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.