Projects
Need inspiration? Find it here! These tutorials feature special projects broken down into steps to illustrate how you can use various concepts, skills, and technologies to build awesome stuff.
Hackers in Residence - Hacking MindWave Mobile
February 26, 2014
Review, teardown, and hacking tutorial for the MindWave Mobile, a $99 commercial grade EEG sensor.
Wireless Arduino Programming with Electric Imp
February 24, 2014
Reprogram your Arduino from anywhere in the world using the Tomatoless Boots wireless bootloader with the Electric Imp.
Simon Splosion Wireless
February 13, 2014
This is a tutorial demonstrating one of many techniques to "hack" the Simon Says. We will highlight the technique to take your Simon Says Wireless.
Das Blinken Top Hat
January 22, 2014
A top hat decked out with LED strips makes for a heck of a wedding gift.
Recreating Classic Electronics Kits
January 13, 2014
100-in-1? 500-in-1? It's up to you when you build your own Science Fair style experiment board!
pcDuino Crowdsource Kiosk
January 9, 2014
Getting People to do your job for you (badly) with some chocolate and a pcDuino!
Quick Illuminated Boxes
December 16, 2013
A quick tutorial to show you how to add LEDs to gift or holiday bags or boxes.
Raspberry Pi Twitter Monitor
November 19, 2013
How to use a Raspberry Pi to monitor Twitter for hashtags and blink an LED.
Hackers In Residence - The Tethered Quad
September 18, 2013
Our first-ever "Hackers in Residence" Tara Tiger Brown and Sean Bonner created a quadcopter that stays tethered to the ground. Here's how they did it!
My Drunk Kitchen Apron
September 5, 2013
A fun project that uses the LilyPad MP3 trigger. This apron will dispense helpful kitchen advice and humor from the host of My Drunk Kitchen, Hannah Harto!
Dungeons and Dragons Dice Gauntlet
August 13, 2013
A playful, geeky tutorial for a leather bracer that uses a LilyPad Arduino, LilyPad accelerometer, and seven segment display to roll virtual 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20, and 100 side dice for gaming.
Mario the Magician's Magical Lapel Flower
May 23, 2013
A guest tutorial from the astonishingly talented Mario the Magician showing how to put together your own servo-controlled lapel flower.
Creating a Humidor Control Box
March 13, 2013
Because some of our boards need to be re-humidified after reflow, we decided to make our own humidor. This tutorial will focus on how to model a project in 3D and then fabricate it using a CNC routing machine.
The Uncertain 7-Cube
March 8, 2013
The Uncertain 7-Cube is a non-committal, less-than-helpful, but also entirely honest fortune teller. Simply ask it a yes or no question, give it a nudge, and the 7-Cube will dutifully inform you that it doesn’t have all the facts and doesn’t feel comfortable making a guess.
Soft Circuits: LED Feelings Pizza
February 13, 2013
Here we will learn how to say how you feel with pizza. Electric pizza.
Heating Pad Hand Warmer Blanket
January 21, 2013
DIY Project Idea: Create a custom hand warmer blanket using heating pads.
Heartbeat Straight Jacket
June 4, 2009
An EL project that displays one person's heartbeat on another person's costume.
Old Tutorials
Looking for the old, archived tutorials? Head on over to the
archived tutorials on the main
SparkFun site.
Please be aware that the tutorials you find there are no longer
actively maintained.