Coming May 15! Multiple tracks added to Grandpa's Gizmos Course

Registration opens May 15th for the summer semester of Grandpa's Gizmos, offered through Pinckney Community Education. During the sabbatical semester, the course was completely updated. There are now more projects, more parts, and a new course layout which will help tailor the course to your interests. Are you an alumnus of the course? Please spread the word!

Last time the course was offered, there were typically one or two projects offered per lesson. Of course, not every lesson will be of interest to every student. We get that. The new course will have four simultaneous tracks: Gizmos, Games, Music, and Timekeeping. While you don't have to stick to the projects in a track, it should allow people to focus more on what interests them and not get overloaded by all the projects.

Gizmos track

The gizmos track is probably of most interest to the home DIY enthusiast, or people who like making tools that are actually useful. Some of the gizmos track projects include:

• Ultrasonic Ruler

• Voltage tester (New!)

• Programmable voltage source (New!)

• Strobe light

• Graphing Thermometer

• Data Logger

• Racing Timer

• Entrance (door chime) counter

Games track

The games track is for those who like to revisit the old-school 8-bit games, as well as some new games and party pass-arounds made especially for the Arduino. Some of the games track projects include:

• Stop It! -- Try and hit the target LED

• Grandpa Says -- our own little Simon Says clone

• Broken Arrow -- find the lost nuke in your submarine

• Pong

• Space Trash

• Landing Simulator

• Fortune Teller

• 3D Maze (New!)

Music track

In the past, making sound has been relegated to the tiny passive buzzer module. While they are simple to use and program, a buzzer will never be high fidelity. In this new course we go beyond the buzzer. Some of the music projects include:

• Improved music interpreter language for the melody player. Besides the previous tempo and style commands, the new interpreter still uses the tone() command but now has better tied and dotted note handling, Also, repeats can be used to greatly simplify entering music.

• Matrix Keyboard -- learn how to wire a keyboard to use the minimum number of Uno pins

• Metronome -- this metronome has both a visual and audio option.

• Theremin A -- Uses LED and LDR attached to a slide to vary pitch

• How to play through a speaker -- amplification and Bluetooth

• Wavetable direct digital synthesis -- Ditch tone() and use true wavetable synthesis to create sound and play over a speaker

• MP3 player -- This project lets you load hundreds of MP3s on a flash card. No WIFI needed for this music! Speaker or Bluetooth output.

• Interactive synthesizer -- combine wavetable synthesis with home-made keyboard to make a playable synthesizer.

• Theremin B -- Use ultrasonic sensor to read hand position and change pitch.

Timekeeping track

Formerly called the "progressive clock project". This track is the least amount of re-wiring from week to week if you don't really like that kind of thing. This project starts out as a night light (all tracks make this) but the timekeeping track keeps adding additional parts to add:

• button control

• beep feedback

• 7-segment clock display

• auto-dimming of display

• temperature reading

• alarm and timer

• tick tock sounds and chimes (or music)

• real-time-clock module (so you don't have to set the time after power-up)

Of course, the first few classes we will have a shared objective of learning the basics, like soldering..

We will provide three of the main boards pre-soldered for you so you can get started quickly. However, there still will be soldering training and plenty of opportunities to use your soldering skills. We are also working on a new design for the first project: a continuity tester. I won't spoil the surprise but our assistant instructor, Gary, is working on something special!

Course registration opens May 15th. First class is Wednesday, June 3rd, 7-9 pm. It's gonna to be awesome!