New Pico Tutorials

Well, I'm slowly getting there with the Pico Documentation, and with a few basic tutorials for those with the starter kit:

• http://www.espruino.com/Pico+Buttons
  
• http://www.espruino.com/Pico+Infrared
  
• http://www.espruino.com/Pico+LCD+Hello+W­orld
  
• http://www.espruino.com/Pico+Light+Senso­r
  
• http://www.espruino.com/Pico+Vibration
  
  

I've updated the Espruino Kits page with details about what everyone's getting in each kit now, and was wondering about good tutorials - specifically for things to do with the parts in the Starter Kit.

I'm thinking:

• Device that plays a sound when you shake it.
  
• A stylophone-style Piano
  
• Something with the 10 multi-colour lights?
  
• A clock
  
• Changing the colour of a light depending on the result of a command on your PC
  
• Light that comes on when it gets dark (using the relay)
  
• A Thermometer/thermostat using the LCD and built-in themometer
  
• VGA or TV output
  
• Snake Game?
  
  

Some of those basically already exist for the Espruino, so I might just modify the old tutorial to handle both boards.

Any other ideas?

It's good to get a closer look of the final pico board. You've done well to squeeze so much onto such a small space in a very usable layout.

It's good to see some pico specific tutorials for first-timers. A page about the adapter shims in general could be good, unless you just want to add to the relevant other tutorials.

Something with the 10 multi-colour lights?

A slot machine with colors...

User holds button pressed some time, which is taken into account for the initial spinning speed like a seed for a random sequence. On release the 3 lights spin the colors in different speeds and different slow down rates and stop times. Instead of fixed colors, fading could be used.

@the1laz yes, a page on shims is a good idea. I'm planning on giving some away with the WiFi + Ethernet modules people ordered (they're with DHL at the moment) and I'll probably document them on the WiFi/Ethernet pages - but especially as the list of shims grows I'll need somewhere to document how/where to get them from.

@allObjects thanks - slot machine sounds like great idea! Should be nice and easy too.

I've just done the piano (and am working on Snake). The piano is pretty cool with the Waveform too :)

Just added snake and your slot machine - it'll go onto the website with the next update I do.

Idea dump:
Another easy project with multi-colors is to make a fake tv that flickers and fades light as a TV would.
Poor mans burglar deterrent, or otherwise faking someone watching TV. :)

Maybe play some tunes with the piezo (mario, zelda, tetris)? Makes me want to do a simple midi to Espruino converter.. hehe

Poor mans theremin, with the rangefinder and piezo.

A dice that uses LCD and vibration sensor, maybe configurable between D6 D8 D12 D20 ... DX?

IR scan/repeat project, that could record a stream of IR then play it back. http://www.espruino.com/Pico+Infrared

Something like a CPU gague using the stepper and a small node program using

var os = require('os');
console.log(os.cpus());

Poor mans theremin, with the rangefinder and piezo.

That'd make a cool general project for the site - unfortunately I didn't include a rangefinder in with the Starter Kit, but it might be possible to do something even more hacky with an LDR :)

Dice is a nice idea too.

And CPU info can be even more hacky - on Linux at least you can just do:

echo `grep 'cpu ' /proc/stat | awk '{usage=(1+(($2+$4)/($2+$4+$5)))/20} END {print "analogWrite(B15,"usage",{freq:50})"}'` > /dev/ttyACM0

But actually doing something better would be really neat - maybe using the LCD to display lots of stats (and a graph :)

Oh, a good TV faker is an interesting project!

Making it convincing could be a challenge. I like it. Cause like, you know how you can look at the light from someone's window, and tell if it's an ad, news, action film, porn, or chick films, by how often the color changes, and the colors they use, and what kind of transitions they do?