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Hackable Microcontroller-Powered Valentine's Card

Posted by kdawson on from the gotta-have-heart dept.

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?"

4 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Re:More Likely Responses by narcberry · · Score: 5, Informative

    Considering my wife came across an electronics project I made, didn't care what it was or how much work it cost and threw it away.. I'm probably not going to spend hours and hours making a valentines day card twinkle...

    --
    Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
  2. Re:More Likely Responses by Alvare · · Score: 2, Informative

    Him: Yeah [...] 14 MHz.
    Her: ... a microcontroller ... huh ... I made you this valentine robot with a couple multi-core processors, AI and Python-plug-in capable, but's okay...

    --
    4 - A robot may not masturbate, except where such action would conflict with the Second Law.
  3. Re:Make her a dinner reservation instead by pla · · Score: 5, Informative

    And yes, I'm female. Really.

    No offense, but what "real" females - shallow or not - say and what they mean differ drastically. I don't think this involves lying so much as simple self-delusion (since they seem to actually believe what they say), but it all ends up the same.

    Simple example - Would you rather get a blinking card that represents a week's work from your SO, or a mere half-day's pay worth of roses delivered conspicuously to your workplace?

    And before you answer, I've tried both (well, not a blinking card, but same idea). The "lovingly crafted with my own hands and dozens of hours of hard work" gift gets a "gee, thanks, how... nice". The large bundle of dying plant debris result in a tigress throwing you to the floor and a few hours of scratch-mark-leaving entertainment.

    Women want stuff and attention, and as much of it as possible. They don't care about the effort or intent involved, just the end product.

  4. Re:More Likely Responses by noidentity · · Score: 2, Informative

    Him: Yeah, babe, and now you can tell your friends that your Valentine's Day card runs at 14 MHz.
    Her: Yeah, like I want them to know that you suck at coding and need 14 million cycles per second just to blink a few lights.