CNC Fun

Recently I had the opportunity to set to see Ian’s father’s wood CNC machine in action. We decided the VW logo would make for a fun and easy enough project for Ian to tackle (I stood back and let him sort out making the logo into Gcode and then putting it on the machine). With occasion suggestions from me and a minimal advice from his dad we were able to crank out this pretty slick looking VW Logo on a scrap board. After I cleaned it up a bit with some dikes and sandpaper here it what it looked like.

Snazzy!

We actually had to cut the logo twice because the first one cracked off a bit of the wood in between carves. Here is a picture of the sign being cut with the CNC machine. Ian should feel free to chime in with the software the machine runs or how his dad built the machine.

It took only a couple minutes to cut

Well, after we’d made the sign I was trying to think of something to do with it. First on the agenda will be a nice coat of paint, but I’d like to put it one something. A friend recently gave me an original VW radio from either a Bug or a Rabbt, so I think I may try to build a box that contains the radio and a couple of speakers. Then I’ll mount the VW logo front and center. Here’s a picture of the VW radio, still trying to figure out what year it is from.

Note 5 buttons

It has 5 really awesome mechanical buttons that will switch channels that seem to be preset to your selected station. Unlike today’s radio it uses all kinds of levers and springs to throw the radio tuner back to the preset station. Still need to put 12 volts on it to see if everything is functional but it looks to be in pretty good shape.

Iron Phone Eats Headsets

Progress has been slow on the Iron Phone this semester after the first headset mic gave out as soon as I was able to get the red button on the iron to answer calls. Figures eh? I looked for another mic and I even had one kicking around from an old< href="v">Yak Bak I took apart ages (literally) ago. That didn’t work either, so I figured I probably fried something within the headset or overheated the mic while soldering it.

Headset number two went much smoother and worked on the first try. Then the connection broke on the mic….. and I overheated the microphone again with my iron apparently because after I reconnected it…. it doesn’t work. Bothered and bewildered I put the Iron Phone on hold for finals.

Now apparently, I ordered another headset at one point or another that got shipped home (how and when… I’m not entirely certain). Much to my surprise I have yet another headset to try.

VCRs, VWs and Windymills on the Nation Mall

Over spring break my grandparent’s VCR/DVD player decided to give up the goat. They asked to take a look at it, so I tried every trick in the book and eventually ended up tearing into the thing to try to see if there was anything mechanically wrong. To my despair, nothing was wrong mechanically and after close inspection of all the boards nothing was visibly wrong there either. The DVD player side (which was actually what died) consisted of one main board with almost entirely surface mount components, I suspect this is where the problem was but chances of finding the correct replacement board for a Sylvania El-Cheapo DVD/VCR player that would be cheaper than a new player…. were pretty slim. In the end, we both one though. My grandparents got a new DVD/VCR player and I got a couple pretty nice brushless motors. Perhaps an arduino based motor controller project is on the way…

Absolute bare bones of the DVD/VCR player after being picked clean of anything awesome

Also, over spring break Ian and I had the pleasure/displeasure of driving a PT Cruiser from Maine to Washington D.C. A trip of epic proportions indeed! We had many laughs along the way and attempted (relatively successfully) to take pictures of every wind turbine along the way. Although the highlight of the trip was the guided Segway Tour, a little on the expensive side but definitely worth the money. The attraction was the Segway more than anything for me but I guess the tour was cool too. After being stared at by pedestrians, laughed at and even clapped for while we rode through D.C. looking like the most obnoxious tourists you could possibly hope to see…. we had to kick it up a notch. As we rolled up the National mall nearing the capital building I saw this. I had to get my picture taken with it.

"Ian! Ian! Take a picture!!!"

Needless to say, I think everyone else on the tour was a little embarrassed by our excitement to see a wind turbine on the mall.

On our way to D.C. we made a stop in Boston for the night to visit with friends. We tried to go to MIT’s new Media Lab, unfortunately we got there a bit late and couldn’t get in. In disappointment we stared through the window and to my surprise Ian spotted (quite astutely) the airfoil used in the Gossamer Condor (Ian please correct me if I am wrong) hanging from the ceiling near the entrance to the building. We could see all kinds of neat stuff hanging around in there, it’s too bad they were closed.

Excited Ian

More recently, over Easter weekend I spent some time underneath my VW Bug adding iron to my diet (eating rust). I put in a new starter motor as the old one was being unreliable and causing me to park on hills wherever I went in case I needed a jump start (Little Miss Sunshine Style). More work is underway for the Bug, next up is probably a new muffler as the old one has finally rusted through. If I had infinite money/time I would love to upgrade the fuel injection system to the MegaSquirt fuel injection system (phallic name, I know). The system is pretty neat though, it is quite universal and all open source, you can even build the board and solder yourself if you like. I would love to have a computer onboard the bug that would allow me to tune the system and maybe switch from economy to performance mode with the click of a button. An EEE pc would fit nicely in the glovebox….. Of course if I had infinite money, I would consider turning the thing into an electric dragster. Recently I’ve been reading about White Zombie, a home built high performance electric car that smokes Tesla Roadsters at the drag strip. Yikes!

