13. Here is what you get, what you give up, and when it makes sense.
- ClusterBot — First Test Run of the Arduino Robot The first drive test of ClusterBot: forward, spins, a turnaround subroutine, backward, and a hard brake. What a hard brake actually does on the Toshiba motor driver versus a rolling stop, and what comes next.
- Pulling the MSP430 Off the Launchpad: A Standalone Hello World on a Breadboard The TI MSP430 Launchpad ships with two chips and a DIP package you can actually remove. Here is how to take the chip off the board, run it from two AA batteries, and get blinking LEDs on a bare breadboard for about 50 cents in parts.
- First Arduino Project: Modifying Hello World to Blink 3 LEDs The classic Arduino Hello World blinks one LED. What happens when a first-timer decides to add two more? A quick tour through variables, wiring, and a bug that teaches more than the working version ever would.