I have always been calling February a recovery month. It’s the weird time of the year where the wages are mainly used to pay for all the bills racked up from holidays. It’s cold outside, and quite miserable in the UK. Nothing lifts your mood better than some online shopping. Here is my shopping list for February.
Arduino MKR1000
I actually got two of them now, one which I ordered for the next project and one which was a reward from Arduino Project Hub (I got a project of the month reward!). These are mini Arduinos with a WiFi shield attached to it. I got fond of Arduino lately. They come with Analog pins and 5V logic which makes some projects much easier. I have two projects in mind. An IoT Jellybeans dispenser and this bad boy!
Sonoff WIFI switch
Would you believe that until now, I have not tried it? They are very popular WiFi switches which can be attached to power cables. I will need few of them to showcase my project for the Electromaker competition. There will be a write up about the switches at some point for sure!
12V Heavy Duty toggle
Who doesn’t like a movie like switches! This one comes with safety cap. It looks like something you could find inside a fighter jet! It will look great and work as a master switch for the project mentioned above.
3-position rotary switch
These look really nice, although I’m not sure why there is no option for an RGB enabled one. The switchboard I’m working on will feature six of these which will handle RGB lightbulbs. The only problem is the number of pins. I want to mod it with a 4-pin RGB LED, which would introduce additional 4 pins per switch! You can see how the number of pins required quickly stacks up!
2 pin Heavy Duty Rocker
In addition to the 6 light toggles, I want to control 6 IoT devices. These toggles come with nice retro labels which fit my design. Simple and classy with a satisfying haptic feedback!
3.7g servos
Do you know what else you can do with servos? Create a custom analogue meter. The micro servos will drive the needle showing temperature and something else (the project has 2 dials, only one has a purpose right now).
RGB LEDs 4-pins
If I’m lucky, I will be able to fit it inside the toggles from above. I really want to have an RGB option available. I needed 6, but they come in packs. You can never have enough RGB LEDs – that’s for sure!
2004 LCD Display
Initially, I planned to use 2×16 LCD display (1602) but the first design just asked for a bigger display. This is a 4×16 LCD matrix with a yellow/green highlight. You can see it will fit the theme nicely.
Rotary Encoders with a switch
I will need at least one for my project. The main advantage of the rotary encoder over a potentiometer is the 360-degree operation. It’s easier to map the output of the encoder to select fine values than with a potentiometer.
3-position switch
A simpler way of controlling the WiFi lights. This is my back up. Should my plan with replacing LEDs inside the rotary switches fail, I will use these instead and use a 5050 RGB strip to drive the highlights. I will save a lot of pins this way!
CD4012B IC
To dive all that input I will need more pins. I can’t use the keyboard matrix, as the switchboard has to register multiple buttons and toggles at the same time. This IC is a great way to tun 3 pins into 8 or daisy-chain multiple ICs.
TLC5940NT IC
In a perfect world, I’d drive each LED like it was a part of one WS2812B strip. This would require just a little programming skill and a single pin. The world isn’t a perfect place so I need something capable of dimming and changing RGB values with PWM signal. This is the right candidate!
DIP IC sockets
The above ICs have to be placed somewhere. This kit of nearly 100 different IC sockets should cover all that use. I rather have some extras left for my next project than save a buck or two and end up short!
The month it’s over. Hope you enjoyed my little shopping list and found some fun items or inspiration for yourself. I’m able to continue with my projects thanks to your support! I will see you again in a month time!
