My Little Project: The Brian Box Saga
So, I decided to finally get around to building this thing I’d been calling the ‘brian box’ in my head. It wasn’t some grand design, just a bit of a whim, really. I had a pile of spare parts cluttering up my workbench, and I hate seeing good stuff go to waste, you know? Figured I’d cobble something together.
The idea was pretty simple. I wanted a small box that would react to sound, maybe flash some lights. Nothing too complicated. I started by rummaging through my drawers. Found an old Arduino Nano – one of those cheap clones, but they do the job. Then I grabbed a strip of those addressable LEDs, the WS2812B type, and a little microphone sensor module I bought ages ago and never used. For the box itself, I found a plain wooden craft box at some discount store, perfect size.
First up was getting the electronics talking. I soldered the LED strip to the Arduino, then hooked up the microphone. Let me tell you, those tiny pads on the LED strips can be a real pain. My first go? Yeah, half the LEDs didn’t light up. Classic rookie mistake on my part, actually – a bad solder joint. Took me a good bit of poking around with the multimeter to find that one. Always the simple things, right?
Then came the coding part. Now, I’m no software guru. I just needed something basic. I hunted down some example code for reading the microphone and controlling the LEDs. Mashed a few bits together, tweaked some values. The goal was to make the LEDs light up more or change color based on how loud the sound was. After a bit of trial and error, mostly error, I got it doing something that looked about right. It wasn’t going to win any awards, but it worked.
Next, I had to cram everything into that wooden box. This involved drilling a few holes – one for the USB power cable and another small one for the microphone to poke through. My drilling wasn’t the neatest, gotta admit. Looked a bit rough, but hey, it’s a homemade project, not something off a factory line. Character, I call it.
Now, why ‘brian box’? Well, it’s kind of a silly story. My neighbor, Brian, he’s a decent enough chap, but he sometimes, let’s say, comments if I’m making a bit of noise in my shed. Not like I’m running a jackhammer, just usual tinkering sounds. So, I thought it’d be a bit of a laugh to have this box light up when things get a little louder. A visual nod to Brian, if you will. He probably wouldn’t even get the joke. He once asked me if my 3D printer was some kind of fancy microwave. Bless him.
So, after all that fiddling, the brian box was alive! It sits there on my bench, and when I’m hammering something or testing a motor, it puts on a little light show. It’s not world-changing, but it’s my little creation. Used up some spare parts, killed an afternoon, and got a quirky little gadget out of it. Sometimes that’s all a project needs to be. Just a bit of fun. And it does make me chuckle when it lights up, thinking of Brian. Maybe I’ll make him one that plays calming whale sounds next.
