Maniacal Labs

For part two of the Dial-A-Song project, I’m going to go through the hookup of the phone’s keypad so that it can act as an input to the Raspberry Pi. The first thing to do was remove the short ribbon cable that came on the keypad and replace it with something a little longer so I could more easily hook it up to the Pi. Here’s the old ribbon cable:

Hey Igors, Miles here. Yes, I’ve decided that fans of Maniacal Labs are hereby dubbed Igor, regardless of gender (I suppose female Igors might want to be referred to as Igorina, but I will allow them to petition for this at a later date [Fans of the great Sir Terry Pratchett, REJOICE!]). The other maniacs and I have decided to do some reviews of modelling software that is available as freeware out there on the internet tubes.

The Binary Epoch Clock is now only $19.99, 40% off! We’re even offering free shipping within the United States. We’re clearing out inventory so we can focus on our latest product and that means you can get the Binary Epoch Clock at it’s lowest price ever! Get yours now! [product id=“410”]

Earlier this week, we got the great news that we have been accepted to the North Carolina Maker Faire. We’re absolutely ecstatic to get to share some of our projects with the public but it’s also been a great push to get some other projects done. I’ve had this particular project bouncing around my head for a couple of years now. I call it Dial-A-Song. Much of the inspiration came from They Might Be Giants, who used to leave recordings of their songs on their answering machine, which could be listened to by calling (718) 387-6962.

We are excited to announce that we now offer 3D printing services! We’ve had a MakerBot Replicator 2 for a while now, which we absolutely love, and now we want to share it. This is a bit of an experiment, so we’re trying it all out via MakeXYZ; a great community of 3D printer owners and those who need 3D printed items. It typically deals with connecting local people, but we will ship to anywhere in the USA.

Gasp! An Update! Yes, it’s true. We’re still here and after coming back from a nice and much-needed vacation, we’re ready to start doing cool stuff again. First off, and update on a previous post. I recently put together a PCB to hold the important control elements of the Polar Giraffe. Many Thanks to OSHPark for another quality board! PGControlBoard with Arduino Pro Mini installed

We love our MakerBot Replicator 2 at Maniacal Labs HQ but eventually you get tired of printing off Portal Companion Cubs, Tardiss (Tardii?), gears, etc. It’s actually a lot more fun to create things that solve a real problem! I recently got a new Nexus 5 phone and Nexus 7 tablet, both of which have the ability to utilize wireless charging pads. Since I’m lazy, this sounded like a good idea (I know, first world problem).

Stick a Pin in It I’ve been working on a side project that uses some of the WS2812 based LED strips, just like the “NeoPixel” strips from Adafruit. Unfortunately, I began having problems with the strips in that they suddenly stopped responding to any control signals being sent to them.

No, we’ve not genetically spliced a polar bear and a giraffe. Although, we’d be interested to see what that looked like… Regardless, I present, for your consideration, the Polar Giraffe! FunctionalTest_1_small Ah yes, the name. Well I had a typo in the main project folder on my NAS device, so the project is known to the file system as “.

PCB Fail Ever since first trying KiCad and OSH Park I have been a little hooked on being able to throw together a custom PC, have it professionally manufactured, and shipped to me within a couple weeks.