Chapter 9. Building your own thing
This chapter covers
- The endless possibilities of creating your own mashups using preexisting, low-voltage consumer electronics
- Steps for creating your own inventions: prototyping, iterating, and debugging
- Isolating circuits from each other using photocouplers
- Analyzing datasheets and other software and firmware implementations to create your own software support for components
- Encapsulating component behavior with custom Johnny-Five plugins and the J5 Collection mixin
- Wrangling sophisticated sensors: processing complex data and managing configuration
For this chapter, you’ll need the following:
- 1 Tessel 2
- 1 set of remote-controlled wall outlets
- 1 SparkFun 3.3 V APDS-9960 breakout board
- Soldering iron and supplies
- Push buttons and/or LEDs for debugging circuits (optional)
- 6 photocouplers (opto-isolators), such as the 4N25
- 6 100 V resistors
- 1 full-size breadboard
- Jumper wires
- 1 multimeter
- 0.1″ male breakaway headers
- 22AWG solid-core wire (optional, for soldering to remote control circuitry)
Hardware toolkit for chapter 9 (optional 22AWG solid-core wire not shown)
