Emmflo
I had the Sculpture Contest in mind and already bought brass rods (before thinking about the gift).
The rest of the components are components I had on hand. For example the LEDs are different ones because I didn't have enough of the same kind, but I think it looks great that way. I didn't want to use an μC so I chose another approach : 555 timers and 74HC595 shift registers !
My process to design this project was simple : I directly built something on a breadboard and modified it until it worked, with no prior schematic drawing. That was a refreshing and fun way to do it but it backfired : I made mistakes and it didn't work correctly once assembled. Changing things directly on the sculpture and trying to work out bugs made things worse and I kept breaking stuff. I finally chose to drop a functionality : the button was supposed to stop the clock while held and input only one bit in the shift register when released. In the final build the button is directly connected to the serial input of the serial register and you have to time manually your input if you want to input a precise number of bits in the shift register.
ThunderSqueak
Amos
Steve Pomeroy
Josh Cole