New Year’s Eve ball drop in your kitchen
[Tech B.] hacked together a Ball Drop for New Year’s Eve using stuff he had lying around. The ball itself is an old Christmas ornament that he cut in half and filled with 14 LEDs and a 9V battery. He finished up that portion of the project by gluing the halves back together and adding a hole for the guide rod. The base is made of some cardboard boxes and hides an Arduino, a servo motor, an LCD screen, and the base for the vertical rod. When the last ten seconds of the year are counted down, a servo lowers the ball by unspooling some yarn that loops over the top of the rod. As the yarn is slowly dished out gravity pulls the ball toward its goal. We’ve embedded [Tech B.'s] demonstration video after the break.
Filed under: home entertainment hacks



[Tech B.] hacked together a Ball Drop for New Year’s Eve using stuff he had lying around. The ball itself is an old Christmas ornament that he cut in half and filled with 14 LEDs and a 9V battery. He finished up that portion of the project by gluing the halves back together and adding a hole for the guide rod. The base is made of some cardboard boxes and hides an Arduino, a servo motor, an LCD screen, and the base for the vertical rod. When the last ten seconds of the year are counted down, a servo lowers the ball by unspooling some yarn that loops over the top of the rod. As the yarn is slowly dished out gravity pulls the ball toward its goal. We’ve embedded [Tech B.'s] demonstration video after the break.
Filed under: home entertainment hacks
