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Welcome to DIY Tryin.
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Build something new.
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I'm Patrick Norton.
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I'm Michael Hand.
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We were going to bring you the most amazing confluence
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of aluminum gas welding and lemons today.
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But that failed horribly.
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Yes.
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Yes, it did.
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So instead, Arduinos.
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Yay!
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What's an Arduino?
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So Arduino is a microcontroller that you
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can program to do tons, infinite things.
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It's a controller or a microcontroller.
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There's, like, 32,000 variations of these,
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from BASIC PIC Stamp through Arduino.
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Some people use Raspberry Pi.
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I'm thinking the cover of Make Magazine this month has
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300,000 different controllers inside of it.
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I mean, a controller controls things, right?
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Yeah, exactly.
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So like I said, it's something that you
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can program to do a whole range of things.
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So in this case, we're going to show off
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how to control high-powered applications,
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or do high-powered applications, with
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this little low-powered Arduino.
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And what's crazy is by combining some kind of controller,
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like the Arduino, and some software you can probably
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download off the internet, probably
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will have to download off the internet,
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you can make things do things-- like automate
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a dorm-room entertainment system,
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or make sure some lights get turned on every time
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your garage is opened, or that a song plays
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every time your cat sits down on its bed.
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It's just-- the limit is your imagination.
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Exactly.
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Controller boards, you can pick them up at Radio Shack now.
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You got yours off of--
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I got mine off of eBay, I think, for $12.
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Because it's cheap and they all seem to work, in my experience.
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This is good.
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So what's with the Flying Spaghetti Monster
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homage of wiring?
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OK, so beyond the microcontroller,
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we also have this relay board.
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This is an eight-channel board, so that
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means that we can power eight different things this way.
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Well, you can turn eight different things on or off.
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On or off, so a relay board is super old school,
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in that it's just like a remote-controlled switch
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that this is a physical switch that's switching on and off.
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There's a chance every time you turn the headlights
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on in your car, a relay is actually doing the switching.
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I mean, these are basically-- as far
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as electronics are concerned, this is Stone Age technology.
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So these are cool, that it's looking for a 5-volt signal.
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And when it gets that 5-volt signal, it turns on.
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And by turning on, I mean it closes the connection,
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and then closes the loop.
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Yeah, you send voltage in this end.
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It does magic.
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It closes the switch at this end.
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And I love reading the specs-- 10 amps, 250 volts AC, 10 amps,
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30 volts DC.
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That means 120 volts, 220 volts, as long
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as it's not higher than 10 amps, 30 volts DC, as long
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as it's not higher than 10 amps-- anything
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up to that maximum.
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That's really awesome.
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That's a lot of juice to work with.
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Yes.
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So the way I have this set up is that I
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have a ground going to the relay switch.
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And then I have pins 2 to 9 here--
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that equals eight, right?
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I think so.
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Yeah, pins 2 to 9, that those are controllable,
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so that I can say OK, send a signal.
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And then when it gets that signal, then it'll turn on.
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Hence the controller part of the Arduino,
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but there's more purple wires.
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Yes, so this-- I have it set up so
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that it has an external power supply.
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Because from what I understand, with these big, eight-channel
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boards, the Arduino doesn't have enough power or enough amperage
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to turn all of them on or off at a time.
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So I don't want to burn out my board.
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So I have this external supplier that
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will supply the power to actually close the gates.
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Like, one to four relays you found that you can supply off
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the board without burning it out.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Then things like sketchy.
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Then I just was scared.
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What are we controlling, and how are we controlling it?
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Is that where the software comes in?
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This is where the software comes in.
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So right now, we have some LED lamps plugged in here.
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And that's a 12-volt load.
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This is 12 volts, which is still way more
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than the Arduino can do.
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It can do five volts.
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And then we also have an AC application here.
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We have a fan plugged in here.
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Don't worry.
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This is safe, not like last week--
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hopefully, we think-- or the week before last week.
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So let's jump into the software, and I'll
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show you how this is actually connected.
