I have been considering an active response element for this year's Halloween display.  I only intend to have it out for Halloween night, but I want it to trigger automatically as the kids walk by.  I don't want any pressure mat to be visible on the walkway, to be stepped over, or otherwise fail.  I want it to be reasonably reliable, but I will understand if it occasionally false triggers from some of the fog effects that will be elsewhere in the yard.  I also don't want one based on visible light, as in combination with the fog, the trip beam could be given away.  Plus some of the laser based ones seem to be a bit pricey.  But I finally found what so far looks like a good solution.

This seems to be a recurring question on the LOR forum.  Essentially the question is how to control more of a load than the DC card will readily handle on it's own. I've often thought that it should be possible to use the LOR DC card to generate the PWM that generates lamp dimming, or speed control for a DC motor, and a suitable transistor to boost the current handling capability. 

I've been looking for a pair of ladder hangers to hang an extension ladder to a wall using 1/4" fasteners.  Nothing I've seen lately really looks like a useful ladder hanger, even before the 1/4" requirement.  I finally got around to bending and welding some 1/4" hot roll round rod.  Here are some photos of the results before any cleanup or paint..

As a result of some trades, I am in possession of a pair of pre assembled "TM-100" antennas.  Externally, they look like TM-100's, except that the connector is a N connector, instead of a F connector.  Unfortunately, the vendor has had some bad luck with shipping. They have the first broken one back in their hands, but did not want to pay for shipping on the second broken one.  As a result, I wound up with two of them instead of one.  I went ahead and extracted the components from the broken one for examination.