Stamp Example

David had the good fortune to receive an unexpected and exceptionally generous gift last night from Jim, brother of a good friend, of a Stamp Micro controller kit. He has been very busy coding away to control a servo motor, LEDs, button switches, seven segment displays, stepper motors, and more.

Santa Brought a Brazing Torch

To no surprise, my offspring, on his very first attempt at brazing with a torch did a better job than I did!

Exceptional Christmas Sorbet

Home made tangerine sorbet, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, apricot, pineapple, pomegranate ariels, red currents, and blood orange.

Components Oracle Data Base

Now with over 200 entries, David is building an Oracle 10g database, called ICSS, running on an Ubuntu server itemizing integrated circuits and other components extracted from all sorts of equipment found at the swap shed and elsewhere with associated datatsheets....an unformatted snapshot of one page below:

Part Number Description Qty

TEA2025B STEREO AUDIO AMPLIFIER
TIP120 POWER TRANSISTORS(5.0A,60-100V,65W) 1
TL074CN LOW NOISE QUAD JFET OP-AMPS
TL082CP Wide Bandwidth Dual JFET Input Operational Amplifier
TL084CN GENERAL PURPOSE QUAD JFET OP-AMPS 1
TL7705CP SUPPLY VOLTAGE SUPERVISORS
U1615 PNP Epitaxial Silicon Transistor 20V 10A 1
UDN2916B Dual Full-Bridge PWM Motor Driver 1
ULN2003AN High-Voltage, High-Current Darlington Transistor Arrays 1

The client browser runs on Koppix, Back Track or Slax booted from an iPod!

Happy Holidays

First snow of the season...over a foot last night....more starting tomorrow morning!

Laser Printer Corona Transformer

This arc is produced by a corona transformer out of a laser printer. A 555 timer running at 200 Hz feeds a 5 amp NPN transistor to drive the primary (yellow clips) from a 12v battery: approximately a 7 mm arc-our guess about 23,000 volts based on the dielectric breakdown of air at STP of 33kv/cm.

Frugal

My Grandparents came from very modest means. Both were frugal and careful with spending. For example, my Grandmother's kitchen knives had a nearly limitless lifespan as they could be sharpened by hand many, many times without need to buy a new one!

Gyroscope

Our first generation mechanical gyroscope.

Printer Modification

This is a control board added to a small HP printer that controls the x and y axis motors plus a solenoid that lifts and drops a pen. The control board is attached to a joy stick for etch-a-sketch like drawing on paper in the printer.

USS Freedom

Newest Navy Ship....on board just 30 days after launch!

View of the Charles

This photo recently (June 09) won an honorable mention at a juried art show.

High Voltage

Plasma between two copper plates fed from second anode of a 13" color TV.

Fall has arrived....

Tube B+ Power Supply

Assembled today from parts scavenged from an old PA system, an audio multiplex switch box, and a zip drive box; output of 325 VDC for tube projects.

Magnetic Field

If you did not believe in the effect of a magnetic field on moving electrons....The 70's have returned....a magnet from a tweeter out of Ohm-H speakers

40 Years Ago...

I built this when I was a kid. The tube is a 6U5 with 1M resistors mounted in the rear. We assembled a power supply from parts harvested out of a very old PA system including a 6V4 full wave rectifier tube, transformer, and 16uf cap to provide B+. Remarkably, some many years later, the Magic Eye still works fine. The case partially open to permit access to wires and internal connections.

Laser out of a CD player

Unexpected image from a laser extracted from a CD player shown on a sheet of white paper. The infrared energy is visible only with a black & white video camera or video camera with night-shot capability. The focusing coil is controlled by a joystick interfaced through a bank of transistors.

While your toes are warming in the sand at the beach.....

Who knew the beach wasn't safe after all.....These guys are aggressive hunters....A Hairy-Necked Tiger Beetle...count your toes at the end of the day...

Latest Air Cannon

This is our latest air cannon sized for tennis balls. The design has two electromechanical valves to maximize the rate of air pressure release.

