Seeing Things

There's something about being a scraphound - a term I borrow from Cory Doctrow - where you see potential in things, cast offs and detritus.
Sometimes it's pretty obvious - like a big neon sign flashing on and off in the heavens - " This toy truck has wheels perfectly gaged for my railroad. I see a railtruck here". Sometimes it's less obvious - "This dead VCR has some very cool buttons and a nice pancake motor here... lets throw it on the scrap pile for use sometime in the near future". And somedays it's just " how long have I had these four broken VCR's for? Uhhhh. Time to clean house".
This one was one of those ones that lept on me like a jagular from a tree. Robot Chassis. definitely a robot chassis. Look at it - independent wheel drive, rechargeable battery, input socket for commands, wireless radio remote for crying out loud... found it at a neighbours garage sale for $25. It powers up, but it's either got some kind of code lock on it or it's dead. At any rate, even with that I'm sure I can re-jig the motors with some kind of controller. It's all about potential....
Hmmm.... now I'm thinking chainsaw and flamethrower.... you know, for when the zombie apocalypse comes? Awesome

Popcorn

Way back, 1972 ish I'm guessing, one of my favourite AM radio tunes was "Popcorn" by a group called Hot Butter. It was probably also one of the first 45 RPM records I bought and played to death on my little portable record player.
Years later I heard it as a dance mix, then as a mash up with some Mutant Frog Thing. Wow - what a blast from the past.
It was only recently that I discovered the original composer of the piece... Gershon Kingsley from "Music to Moog By" circa 1969. Awesome on several levels.
Man, that internets is a useful place.

Cracker Box Amp

Dude! Who needs Guitar Hero III when you can build a tasty cracker box amplifier. WOOOOO!.

This is one of those projects that was built a)because it was sort of cool b) I needed some kind of an amplifier for class and c) I had most of the parts in stock anyways. Notice I said "most"...

Back in the dark store rooms of PGSS, there are literally thousands of bits and pieces leftover from the old days, when we had a pretty comprehensive tech program. I occasionally go on raiding parties for said bits and pieces as I can usually source out 90% of the pieces I need. There are a few common IC's in stock, lots of caps and any resistor you could need, as well as some funky hardware. But usually there's one thing I can't find and it's off to 4500 block Main street, or Loughheed and Willingdon, where the only few electronics retailers I know of exist.

Funny thing though. This time the plans called for a 25 ohm rheostat. "Doesn't exist" says one retailer. "No Got" says another - "Try Digikey" . Digikey has them but they're stupid expensive 500 watt versions.... crap....

Guess who saves the day? "The Source" formerly known as "Radio Shack" - the last place on Earth I would expect to find any part relevant to a project.

Anyways - it amplifies the toy guitar nicely and the kids think that's OK.

Mad PCB Skillz

OF COURSE I dabble in electronics. What self respecting geek doesn't? It's been a long haul though - for many years I had a less than stellar success ratio with circuits. Frankly, I had pretty much given up. I even had one of those "1001 projects with electronics" toys - but I only ever attempted about 100 of them, and maybe got 20 to work properly. It never really excited me too much - making a "real AM radio" ( why? I had an AM radio - I wanted an FM radio...) or a "lie detector" ( "Hey Pat! Are you stupid? " "NO!" "BEEEEEEEP" "HA HA PAT'S STUPID").... yeah, tons o' fun.... sorry Pat.

Anyway, fast forward to when I had trains. "Make you own Electronic Speed Control", "A Computerized Turnout System", "Home made DCC for your trains".... not so much. Most of the projects I couldn't even begin to source out parts - "Radio Shack" really didn't have the inventory necessary for most of them, and as I recall, they were pretty complicated. More for the retired electrical engineer than a geek with a $10 soldering iron.

Nowadays I like to muck about with microprocessors. Definitely a LOT easier when a computer program does 90% of the work. And most of the parts you can get at Radio Shack.

Of course, the hard part is assembling the damn things. I've used prototyping boards, but I hate having to route wires everywhere. And up until now, PCBs were a thing you could only get done professionally at a ridiculous cost. Well, ridiculous if you only want the one board for a hobby project...

But now....I can do it myself ( to borrow a phrase from #2 )

1. Design the circuit: I use something called PCB Wizard. It assumes you've got a lot of basic parts and can suss out a circuit schematic. It also designs the board and the traces for you - which is one of those things that you previously needed an engineering degree to do...
2. Print the circuit using a laser printer on glossy magazine paper. I like Teen People magazine. Probably just a coincidence, but I get some really great boards with this ( I got it from the Library discard pile, thank you very much)
3. Use the Graphics Departments heat press to iron the laser printer toner onto copper PC board. We have TONS of old copper boards around, leftover from the days when we had a pretty good electronics program.
4. Remove the paper. I like to soak the boards in hot soapy water - the paper peels right off, leaving the toner on the board to act as a resist to the etchant.
5. Etch the boards. I used to use ferric chloride, which you can get at any electronics store. But the stuff is nasty and you can't pour it down the drain. Also, you can't see through it to see how your boards are doing. Now I use a special brew of hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide, which turns a lovely emerald green while it's doing its work. Also nasty, but easy to clean up spills with baking soda and water.
6. Drill the boards. Again, leftovers from the electronics department yield a nice drill press and a few dozen drill bits.

I've made sets of boards for my Physics 12 class to learn about circuits, some demonstration projects, a pre-amp for my Laser Show and now I'm working on a class set of microcontroller boards to teach physical computing.

And today I etched my first double sided board ( see above ). I am teh ROXXOR!

Bum Hand

You know that kind of laughter where you basically can't breath? And it's actually painful? But It's been a long time since you laughed that hard? For some reason, this made me do that.


Wooo! Ouch...

Mai Intellivisions...let me sho u it.

Scored big on the Intellivision collection this weekend. Friday I found a copy of Space Spartans, complete with box, overlays and instructions ($3.99) and today I found a complete Intellivoice module, with box but without instructions( $also $3.99 - love that Val Vill) . This adds to my collection of two first gen. Intellivisions, one Intellevision 2 console and 30 odd games. All in the crawlspace, of course - the kids have zero interest in playing these awesome games, especially 'cos Dad can seriously pown them at any one... and the graphics are pretty crappy when compared to... oh, say... their Wii.

Intellivision collecting isn't something I'm radically serious about. I started out pretty well when I found my first console in a second hand store in Cache Creek, along with about twenty games. The guy let me have it all for forty bucks ( the original 1982 value of it all would have been $350 for the console plus $40 for each game - $1150 in 1982 dollars, probably about $5K today) . Since then I've found a few more games at the good old Val Vill, and bought a few pieces off of ebay to round out the collection. If I can add to the pile for five or ten bucks, I'll do it. It's nice to have a hobby that's not that expensive, doesn't take up a lot of space (at least when it's stored under the house) and is at least vaguely historically important - given the video game industry is more profitable than the entertainment industry these days. I kind of liken it to collecting old movie posters and such. I doubt it will ever be a valuable collection, considering the amount of stuff that's available on ebay, but it will be nice to show the urchins later in life - this is what Daddy played when he was your age...

And they will laugh and laugh.....

Powned

Day 1: I'm playing a big ass dragon called "Charizard". I breath freakin' fire, dude...my TAIL is on fire. I am DRAGON. TROGDOR IS IN DA HOUSE!

#1 is playing something called a "Kirby" - basically a big, pink blob.

Game on.

Ten minutes later and he has wiped the floor with me. "But... I'm a DRAGON! Dragon vs pink marshmallow = No Contest! What's wrong with this game? This is SO WRONG!"

Turns out "Princess Peach" kicks ass too.