An Arduino Pro Mini drives an LSM303DLHC compass/accelerometer breakout board and a 12-LED NeoPixel ring. The heading is indicated with a red ‘Pixel between two yellow ones.

The brains of the operation is an Arduino Pro Mini. It controls two MAX7219s that drive the 42 LEDs plus the 7-segment display.

The creator of the Arduino RF Pro Mini open source development board Etienne, explains a little more about the inspiration behind the project. “ I’ve loved Arduino for years.

Users will need to provide their own Arduino Pro Mini and the hardware features a 1.4 W, 8 Ohms, Texas Instruments TPA2005D1, 14 bit ganged PWM, PWM 8 kHz low pass smoothing filter all powered by ...

Prices for boards themselves vary, ranging from around £13 for the Arduino Pro Mini right up to £75 for an Arduino Bluetooth board which uses wireless comms to cut the USB umbilical cord.

Arduino Parking Assistant guides your car You wait ages for an Arduino-based garage parking assistant to come along - see How to build an Arduino Garage Parking Assistant - and then here comes another ...