The moment you think you’ve lost your wallet, you get that panicky feeling. All of your cash, your ID, and your credit cards are suddenly gone. Your range of options is dramatically limited. You might be stranded somewhere, unable to get home or into the club where your friends are. You...

[In my previous posting, I discussed the shortcomings of the digital alarm clock and what my goals were for the ideal clock. A link to that posting is at the bottom of this one.] How the Clock Works — from the Outside. Our clock has only three interface elements; a big blue display (the...

With everyone at the Consumer Electronics Show drooling over giant flat screen TVs and miniature tablet-shaped supercomputers, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at a common consumer device that we STILL haven’t gotten right after a hundred years or so: the alarm clock. You...

That funny looking symbol on my new business card is a QR code. Lately these little beasties have been cropping up on everything from T-shirts to magazine ads. The QR (Quick Response) code is a two-dimensional bar code that can store contact info, URLs, even paragraphs of text. Although they...

Did you ever play the electronic game “Lights Out?” I’ve built a seven-color version of this toy from the 70′s using LED’s and a PIC microcontroller. (More on this...