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Cool.
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How this is powered.
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First, you need the actual Arduino software,
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which you can find at Arduino.cc.
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It's downloads for, I think, Mac, Linux, everything.
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Intel Galileo.
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So once you have that downloaded,
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you'll see you have this cool little software here.
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And the nice thing about Arduino especially
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is that smart people have figured out
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how to do whole lots of things already.
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Yay.
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So I found on this Arduino dash info dot Wikispaces dot com,
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someone already wrote code to control a relay.
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AKA Arduino power.
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Yes, so I just straight copied and pasted this code
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into our Arduino software here.
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I'm going to say it, because it's my job--
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is that legal, Michael?
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Probably, they put it on the internet.
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It's generally accepted and cool.
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OK.
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Just saying.
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So the way you actually send code to the Arduino
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is that you make sure you have it connected to your computer.
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So this just has a USB cable.
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So first of I'll compile the software, and then I'll upload.
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So if you're getting errors here,
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you probably have to select the port that you want to be on.
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Things are happening.
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In this case, I have the USB.
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But it worked.
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And as you can see, this code cycles through.
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It turns on all the switches, and then turns them off.
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It doesn't have to cycle them.
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It's just what this particular application is doing.
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Yeah, so this is very basic on how
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you get an idea of what things in the code you actually need.
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And then from there, you can start playing with the code.
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So in this case, it's setting to be, like, a one-second delay.
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If we want to get crazy, we can set it to be, like,
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40 milliseconds.
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Which, when I--
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You'll break my fan.
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So I just sent it.
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It'll take four seconds.
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And then, oh, awesome.
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And the thing I love about the mechanical relay
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is you can hear them switching over.
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So I'll just let this go for the rest of the episode.
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(DRUMMING) OK, maybe not.
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A little annoying.
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So instead I have this code that I kind of
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expanded a little bit.
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It's definitely not the cleanest code ever,
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but I'm sorry everyone.
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It works.
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So another cool thing you can do with Arduinos,
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is-- that last application, you could take this.
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It's all self-contained.
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It doesn't need to be connected to a computer.
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So you can just power the Arduino
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and it will cycle through that forever, if you want.
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You could have a crazy light display,
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or you could use it to control neon light transformers
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or something.
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Yeah, but if you want to have it so that it's
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listening for something, so now I brought in a serial port.
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So that the Arduino has a port that you
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can send commands to, and then doing that,
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it'll do whatever you set it to do.
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So I have it set up so that it's listening for different keys.
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So if I hit one, it'll turn on the first relay.
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And if I want to turn it back off, I hit one again.
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So switching physical universe things
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on and off your computer, I don't
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know why I still find this incredibly fascinating.
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So the serial port can be very, very useful
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if you want to send commands to your Arduino.
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And hey, while I'm still here, you should check out Audible.
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Go to audiblepodcast.com/diy and you'll get a free audio book
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of your choice, and you'll help support the show.
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Nice segue, huh?
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So part of the reason you got involved with the relays
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was so that you could do stuff.
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We're going to do something kind of
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exciting in the next few weeks with hard science
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again, not controlling lights, but controlling something else.
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Screaming may be involved.
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We'll go more in depth with that,
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but I can show you a little-- just to finish this off,
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I have it set up so that I have a Python script here listening
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for numbers.
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So I could be, like, bum bum bum bum bum bum light show.
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Ladies and gentlemen, would you like
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to learn how to make things do things,
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and just learn how to get your diy on?
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Please subscribe to DIYTryin.com or YouTube.com/DIYTryin.
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I love how it through to the fan.
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That was beautiful.
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At DIY Tryin on the Twitters.
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And rumor has it, there may even be a place
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to hang out with us on Reddit.
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And if there is, you'll see it down below.
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And if you're on YouTube, please comment down below.
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I'm Patrick Norton.
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I'm Michael Hand.
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We'll see you next week on DIY Tryin.
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What did that look like, Liz?
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It looked really good.
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Oh, my god.