House of Zephyrus

Sun, 21 Mar 2021 19:20:08 +0000

The one task I hate when gardening is hardening off plants. I tend to rush it and my poor seedlings pay the price. Usually, I am pretty good about limiting sun exposure but not so good about setting up wind breaks.

This year I decided to try introducing wind to my plants while they are still in the grow room. Sure, I could go plonk down $50 and get something bespoke here, but this is a perfect opportunity to use some of the extra PC case fans I have sitting around. It took all of two minutes to prototype a working “plant fan” by connecting a 9V battery across the fan terminals and cable tying the fan near my bell pepper plants.

Arduino pumpkin lights

Mon, 02 Nov 2015 14:05:03 +0000

Lacking creativity this year, I kind of phoned in the pumpkin carving. We went with regular old triangle-eyed Jack-o-lanterns. It turned out this suited Alex fine: he has decided lately that a certain level of traditionalism is called for. Watching keenly as I cut away bits of pumpkin, he was quick to point out whenever I was doing it the wrong way.

Anyhow, not wanting Halloween to pass buy without doing something new, I decided I’d write a pumpkin light control sketch for Arduino. I have the original board with the Atmega8, and the last time I touched it, the SDK was arduino-0011, which was released about seven years, three domiciles, and one country ago. Since then, I’m happy to see that arduino-mk landed in Debian, and the SDK hasn’t changed APIs in any noticeable way, so it was easy to get back up and running.

Arduino on Insignificant Bits

House of Zephyrus

Arduino pumpkin lights