Battery Backpack

A few months ago I built a small "backpack" for my rechargable battery pack in order to bring the 9.6v battery to a more microcontroller friendly 5v. Well, it lasted for a good while but then I ended up snapping the LM7805 regulator off the board. Instead of repairing it, I decided to make a new one. The new version uses binding posts instead of female headers, and also breaks out the source voltage. It's a bit larger then the last one, but still fits on the battery pack.

 As you can see, I had a cheap bent piece of aluminum for a heatsink before, and things were a bit crowded. I'm going to miss the female headers, but if it becomes a problem there is still room to add them on the new board.

Electronic Dice

 The past couple of weeks I've been building some electronic dice based on a project I read at The Electronics Club. Since I live in the US its pretty hard to find stripboard, so this project just sat on the back burner until one day I decided to toss it together on breadboard. My last order from Mouser had landed me enough parts to build 5 of these, so instead of letting it gather dust I mocked one up.

Santa-Pede Challenge

So Hack-a-Day is rehosting their Santa-Pede Challenge since there were zero entries the last time around. I figured I would at least pick up one of those annoying santas and tear it apart, just to see what I could do.