Have you switched your QSOs to PSK31 or some other digital mode, but miss the joy of sending CW with an iambic paddle? Then here’s a project for you.
Continue reading »
Tonight, we assembled our new 16′ diameter PVC dome. The result of two solid Saturdays of work, it came together beautifully. Now we just need to disassemble it and move all the furniture back in before tomorrow’s class…
Continue reading »
A few days ago, one of our newest members, @dustynrobots shared a link to some amazing Valentine’s day cards with the rest of the group.
These amazing Valentine’s day cards for makers by Steve Hoefer are sourced from old public domain US Patent Office. They’re awesome and hilarious, and have inspired us to make a few things.
First, it got me to make the ecard site that I’ve been thinking about for a while now. Postkin’s GeekCards are free, funny ecards for the geeky people in your life. These cards were so amazing, once Steve agreed to let me use them, I had to get the site built in time for Valentine’s day!
Now that the site is built, I’ll be adding more geeky ecards for other events soon! It’s also flash-free and built on web standards so you can actually view the cards when you get the email on your phone.
Hope you enjoy the ecards, and if you have ideas for other geeky ecards we can create, please let me know!
In the meantime, Trammel has been working away on letterpressed editions of these cards on our Intaglio press. Hopefully we’ll have some more pictures of the process and finished cards soon!
Trammel has a great writeup on using the letterpress, but if we pester him in the comments and maybe he’ll do a post about the process of making these plates and some of the other amazing new stuff he’s been up to with the letterpress lately!
Like playing chase-the-laser-pointer with a kitten.
After a couple weeks of hacking on the Gilson we have PID* control.
When we first saw the Gilson, we didn’t have access to any feedback mechanisms. All we had were panic stop modes of control. After a ton of experimentation, and Nick reading five control theory books, we are having fewer incidents in which someone yells “Holy Crap Make It Stop Before It Destroys Itself!” It’s not yet a null set, but the cardinality is significantly reduced.
<cue loud bang>
* proportional integral derivative
Raphael Abrams shows us his Freelance “Puncher” time tracking device. After trying many different methods for keeping track of his hours, Raph created this little puncher to easily clock in and out of his freelance work.
Check out the code and schematics here: https://github.com/raphaelabrams/freelance-puncher
When life gives you busted up old LCD panels, make… lightboxes! I constructed this one out of the CCFL backlight from an old laptop LCD I found around the space. It gives a nice, even white light, and runs off a 9V at about half an amp.
The inverter for the backlight was long gone, so I replaced it with one of these inexpensive CCFL inverters from MPJA.
A little hot glue and acrylic cement later, we have a perfectly serviceable lightbox. Now, what ever could we use one of those for?
We’ll let this bit of awesomeness speak for itself 🙂 Check out all the Resistor cameos!
Learn more here!
http://arduinothedocumentary.org/
At a recent meeting I had a chance to sit down and check out Bill’s “Simple serial display” which, true to it’s name, is simple, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting one badly! Watch the vid to see it in action, and check out Bill’s earlier post for more info!
Did you know that you can cut letter press relief or intaglio plates on the NYCR laser cutter? The laser cut acrylic holds a decent edge and is far less expensive than copper plate. Here is a short guide to how to make engraved invitations using the intaglio process:
Continue reading »
New in the NYCR vending machines are Teensy 2.0 boards. They have ATMega32U4 chips, which have the built in USB drivers and, via LUFA, can appear as any USB device, not just a serial communications device. Want to make a MIDI device show up as a USB keyboard? Or a core memory as a mass storage device? You can do that! The USB doesn’t consume a UART, so there is still a serial port available for interfacing with GPS or other external RS232 devices.
PJRC makes the Teensyduino plugin for the Arduino IDE and a set of compatible libraries so that you can use it with your Arduino sketches. Or you can drop into straight C and take full advantage of all of the AVR pins.
Update: They are very popular! Three were bought during Craftnight tonight.