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Hackable Microcontroller-Powered Valentine's Card
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?"
Him: Yeah, babe, and now you can tell your friends that your Valentine's Day card runs at 14 MHz.
...uh, yeah... I'll be doing that right away...
...
Her: Really?! 14? How many songs does that mean it can hold?
or
Him: Yeah, babe, and now you can tell your friends that your Valentine's Day card runs at 14 MHz.
Her:
or
Him: Yeah, babe, and now you can tell your friends that your Valentine's Day card runs at 14 MHz.
Her:
(She remains as silent as all other RealDolls)
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
the "hearthack" tag
http://pinopsida.com
but can it run Ninnle Linux?
I'm a huge geek. I always read up on new hardware/software. I play MMOs, I have a tech related job.
And this is too geeky even for ME.
>"...how many ladies can say that their Valentine's card runs at 14 MHz?"
How many want to?
That's the least page I can remember bearing a "Valid XHTML" logo at the bottom. Ugh.
while this is certainly nice, somehow this gift isn't very impressive if you just have to follow a video tutorial.
I'm fairly sure they're going to be pretty pissed when they open it expecting chocolates and all they find is a bunch of wiring and batteries.
I don't have a girlfriend so I can't be entirely sure, but I do know that the chick at the video store wasn't happy when I finally got her to open the box of chocolates I was holding in front of me only to find my penis poking in from a hole in the bottom.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
"In addition to our ... you'll need ..."
Not anatomically correct.
I bet with liquid cooling you could get it to 18MHz!
How many ladies can say that their Valentine's card runs at 14 MHz?"
/.'er without a significant other.
Zero, the same number that will be saying it on 2-14. Because anyone who is nerdy enough to give this as a gift is a virginal
Only a really 'special' girl is going to be impressed by this. The only thing a girl wants you to make for Valentines day is a dinner reservation.
Should make for an interesting week!
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
I thought geeks don't have anyone to give this to...mothers excluded.
I saw tons of "record your own love song" card at Hallmark. I kept wondering if it would be possible to hack the card after the envelope been sealed to change the recording to the Barney theme song ("I love you, you love me..."). Should get some special guys dumped in a hurry to make some special girls available. Anyway, just an idea...
Hackable Mind Control-Powered Valentine's Card
That would be so much cooler, and helpful for this crowd.
Him: Yeah, babe, and now you can tell your friends that your Valentine's Day card runs at 14 MHz.
Her: 14 inches! wow!
Him: ...uh, yeah...
So, did the blinking valentine's day card work for him or what?
If you want to make a special card which lights up, I saw this great little project close to christmas and so I made 9 cards, but instead of watch batteries that would die after a week or so I wired in resistors & USB plugs (strangely the only place I can find solderable USB plugs online/offline is from Maplins!), all the recipients loved them and most wondered how the blinking flip they were lit up.
Edge lit holiday cards (the snowflake one looks much better with a black background & two blue LEDs, one at the top & other at the bottom)
Next christmas I'm going to have to make something even better - anyone have any simple circuit designs on using an LED as a light sensor and then making some more LEDs react by blinking?
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
While there's nothing wrong with a dinner reservation at a nice restaurant (who doesn't like good food?), my own experience suggests that a sincere creative gesture is often pretty well-received.
Tweet, tweet.
She might attempt to do something similar for next month's "guy" version of Valentine's Day.
Then again, that might work out well.
The Internet is generally stupid
these guys seem to have a decent piece of the slashvertisement market recently...
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
I thought it was sweet. I would rather have creative and heart felt than generic, well sans the cheesy Al Green song.
I bet that if we put them in SLI (aka you duck tape 500 of them together) you can play crysis! how many women can say that their valentines day card can do that?
Her: That's NOT the kind of crystal I had in mind.
This is the second time I've seen an advertisement for nerdkits on the /. front page. The fact is, you can't build any of their submissions unless you shell out $80 or so (I'd double check, but don't want to send them the traffic again) for their 'starter' kit with the necessary components. The videos simply show you how to make certain things above and beyond the projects initially included with their kit.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
I own a NerdKit and have been having a lot of fun playing with it. While the components certainly cost a lot less than $80, the documentation and real human-based tech support (right down to helping you debug your own code at no charge) is well worth it.
It should also be noted that if you choose to make more of the kits by buying components, the NerdKits people supply their bootloader and assistance for installing it on a fresh microcontroller. I think it's a pretty sweet deal, even if perhaps a Slashvertisement is a bit uncouth.
Make your date memorable as in live to tell another day, by not putting garments over halogen lamps. I know is just a prop but props can be set ablaze. Just ask Michael Jackson. Cool Valentine's card thought.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
Instead of wasting your time hacking microcontrollers, why not try something REALLY radical, like, say, a nice dinner out, see a show or go to a comedy club, and maybe a nice little present that she actually wants? Anyone? Bueller?
Seriously, guys. Maybe do this as an extra little kicker, because let's face it, she HAS to appreciate your nerdiness/geekiness or she wouldn't be with you, but make it your LOWEST priority project.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
A) Real men don't build a circuit with an 14Mhz ATmega, when a couple of 555's and a few TTL counters would have sufficed.
B) Real men don't program micro-controllers in C (or, god forbid, BASIC), when a hundred or so assembly instructions would have sufficed.
C) Real men don't give their wives goofy hand-made electronic crap on Valentine's Day, because they know their wives will figuratively and possibly literally beat the shit out of them thus belying that whole 'real man' thing.
Him: Yeah, babe, and now you can tell your friends that your Valentine's Day card runs at 14 MHz.
Her: Really?! Thanks sweety! Do you think we could put an Arduino in one of this?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I think she'd have more fun with a Rabbit running at 14 Hz.
Squirrel!
If anyone has a girlfriend/wife that understands what megahertz are, and would actually be impressed with a card that's measured in megahertz, for the love of God hold on to her...you've found yourself a keeper.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
Let's face it, if you were even considering taking romantic advice from Slashdot, your romantic life is most likely in so much trouble that doing this will simply bring forward the inevitable anyway.
Personaly I'm sure she'd want something that ran at 150hz (approx)
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
All things considered... $80 is not a bad price.
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.
Life is short: void the warranty.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these! & Yeah but can it play doom?
My other sig is a knife wound.
Talk about a waste of cycles. I'm sure the same thing could be achieved with just 1.4kHz.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
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.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
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.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
...this year I can finally send myself a Valentine that even I'll be impressed with? :^(
The woman who would appreciate this card very well may say the following... Why this card is automatic...It's systematic...It's hydromatic...Why it's Creased lightning (Creased lightning)
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Strange as it seems, my wife says she still prefers diamonds to a microprocessor-controlled Valentine's Day card... yeah, I know, I don't understand it either!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Hmmmm, I'm wondering: will she find this cute, or plain too much geeky ?!?
[Pruneau
At first I thought it said "Mindcontroller" rather than "Microcontroller" in the title... Dangit, I thought that'd make Valentine's Day easy this year...
This sig is false.