The non-I²C version of the standard 1602 LCD needs 16 wires and a contrast trimmer. The I²C backpack takes it down to 4 wires and gives you contrast control over software. If you're doing anything more than blinking an LED, this is the upgrade to make. Parts list: • 1602 charact…
What you'll build: a desk clock that keeps accurate time with a coin-cell backup, displays HH:MM:SS + date on a crisp OLED, and stays accurate to better than 1 minute per year. No internet, no setup app, no apps to update. Parts list: • Arduino Nano • 0.96" SSD1306 OLED display…
What it does: the TCS3200 is a square chip with 64 photodiodes covered by R/G/B/clear filters. By selecting one filter at a time and counting the square-wave output frequency, you can measure how much of that colour the surface is reflecting. Use case: I used it in a small conve…
What it is: a flat MIDI controller with 12 capacitive touch pads on a sheet of acrylic. Plug it into a computer over USB and it shows up as a native MIDI device — no drivers, no extra software. Ableton, FL Studio, GarageBand all see it instantly. Why Teensy LC: it has native USB…
This is NOT a real radiation detector. It's a teaching tool that produces statistically realistic Poisson-distributed clicks at any background rate you choose, so you can demonstrate randomness, dose-rate maths, and counter electronics without owning an actual SBM-20 tube. Why b…
The classic hard project. Beautiful in theory, brutal in tuning. Took me 3 evenings to get it balancing for more than 5 seconds — and another evening of tuning before it could be pushed and recover. Parts: • Arduino Nano (or any 16MHz AVR) • MPU6050 6-axis accel + gyro module (I…
