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.

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.

Saturn V Desktop Background

It has been quite a while since an update, but school is consuming far too much of my time, and it seems that it has taking up lots of Tony’s time too.  Tony’s working on assembling a BlimpDuino in his spare time, and when I get a break I plan on CADing and constructing a scale model of Santos=Dumont’s No 14bis (Additional Information).

Anyways, the meat of this update.  I found a really awesome photograph of the roll out of Apollo 17 on Wikipedia, but it was the wrong size.  So, I cut it down to a good desktop size, and tried to keep as much rocket in the picture as I could.  Click Download on the Picasa Page to get the full size version (3280×1843).  Enjoy!

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

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

Interesting Projects

RPI takes an extraordinarily long Winter break.  I’m leaving my dorm room on Friday (8/18) and won’t return until (1/22ish).  I want to be an engineer when I grow up, but outside of the FIRST Robotics Competition, and restoring aircraft at the Owls Head Transportation Museum. I haven’t had a whole lot of hands-on experience.  I spent a couple of weeks at Fisher Engineering in high school, but most of my work experience has been in an office.  I helped organize a $1.5 million car auction last summer, which was pretty awesome (and I will hopefully be working their again this summer), but it’s not engineering.  After all, it doesn’t make much sense to hire a highly skilled accountant to lead the design team of the next Space Shuttle.

So, I brainstormed some things to do.

CAD an airplane.  A really old airplane.  WW1 Aero, is a highly informative magazine on the early aeroplane, filled with both stories of the early aviators and technical goodies.  Sadly, they may have printed their last hard copy issue, but they maintain a list of drawings nontheless.  Not quite sure, which airplane, I’d like to do, but I’ll need a full set of drawings.  Right now the front runner seems to be the 1909 Wright Military Flyer, as it has complete drawings.  I’d like to do something a little less well known, but I’d gladly settle for a Wright.

CAD a rotary engine. Rotary engines were the gold standard of aviation from 1909-1918.  Airplanes need power to fly through the air, and to get that much power, you need engines that generate significant amounts of heat.  They needed some sort of cooling system, and water cooling was simply too heavy.  The Seguin brothers from France developed the rotary engine.  The cylinders are located radially around the crankshaft.  However, instead of mounting the engine block to the airframe, they mounted the crankshaft to the airframe!  That is, the cylinders spin with the propeller.  Scroll down on this page and look at the big picture for a still of one in action (this is a slightly different engine.  I would CAD a Le Rhone 80 HP, they built a 100 HP Oberusel).  WW1 Aero has the full set of drawings for an 80 HP Le Rhone, which is what leads me in that direction.

Human Powered Flight. Okay, so this sounds really crazy.  But I’m quite convinced it’s not out of the realm of possibility.  Jesse van Kuijk just flew last year, doing almost all of the work himself.  He’s 19 and started when he was 17.  I’ve emailed with him a few times, and also Bryan Allan, pilot of Gossamer Condor and Gossamer Albatross fame.  No doubt it would be a huge amount of work, and probably span the next two summers.  Luckily, most of the “hard” things (airfoil, basic structural issues) have been done before.  It would also be undeniably cool.

Rockets I lurk on the aRocket mailing list.  If you are at all interested in amateur rocketry, I suggest you google it and join.  Lots of really smart people doing really incredible things.  It’s a lifelong goal of mine to build a liquid propellant rocket, but building one is a little expensive for a poor college student.  Perhaps some early design work?

First Lego League, VEX Scrimmage and Launching T-shirts at the Civic Center

This past weekend the Black Bear Robotics club made it’s way to the First Lego League Event in Augusta, ME. Besides getting up at 5:30AM to get to the event on time, we did a lot of work at the event. I was a Mechanical Design Judge and got to check out some of the good and not so good designs by the middle school students competing.

Also, we setup our VEX field where we had 12 teams participating in a scrimmage in preparation of the Maine VEX Championship. Overall the kids participating had some great robots, one with an elevator and another with a sort of duel vertical conveyer system.

Also, the t-shirt launcher was on display and in demonstration. We got to fire it into the stands at the civic center much to the enjoyment of the kids. It got a great response from the crowd despite the bugginess of the tilt for the barrels. We dialed it down from 100 psi (which hit the back wall of the students section at the Alfond) to 65 but still got pretty good range.

Checkout Black Bear Robotic’s Youtube account and check out what we’ve been up to.

A high school student talks with a robotics club member

Posters for the Aeronaut

USS Akron above my desk

Whether you’re a pilot, aerospace engineer, student, or just a random person on the street, it’s hard to ignore the majesty of a flying machine.  It’s always nice to have posters to hang on your wall.  Posters from Walmart or another big box store are pretty generic.  Luckily, if you like flying things, be they airplanes or rockets, the National Air and Space Museum’s Archive Division has the service for you!  They’ll ship you technical drawings for incredibly low prices.  While they are essentially large black and white photocopies, they still look fantastic.

List of Drawings

Order Form

Shipping Costs*

*Regardless of how many drawings you order, you’ll want them shipping in a tube to avoid the creases.  So, you might as well order at least $20 worth of posters!

Micro Wind Turbine Test

For my ECE 101 class we had to make an invention, although it didn’t have to be electrical. The first thing that came to mind was a small wind turbine. Basically, I wanted to make something that could be mounted on the window of a school bus or a greyhound bus so people could charge their electronic gadgets with ease from their seats (assuming they don’t have access to any other power source from the engine).

After running some calculations I found that this could be a pretty fun and challenging problem to work on. I would need to make a generator that would work at very high wind speeds (upwards of 80 mph) to ensure I had a little bit of a margin of safety. I figure a typical greyhound bus probably doesn’t do much over 85, figure in a bit of a headwind and it could probably experience a bit more than that.

Barley lighting an LED with the power from a fan. The turbine would light 4 in a 25 mph wind though.

After running some calculations for a 3 inch diameter rotor I found that my main problem would be making the whole system inefficient enough to not over charge common electronics and blow the stator all together. Originally, I wanted to take apart a muffin fan and rewind the stator coils to suit my needs. However, there isn’t much room inside the core of the muffin fan that I had on hand (1.25watt fan) and the number of turns I would need to reach charging voltage would require a smaller wire than I had (or so my professor thought). I took his advice for a lot of reasons (mostly because of a time deadline).

My group member and I mounted his small fan blades on a motor in my room and decided to just give it a shot. After a quick test on the multimeter we achieved about 19 volts (no load) so we threw an automotive blinker lightbulb on it.

Automotive bulb attached

Here are the results: Micro Wind Turbine Test