Jun 10

“Lego felt tip 110″ printer connected to an Apple Mac. This is not mindstorms, I designed/built/coded it all from scratch including analog motor electronics, sensors and printer driver, the USB interface uses a “wiring” board.

FAQ: Track name? “Christopher and Raphael just popper Shinichi Osawa distortion disco edit”

FAQ: How long did this take? Hard to say, maybe 3 weeks working evenings.

FAQ: You’re a student and this is a university project? I’m not a student, this is just a hobby project.

FAQ: Just a remake of the 1092a? No, I’d never seen the 1092a until now. However some of the parts came from a 8094 kit amongst others many years ago. It is made to my own design, but I acknolwedge influences and the great work of the official lego designers !

FAQ: Does this use mindstorms? Nope, wiring demo board + homemade analog electronics and sensors.

FAQ: DPI? Dots per inch? Approx 75 DPI

FAQ: PPM? Pages per minute? Not even 1! I sped things up a little in the video editing to keep it interesting to watch :)

FAQ: Helvetica? Yes of course, my respect to those who noticed :)

FAQ: Full color version/more colours? Originally I was going to do 3 colour version, but I had to simplify as only have 4 lego motors.

FAQ: Open source, schematics etc? Yes, I’ll try to get around to this soon. Unfortunately I’m pretty busy at work at moment and documenting this project to a good standard will take a while. Sorry :(

FAQ: Wrote your own driver? Yes, uses standard Mac OS print mechanism.

FAQ: Are you using some sort of MCU demo board(the black pcb)? Yes. [1] http://wiring.org.co/hardware/

FAQ: re: Mac vs PC abuse? Video not meant as a Mac advert and I’m sorry if the Apple logo offends anyone. I just find them easier to use.

FAQ: Felt tip damage drying up? Yes this is a problem, but one felt tip usually lasts for quite a few pages.

FAQ: Felt tip auto-capping? Nope, sorry.

FAQ: Sensor info: Horizontal positioning using homemade shaft encoder (black/white rotating lego squares you see in the vid) with a SY-CR102 photo reflector from Maplins, (only £0.89 or .30). This is into a sampled analog input as I couldn’t get full enough saturation to trigger the ext interrupt pins. There are also push buttons built into lego bricks for left and right end stop detection.

Feb 17

This is a model scale communications tower I built between October 2009 and January 2010. It is made of materials you would typically find in a hobby/electronics shop and a hardware store. In other words, built from scratch. It has steady burning lights (made from leds) and flashing lights (made from indicator lights) that simulate the Hughey & Phillips (formerly Honeywell) L-810 (TM) and KG-114 (TM) obstruction lighting respectively. It has all the cabling for the lights and the other cabling simulates the coaxial & waveguide cabling to the transmitter antennas and microwave dishes. The four microwave parabolic antennas are my best effort to simulate the radome covered antennas manufactured by Andrew-Commscope (TM). Other finer details such as the air circulating out of the side of the housing meant to simulate air conditioning to cool electronics that can get rather hot, grounding wires for the housing and tower, and signage have been added as well. It was built entirely by myself, including the basic electronics needed to power up the lighting. I have an interest in radio/tv/microwave engineering other interests of mine include astronomy, meteorology, and information technology. My name is Brian Vincent and I currently reside in Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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Feb 16

Hobby Shop

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Feb 15

I have alot of flight videos from over the past 9-10 months of having this Rc airplane and decided to put together a copulation of the many many landings and maneuvers I have done with the camera onboard. As the months have gone on I have changed out the electronics, Radio, servos ,ECS and now has a brushless 400 rimfire running off the stock battery and it preforms wonderfully. My landing have gotten better since I changed out the radio and servos and with the new motor it has improved my smoothness and control of the craft. I use skinny long zip ties chunks of Styrofoam and folded kleenex to hold the cam in place and help buffer the vibration, noticeably with the stock Geared motor the plane is a shaker and the placement of the camera puts it in the one place were it gets the prop-wash and vibration the most. If you plan on trying this yourself I would suggest that you practice longer takeoff and faster landings, and like all my flights with the camera onboard i like to get it up as high as I can then cut the throttle and glide it in for as long as I can giving a better picture. Feel free to post comments and as the year goes on i plan to fly 2 planes both with cam and hopfully get some great shot's and make more videos.

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Feb 14

www.theelectronicsbook.com now you can learn the hobby of electronics

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Feb 13

www.theelectronicsbook.com learning the electronics hobby

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Feb 12

www.theelectronicsbook.com how to learn electronics in a month.

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Feb 8

George shows us how to use the Kenwood TS-2000 as a Software Defined Radio with Winrad. Peter experiments with the WSPR Weak Signal mode. And Tommy teaches us how to easily create Time Lapse Videos. Plus plenty of viewer email. Its 44:04 of amateurlogic fun.

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Feb 7

What do you get when you combine a capacitor, some leds, and a solar cell? A BEAM Bug Bot! BEAM stands for Biology Electronics Aesthetics Mechanics which means that the robots are inspired by biology which means bugs.

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Feb 6

www.iheartheli.com Bonus footage from Episode 3 showing alternative use for extra set of skids. DIY sailboat! Later I will show how to waterproof the servo and receiver so you can sail it without worrying about the electronics. Enjoy. The website has lots more fun stuff.

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