When I am at work, I use headphones; a lot. About half the time I am listening to music, the other half I am talking with someone on Lync (Skype for Business). That made it difficult for my colleagues to know whether I am available or not, so I get interrupted when I’m on the phone. I needed a way to communicate my availability!

About a year ago the girlfriend and I finally found a house and got settled in. It’s not huge; neither is the garden or the garage. But there was enough space for me to get my own room; a man cave, office, and workshop, all in one! I’m very happy with it, small spaces spike the creativity, and I’ve managed to fit pretty much everything I needed. It has taken me this long to get everything together and document it.

AVR is a series of microcontrollers from Atmel. Fitted with A/D converters, comparators, timers, interrupts, internal oscillator, and more. Flash memory is used for the main program, SDRAM for variables and EEPROM for values that need to be saved through a power loss. Cheap, fast and easy make them perfect for home automation projects.

Seasoning a humidor means getting it ready for cigars by saturating the wood with moisture, so that it no longer is hygroscopic.

Temperature sensor with serial RS-485 interface. Two additional sensors can be connected using 3-pin headers on the circuit board. Uses an AVR ATmega8 microcontroller.

I rebuilt an existing interface module — to be a stand-alone temperature and humidity sensor, with serial RS-232 interface. Uses an AVR ATmega8 microcontroller.

I rebuilt an existing interface module — to be a stand-alone temperature and light sensor, with serial RS-232 interface and some signal LEDs. Uses an AVR ATmega8 microcontroller.

Portal alarm box unit, my main project on technical college.

Strobe light controller, using the AVR ATtiny2313 microcontroller. Meant for cars; with front, side and rear warning lights.

A 19" rack cabinet filled with electronics and AVR microcontroller modules — I called it: The rack box project!