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?"

Comments

More Likely Responses

[Arthur Grumbine]

Him: Yeah, babe, and now you can tell your friends that your Valentine's Day card runs at 14 MHz.
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: ...uh, yeah... I'll be doing that right away...

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)

Re:More Likely Responses

[Sepiraph]

Think about it: how many ladies can say that their Valentine's card runs at 14 MHz?"

Clearly this is a trick question. No such girlfriend ever existed in the first place.

Re:More Likely Responses

[narcberry]

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...

Re:More Likely Responses

[Arthur Grumbine]

And that's why it's currently +5 funny. I know my audience.

Re:More Likely Responses

[moosesocks]

OK, but bear with me..... assume a spherical girlfriend of uniform density.....

Re:More Likely Responses

[az1324]

or
Him: ...14 MHz.
Her: At least something knows how to oscillate around here.

Re:More Likely Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

That's easy, just imagine the average American woman.

pfftt...

[djupedal]

>"...how many ladies can say that their Valentine's card runs at 14 MHz?"

How many want to?

Invalid XHTML

[XanC]

That's the least page I can remember bearing a "Valid XHTML" logo at the bottom. Ugh.

Overclock it?

[canatech]

I bet with liquid cooling you could get it to 18MHz!

Make her a dinner reservation instead

[piltdownman84]

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.

Re:Make her a dinner reservation instead

[pla]

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.

Re:Come now

[iocat]

It's not too geeky, it's too PATHETIC. If you need a microcontroller running at 14Mhz and C code to blink some heart shaped LEDs, you should just turn in nerd card now. It's like using an anvil to hammer a picture hanging nail.

If you can't create that card with a 555 and a couple resistors, I wouldn't be surprised to see your Valentine laugh in your face and go off with a real He-Man who writes assembly.

Christ! A 14Mhz microcontroller... if you're gonna use that, the damn card better access the internet or play NES games at least.

Something more simple

[hack slash]

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?

Most Likely Response

[az1324]

Her: That's NOT the kind of crystal I had in mind.

Re:Come now

[daveime]

Damn, you mentioning 555's takes me back ... in 1981 when I was just 13 years old, I got a little project published in Everyday Electronics, on just such a premise ... an oscillator made from two gates of a 4001 feeding into a 1 of 6 counter (4022 ?) and 6 LEDs cycling in sequence. I'd abandoned the 555 in favour of the NOR gates as it was bloody unstable and used to do horrible things to the power supply.

I got paid 12 pounds for getting that published, which was like a kings ransom for a 13 year old.

Microcontroller pfft ... can you say overkill ?

Not what she'd want

[Big Hairy Ian]

14Mhz??????

Personaly I'm sure she'd want something that ran at 150hz (approx)

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