Air Cannon with two tennis balls

A short video with sound of the new air cannon in action. The object that falls off to the left is a Gatorade bottle used as packing as it fits perfectly inside the PVC barrel. The two tennis balls are loaded after the bottle and some water is added to increase pressure seal and provide some smokey aesthetics. Note the tennis balls simply dissapear into the sky; excellent performance, difficult to find the tennis balls when they land.

Light Painting

David built a multi-color light pen using a tri-color LED and some switches and a battery scavenged from various devices fed into the disaggregation machine in the basement. Shot in near total darkness at ISO 3200 with shutter open for drawing duration.

Cork Cannon

An excellent cork cannon made with a $15 irrigation system valve (24VDC); must be used only with great caution and supervision. We're working on a timer circuit using an MM74C926 counter IC in an effort to measure the velocity of a cork in the barrel.

DC Motor Controller

A DC motor controller from Futurlec providing speed and rotation direction control. A very nice product for only $20.00. I plan to use two of these for the port and starboard decent motors. The primary decent motor on the bottom will be connected directly to an on board battery via relay board also from Futurlec.

Connectors

Bulgin IP68 six terminal connector mounted on the bottom plate of the pressure chamber bulkhead. Room for three more connectors is available.

80 Watt Audio Amplifier

David built a new 80 watt audio amplifier replacing the earlier circuit that we accidentally shorted out with loud and smoky results (see earlier post). Note the large heat sink on the left and the component board on an acrylic panel as this will be incorporated into a larger acrylic pyramid housing that we've constructed. We tested the circuit with an iPod source and successfully drove a test speaker array with Ozzy at a very high volume.

Updated ROV

A view of the ROV updated with additional down propulsion motors (two pushing up & one beneath the chamber pulling down) and the new pressure chamber.

New Electrolysis Cell Design

A new design with an acrylic divider to separate the hydrogen & oxygen. The hydrogen flows through the tube on the right. In the rear is a partial view of a manifold assembly to collect output from four cells.

Combustion Test

Ignition of gas (hydrogen & oxygen) produced by the electrolysis cell with sodium bicarbonate as the electrolyte solution inside an Aquapod.

Electrolysis Cell

An electrolysis (of water) cell with dual electrodes.

Zoomer

Breadboard Prototype Box

This is a breadboard prototype box David constructed recently. Built out of an audio switching unit found at a yard sale, this experimentation platform will have three breadboards (one shown installed), a full array of voltage supply options from an external supply and a battery option off the strip in center (+/-3,5,12, etc), slider pots, switches, leds, current meeter, oscillator signal source, and more.

Pressure Chamber

Further progress with the pressure chamber now with the bottom ring/plate installed plus the cable/connector bulkhead section seen at the bottom of the assembly. I'm on a search now for sealed connectors for the interior wall and through hull cable seals for the outside surface of the cable bulkhead. This space will also support pressure and temperature sensors.

I'm working to adapt the original ROV frame to host this unit (12"x6" electronics + 3"x6" for the bulkhead). I'm also adding a more powerful down propulsion motor design (two motors pushing up on either side of the pressure chamber and one more powerful motor pulling down directly beneath the chamber).

Pressure Chamber Dome

The 6'' acrylic dome mounted on a flange fabricated from flat 1/4" PVC with a heavy gauge red rubber gasket. I have doubled the number of screws holes as early tests show small deformation of the acyclic between screws leading to possible leaks. I have replaced the philips head screws with stainless allen bolts (8-32) with nylon lock nuts.

Control Circuit

David put this circuit together yesterday. It models a surface controller and components on the ROV using two independent sets of 555 timers, surface and craft, linked via fiber cable. When one set is selected, the frequency of the surface timer is fed into a comparator on the ROV and matched with corresponding timer on the craft to produce a true signal. We are working the problem of synchronizing the surface and craft timers as phase drift could cause the comparator to change state. We'll also prototype an alternative design with a frequency-to-voltage IC.

iPod ear phone cord wrap with LED light

Originally designed to provide a convenient way to keep your iPod ear phone cord neat and untangled, this version has batteries, switch, and a bright blue LED built in.