yet another source of inspiration…
Somewhere between Advent candles and Christmas cookies, a strange phenomenon hit our household: pixel fever. The kids wished for pixel art from pixeln.ch for Christmas — not plush toys, not consoles, but gloriously rigid grids of colored squares. At that moment, it became clear: this was no phase. This was discrete geometry taking over family… Read more A Pixelated Christmas Gift
It all started on a rainy afternoon when my kids asked a very dangerous question:“Dad… can’t we turn our own pictures into pixel art?” That question triggered what every developer-parent knows too well — a new side project was inevitable. A Small App with a Big Creative Goal So I built a small pixel image… Read more A Geek’s Love Letter to Pixels
I recently hacked together a delightfully simple micro:bit app that converts ambient light into sound. Think of it as a poor man’s photodiode oscilloscope — or, more accurately, a light-controlled Geiger counter for photons. The idea is straightforward: more light → faster clicks. What the Code Does (in Human Terms) The micro:bit constantly reads the… Read more Turning Light into Clicks
In this post, we’re developing a Happy Cube solver using a mixed integer linear program (MILP). Previously, we tackled this problem on a micro:bit using dynamic programming and backtracking. Now, we’re trying a different approach by creating a mathematical model to solve this combinatorial challenge. The idea is to structure the MILP so that it… Read more A MILP based Happy Cube©® Solver
In this post I’ll demonstrate the results of my most recent fun project on the micro:bit: An app to solve Happy Cubes®, a set of puzzles created in 1986 by the Belgian toy inventor Dirk Laureyssens. My kids were playing with these cubes and I was wondering, if the micro:bit could solve these cubes in… Read more Solving Happy Cubes® on A micro:bit
In this post I will demonstrate a “Hello, World!” example for the micro:bit to light up some Neopixels. Neopixels are individually-addressable RGB LEDs and can come in various forms. The most common form is the chain having all units connected serially. It was invented by Adafruit, an open-source hardware company based in New York City. Why did I… Read more Neopixels with micro:bit
In this post I’ll show you the simplest setup to generate synthetic sound using an Arduino Pro Mini. Of course you can also run it on a Leonardo or on an Arduino UNO R3. The project is inspired from a project from the official arduino project hub and you can get the sourcecode here. What… Read more Happy Birthday Duino
In this post I’ll show you how to build an arduino based math training console based on simple standard components. The app is suitable for training math in lower and middle school. It allows configuring difficulty level as well as operations and lets the player choose the correct result from a selection of 4 outcomes… Read more An Arduino based Math Trainer
In this post I’ll show you how to implement a marquee running on an Arduino Pro Mini (5V). The project uses a slightly adapted version of the C source we developed for running the same project based on a Raspberry Pi 3B+. The main changes werd applied due to the two function void setup() and… Read more Marquee on a 8×8 LED Matrix Display run by a Battery powered Arduino Pro Mini
Since the 8×8 LED Matrix Display I used in my marquee project is able to display 8×8 pixel sized letters and I am a great fan of the old Commodore 64 I designed the the font according to the C64 charset visible here: Based on the hardware reference provided here you can get the information… Read more Font Design for Raspberry Marquee Project