I put together another video of what i've been doing with my dorky geektoys. This is a cool steppermotor/gear assembly i got out of an old dot-matrix printer. I originally assembled it all with a mess of 4 radio shack transistors, but then i found this tutorial (and discovered that nice clean transistor array chip) which made it simpler to work with.

argh... sorry I'm all sniffly in the video. It's cold in my garage. My video production skills still leave something to be desired.. oh.. and the word i was looking for was photodiode. Damned if i was going to go look it up and tape that thing again though.. ; )

so... there ya go.. that's motion.. now what the hell do I do with it? ; )

UPDATE:
Free bonus video with purchase!
How to run the arduino off of a 9.6v Makita battery!

I have to say, I'm pretty psyched about this idea. At 1.3 amp hours, I'm one step closer to some robotic fun.

It's an ambient orb style pulsating pig!

that's it... really. but i learned to read digital and analog pins, and how to write to the analog out pins, and before that the digital ones. Woot!