1975 VW Bug

A Maine Update

I never seem to remember what to put up here until I look at the pictures on my phone. It’s kind of hilarious the stuff I find on there. So, here are some of those things that I thought were worthy of a picture these were all taken at UMaine, Orono.

During a late night of studying in Barrows Hall, an upperclassman yelled from across the room to a person standing by the printer “Hey, what’s the weather like?” By this time it was dark outside and being Electrical Engineering upperclassmen… they probably hadn’t been outside in quite some time. They were met with the response “I dunno, but the printer says it’s 52 and cloudy”. At the time it didn’t strike me as odd, after a minute though it occurred to me what had just been said and I had to see it for myself.

Printer in Windows Lab of Barrows Hall

The Black Bear Robotics club helped in putting on the 2nd annual (I think) Maine VEX championship. We had around 20 teams including last years world champions, Green Egg Robotics. Overall the event was pretty classy with appearences from Governor Baldacci and President Kennedy (of Umaine that is).

Maine VEX championship in DPC 100

In my ECE 177 class our teacher, always has an item of the day that he shows us in the middle of class. It’s a nice way to break up the class and being an avid puzzle collector he usually has some neat stuff. The other day he brought in a chunk of Aerogel, which has the lowest density of any porous solid. I’ve always wanted to hold a chunk of it but it was usually in a locked glass cabinet whenever I saw it. You’re really not supposed to hold it for too long, apparently the stuff absorbs moisture and if you get too much water in it… it stops being so cool…. or something. Either way, I couldn’t resist and I snapped this picture mid-class. It’s got a cool texture a lot like really strong jello.

Aerogel was the cool object of the day in ECE177

Found in the parking lot of the AEWC was this classy piece of Maine auto detailing. Probably a more appropriate picture for the There I Fixed It Blog.

Nice pai.... tape job?

Biased Fun

I often find myself wondering while I’m in circuits class “That’s awesome! Now when do we get to play with transistors?”. So, instead of waiting around to take the next level of circuits classes (which won’t be offered until spring 2011…. damn!) I decided to start messing around with them anyways. What better place than the weekly project night on campus (hosted by Black Bear Robotics club of course)?

So, I knew how a transistor worked basically from reading about them a while ago. I’d even made circuits with them before but I wanted to see if I could hook up a basic transistor from memory. After sufficiently heating up the transistor due to lack of a current limiting resistor on the base, we figured out where we went wrong. Then I wanted to try to make a circuit that would switch its self on and off, it’s called an astable multivibrator. Again tried to recreate it from memory and logic but didn’t succeed. After finding the details online I was able to make the thing work but it was still quite complicated to hook up.

There was also a circuit problem that we had for homework about inductors. We had just been introduced to inductors and the question had a clue in it about finding the voltage across a resistor that was in the meg-ohm range. Basically the circuit employed a switch and when the switch was pressed it connected the inductor to a voltage source and shorted out the resistor, then when the button was released the resistor was in series with the inductor. According to the equation V=L(di/dt), the voltage across the resistor goes extremely high for a very short time. I figured I should probably build it just for fun, so I wrapped a bunch of magnet wire around an old magnet (the closest thing with enough ferrite in it) and when to town. Since the change in current is so dramatic, we were able to achieve about 180 volts from a 4.5 volt source (3 AAA batteries). My circuits professor said you need about 300 volts to see much of a spark though because of the dielectric breakdown of the air which is equal to about 3X10^6 V/m.

After just a little experience playing with transistors, I have gained a lot of respect for this man.

Oh excuse me, my iron is talking again…

My friend Toby had the urge to convert a candlestick phone to work with either a landline or cell phone. So, we went off in search of a candlestick phone online and at various stores. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a candlestick phone that wouldn’t break the bank. Still determined to make some object of yesteryear function with a cell phone, we found a willing object: an old chrome iron.

We decided the best route would be to buy a bluetooth headset and fit it into the iron. That way we could both use the iron from time to time and we didn’t want to have our entire cellphone in the iron. We wanted to make it as normal looking as possible with still decent functionality and of course we needed to be able to answer and hang up calls with the big red button located on the handle.

First we disassembled the thing and I banged the dents out of the chrome covering. Here are the inner workings of it.

An unusual assortment of parts

I realized that we couldn’t completely gut the thing because there was a screw and a nut that held the cover on. So, I found some bottle caps and poked holes in them, they make the perfect size standoff for elevating the screw piece to the correct level.

It really does fit perfectly

So, we had a hollow Iron…. now what? Toby and I went shopping for a cheap, simple bluetooth headset. We found just the one at Newegg. We wanted something that was small but not too small so we would be able to modify it easily. Settling on this one was a good choice, it had simple one-button functionality (another two buttons for volume control), a through-hole microphone and a pretty loud speaker. It took a bit of wiggling and prying to get the plastic apart correctly but here is what it looked like all hacked apart.

