These days it is mainly my son who does interesting electronics projects. He started doing this when he was six. Like me he doesn't like taking circuits from magazines but rather designs them himself (with some help from the internet). He just breadboards the circuits.
If you have trouble connection your computer to your television then this may be the answer.
Using Eagle and other EDA software I made a few PCB's. Originally I was going to put them all here but that is too much work. Here are two very old ones.
This circuit simulates two dice. It is build around a PIC 16c84 microcontroller and runs from a 9V battery. Pushing the right button "throws" the dice and sounds a short beep to alert the other players.
It is possible to choose between one and two dice with the left button. After five seconds the display blanks (except for a flashing decimal point) to save battery power. Pushing one of the buttons brings the display back up.
The size of the PCB is 3.2"x3.2".
This circuit was made for my wife's birthday. It is capable of flashing five strings of LED's with different frequencies. It also has a connector for an 8 Ohm loudspeaker and two connectors for the small PCB's that are contained in musical greeting cards. In this way the circuit will play alternatingly two room filling tunes at regular time intervals. After a while this is quite maddening so it is possible to turn off the sound!
I build this circuit with my son and we connected it to the back of a heart made from cardboard. In the heart we made little holes for the LED's. Pretty nice. Obviously the same circuit can be used as a christmas gadget.
The size of the PCB is 2.9"x2.9".
