the long road to Seattle

All my electronics tools are packed away. The work bench is taken apart. I am painting my office (last room in the house!). Two weeks left to get prepared. We list the house April first (fools!).

Then and only then will I be able to get downtown and start packing the studio.
Of all the things you can do as an accumulator, moving across the country might just be one of the most painful. There is only so much you can take with you, and the rest has to disappear. I am planning a major studio sale (stay tuned junk fans) and intend to bequeath whatever might be of use to the hacktory, but in the end I know I will have to throw some stuff out. And that my friends is just not something I want to think about right now.

The only thing that keeps me from despair is Rae's promise that Seattle will have fun junk too. I trust her. Junk happens.

exhaustion

Ignite Seattle was a blast!
Everyone who spoke was really good, and there were a few true standouts.
I can't wait for the video to get posted, although I dread seeing myself.

I really want to thank Brady Forrest and the good folks at O’Reilly for putting it on and giving me the chance to expound on MakePhilly.

Now about the title...
We have been in Seattle since Saturday and by the time we leave on Friday we will have:

• seen 15 houses with our realtor
• had (a combined) 6 job interviews (or a reasonable facsimile there of)
• and driven untold miles looking at neighborhoods.
• delivered 1 Ignite Seattle talk
• visited relatives
• caught up with friends
  

I need to go home and sleep for a week.
I am getting very excited about moving though!

crazy

So Rae and I are in Seattle on reconnaissance for our move this spring.
Looking at real estate, trying to do some professional networking, trying not to go insane from the expanding possibilities.

I found out last night that I landed a talk for the upcoming Ignite Seattle on Tuesday (that by the way is tomorrow). Very exciting!
My topic is "fun without function" and I am going to present the codification of our experiences with makephilly and the maker challenge. I am really looking forward to this!
It has been a while since I spoke to such a large crowd, and now is the nervous part. I know I can talk for 5 minutes, the real challenge is how to say it all in JUST 5 minutes. That and how to choose the best pictures (thanks flickr).

what is it?

I do a lot of scrounging.
Admittedly I just like taking things apart, so the motivation is not always to get useful parts.
But once you have a large junk box full of old circuit boards you just know that one of them is carrying the part you need.

Conversely, I often find myself staring at a board and wondering "what the hell is that thing?"
I have a pretty good basic knowledge of electronics, and I think I can identify the general class of a part without much help, but there are always mystery items which need some research.
I like research.
What better way to waste time then by learning something?

Along the way I have collected a few links which I use to try and figure these little mysteries out.

Here are a few:

The impressive sounding FCIM Component Identification Tool it is at least 12 years out of date, but then a lot of the things I am scrounging from are old too. The site is hard core Web 1.0, and a little hard to navigate, but they show LOTS of useful info on package types, general usage guidelines, and part numbers.

For a newer resource that includes lots of surface mount (SMD) codes try TKB-4u (The Technical Knowledge Base for You!) which lists lots of codes, and some basic info on identifying those tiny parts.

There are more lists of SMD parts at TALKING ELECTRONICS as well as useful information on op-amps, voltage regulators, opto couplers, and some basic older ICs.

For semiconductors, once you have found the part number you will also need to know how to use it, and for that you need a data sheet. Data sheets are like gold. They have the pin out, all the power specs, timing data, and often a reference circuit you can use as a starting point for your own designs. Finding a data sheet for an older part can be difficult, and many of the site which claim to have them want to charge you for them. Some time ago I discovered All Data sheets and have rarely had to look anywhere else.

blue LED POV and the Diecimila hack

I really wanted to make something cool with my new toys before the last make:philly meeting. I knew there was not much time, so I settled on a POV device. I figured that would be easy to show off, and would be a good way to interest people in the hacktory arduino/freeduino class. As it turned out, the hardware was the easy part. Here you see my attempts to get it to spell MAKE. Obviously I still had some work to do...



I found these great little smd leds on a junked keyboard pulled from the trash. Soldering them down with their individual current limiting resistors was a challenge. Unsoldering them from the keyboard was a nightmare! In the end I only ruined one. I really want to build a hot air rework unit.



Along the way I came across this post. Pure freakin' genius! I used an smd cap instead (because I had it and I am addicted to soldering tiny things), but other then that I can't add anything useful other then to say it works like a charm.

Doing it the hard way

I ordered 4 bare bones arduino kits from Modern Devices. But in a moment of false economy decided not to order a USB < -- > TTL cable for them. Instead I decided that I would use some of the parts from the SMD grab bag I got ages ago and make one myself. My old laptop has a serial port, so I did not have to contend with USB, and it is "old tech" so there is lots of info out there.

Finding a suitable schematic was as easy as looking at the serial Arduino schematic and finding the rs232 input area. I rounded up all the parts, and used a peice of prototyping board designed for SMD parts from OnePas (http://www.onepasinc.com/). I also dug up a DB9 connector in a plastic box that had enough room for the tiny board I ended up with.

I have a desk mounted magnifier lamp (which had been in storage unused for 30 years!) and it turned out to be an absolute necessity. Soldering the parts down was surprisingly easy, but working without a design provided the usual set of challenges and opportunities for cursing.

