Current Controlled Boost LED Driver and Black Soldermasks

The MAX16834 is a neat little chip (it's not the only one, there are plenty of others out there) that allows high efficiency designs for LED string driving. It provides a platform for a Buck or Boost converter design, as well as brightness adjustment via analog/PWM input pins, as well as a fault output (in case of open/short circuits for example) and also diverse other functionalities that can be quite useful. [Link]

Plants liven up any space by adding a sense of airiness and life. That is – of course – when you don’t forget to water them, and they shrivel up and die. I am very bad at remembering to water plants. That is why I built this self-watering plant to do it for me. Using a soil sensor, and an Arduino-controlled water pump, I have created a system that will never forget to do it.

 

Instead of remembering to water my plants when the soil goes dry, I only have to remember to once and a while refill the water reservoir. In this way, I have decreased my obligation to these plants and put it off to a much later date. Perhaps further iterations of this device can be connected to a rain barrel so that I won’t even have to worry about refilling my reservoir, and the entire system can be fully automated. [Link]