Innards of a bluetooth headset

I decided it would be a good idea to layout the headset in the iron and try to make a test call just to see how well it would work. We expected it might be hard to hear and there might be some echoing in the iron. It worked…. but the echoing from the mic was a bit much. Also, the volume of the speaker could’ve been improved. Pictured is the testing layout (not permanent)

The mic is under the circuit board on the far right

Here is Toby talking into an iron…. that crazy kid.

Well... it never did look right when he held a cell phone

It was clear after the first test that we would need to do some adjusting of the microphone. Also we would need to figure out a way to answer calls with the red button in the handle and be able to charge the headset without taking it all apart.

We had to settle on a name for this thing. Toby suggested The Smooth Talker, it was settled.

More to come.

Project Night

The Black Bear Robotics club hosted it’s first ever project night recently. With a whopping one perrson attending who was not actually in the club! Gotta celebrate the small victories sometimes… Basically Project night is where you bring all the stuff you’re working on or want to mess with to one place and go to town. The idea is very similar to a Hackerspace.

Trying to figure out why the control system is on the fritz

I worked on assembling the control board for a Blimpduino. Other members worked on trouble shooting the electronics system on our T-shirt launching robot, fabricating what will hopefully be a small stepper motor controlled CNC machine, troubleshooting a homebrew Tesla coil and playing with arduinos. We hope to make these project nights a weekly occurrence as it was pretty fun and a good way to get stuff done.

Blimpduino assembly, with Tesla coil parts scattered about

A little CNC fabricating

Nannie’s Favorite Recipes

For Christmas I wanted to give my sister a unique gift that she could use. Being the general cheap skate that I am, I also didn’t want to spend a fortune. My sister is getting into baking and cooking lately and she requested cookbooks for presents. My grandmother makes some of the best stuff around so I figured why not ask to see her recipes? So, I began typing up most of my grandmother’s recipes which have been collected and refined by dozens of ladies around town for years and years. I printed them off and put them in plastic sleeves in a binder to ensure that they wouldn’t get messy or wet. I also figured it is nice to backup some of these timeless recipes in a digital format.

I wish I’d taken a picture of the binder but here is the digital format of the recipes for the cooking inclined.

Nuzzo Recipe Book

A Holiday Break Update

Before break, I made a little list of things I wanted to accomplish. A few of these things included:

• Read Saving Sammy
• Learn CAD
• Assemble parts list for LED matrix
• Search for Elon Musk on Omegle

Not all of these goals have been met yet (there’s still a few days left and I think I’m making progress in Omegle search). I actually did read Saving Sammy, I completed a Solid Edge tutorial and kind of got some semblance of a list together for making my LED matrix work. Despite not really completely most of my plans, I have been distracted (as usual) by other unexpected tasks.

My sister’s powerbook G4 has hit a fairly major problem, the power connector board has given out on it. So, I decided to see if it was a simple fix that could save her some money.

Putting this all back together should be an adventure.

I found a great guide on iFixit, I didn’t use it until I got stuck toward the end but it definitely came in handy to tell me what size Torx bit i would need to get the board out. Nothing was obviously poorly connected and I did some continuity checks with my multimeter, I also reset the power management unit following these instructions, but didn’t seem to fix the problem. We ordered another board and it is on it’s way home. I’ll have to finish it another time. Putting everything temporarily back together was quite hilarious. Where does that screw go again?….

In other less technical news, I sold my first item on Ebay. My old 5th generation Ipod that would not play out of the headphone jack. I was surprised to get $49 for it, I suspect someone will take out the screen, battery and/or hard drive and put it in their Ipod. Not bad though for something I was considering giving away.

It’s always great to be home for the holidays, one of my favorite things to do is make a family trip(s) to Marden’s. This time I made out quite well, scoring two 9.6V batteries and chargers for $1.99 each and a police scanner antenna for $.99. I even succeeded in finding a comically big ratchet, unfortunately I didn’t buy it… one only has room for so many comically big things.

Yes all four of my fingers do fit through there.

Well, this post is a little late as I am back at school and just getting back into classes this week. Break was nice but I am glad to get back into the swing of things.

Renewable Energy Christmas

My wind turbine is currently enduring it’s first winter in Aroostook county. The light that was installed on the tower originally required a ballast to ignite the bulb, little did I realize that my inverter didn’t like this very much. Modified sign wave inverters should never be hooked up to purely inductive loads (eg. a transformer or ballast), a couple of burnt out inverters later I realized this. Apparently the electrician was too busy to install an incandescent alternative before winter so it looks like we’re stuck with no light for a while. In the meantime, the landowners decided to use the energy to power their christmas lights (which they strung up the tower). A great use of the power if you ask me.

I requested a picture immediately, apologies for the low resolution but they say it looks great at night!

Wind powered Christmas lights