In the end I got it all put together, but I simply could not get it to work. Two days of fiddling, finding mistakes, testing with the scope, trying different computers, and learning the intricacies of rs232 protocols left me no closer to a working cable. In a funk I ordered a USB cable from mouser, and almost gave up.

One final investigation finally revealed the problem. DB9 connectors are number as you look at the BACK not the FRONT! Switch one wire and suddenly the thing works like a charm. One of those things you just need to know.

It is probably the most expensive cable ever built, but I am quite happy with it.

down the rabbit hole again

Why is it that every site requires a return to the beginning?
I am working on a new Drupal site for Rae's cousin who runs a small management consulting firm in Seattle.

It should be dead easy, right?
Just drop in a few modules, do some simple theme work, post to the host, and go get lunch.
Right.

Instead I am looking for a JQuery plugin that does dropdown menus cleanly, trying to remember if there was a reason I had not used the asset module last time around, fighting with CSS, and generally feeling unmotivated.
I suppose having a well thought out process and a set of standards would help.
Maybe next time.

oscilloscope

After a few months of research and obsession I bought a scope.
I was getting frustrated with the levitator and thought that having better tools would help.
No, I am lying.

Really I just wanted one (and have wanted one for a very long time).
I certainly don't need to prove to anyone what a geek I am, but if I did this would be the way.
For $250 I got a 15 year old tektronixs 2246 from ebay. For those not up on their obsolete test equipment that is a 4 channel 100 mHz scope with built in multi-meter and various other measuring cusors.

With heart in mouth I waited the week it took to get here, wondering the whole time if I had thrown my money away on a door stop. Oscilloscopes are pretty complicated machines, and although I had learned that this was supposed to be a fairly rugged and reliable one, I was sure it was going to be broken. Fortunately it arrived in one piece with all functions seemingly intact.

Now I just have to figure out how to use it.

got my blog back!

Somewhere in the heart of the google empire lives an evil gnome whose job it is to make things as complicated as possible.
This malicious individual got hold of my blog, noticed that I had not posted in a year or so, and decided to punish me by making it impossible to log in.
Well I showed them!
After many repeated attempts to gain access with every email address and password I have ever used, and after trying, exhausting, and cursing every help channel they offer (which did not take long).
I finally had a breakthrough!
Somehow my blog had become registered under an email address that does not even exist (to my knowledge), and I only discovered it by looking at the http headers being sent when I tried to log in.

In any case it is fixed now, and I have managed to migrate to the new blogger, and although I may not post for another year, I feel much better!

many more meters

many more meters

So, it may seem as if I have a lot of meters, and perhaps I do. The funny thing is that in comparison to other things I collect, I don't have that many at all. These came from our excursion to the reningers flea market last weekend. Many aisle were walked, and much haggling ensued. At the end of the day I came home with a haul which these nice finds were just a small part of. I bought minnow traps, sand sieves, light fixtures, mould forms, and beat up bocce balls. Rae claims these shouldn't really count towards the weekly big magnet quota since they don't come from the studio. I feel that since they will end up at the studio, I am justified, and am merely capturing them in transit.

In either case it was a grand weekend for collecting. After returning from the countryside we went to get food at the co-op and stopped at a tag sale near by. I asked one of the ladies about a bunch of electronics and odd industrial looking stuff, and she responded by saying "you want that stuff? Please, take it"

Don't have to tell me twice. Turns out to be old mine safety equipment. CO dosimeters, noise dosimeters, odd measuring equipment, basically a jackpot. It is in pieces all over my desk now, and I am having a blast trying to figure out how it all works.

They thought it was their kid, but it was just a fluke.

They thought it was their kid, but it was just a fluke.

Because some jokes are just too silly to resist. Even if I am the only one who will think it is funny.

Milli and Micro the Ampere family

Milli and Micro the ampere family

Two classy old weston meters I got for a song on ebay (yes you can do that through paypal).
I can't imagine what I will do with them, but if I ever figure it out I know where to find them. Or not.

In the background is my mag-lev project.
If I ever get it cleaned up perhaps I will post about that too.

Week 2 (gear puller?)

week2 (gear puller?)

At first I thought this was a valve spring compressor, but after closer examination I am not so sure. Perhaps a device for separating gears on a shaft?

In any case my friend Tom gifted it to me when we visited his lovely family in MI a few years ago. He had apparently saved it for me knowing that I would love it... and I do.

Forged steel about 7" by 2.5"

where to begin

where to begin

Not really fair to count this shot against the weekly goal I guess, but I wanted to show the source. This is the "studio" I rent, which serves more as a storage space these days. After a brief flurry of artistic activity a few years ago, I went back to building web sites. So the output from the studio has dropped to (almost) zero. That has not stopped me from collecting though. Slowed me down a little, but only because I only get here to deliver things once a month or so, and R sees the stuff (and gives me a hard time) if my car gets too full.

A Big Magnet

Many years ago I was a graduate student studying metalsmithing at Cranbrook. One day, one of my fellow students looked at my work area in dismay, and pronounced "It looks like there is a big magnet under there and all that shit just sticks to it."

I accumulate things.

Sometimes I make stuff out of them, but mostly not.

I think I have accumulated some really interesting stuff, and I intend to take pictures of one thing each week and post it here. I could go for a really long time at one a week, so maybe it will be more frequent, but probably not. We will see.

-jak