Columbus Day: What Are You Working On?

Wow, Caribbean Conquest Day is such a dull holiday. If it’s a holiday at all: we’re at work today and you probably are too. We decided to post what we’re working on in hopes of breaking out of our holiday slump. Pictured above are two IR illuminator boards we assembled this weekend. We bought the kits from BG Micro. We’re planning on testing their camera blocking ability once we come up with a ~13V portable power source.

That’s what we’re doing. What have you been working on lately?

(If anyone can find a source for the welding goggles in the picture, we’d love to hear it.)

50 thoughts on “Columbus Day: What Are You Working On?

  1. This weekend I built an air pressure ratio switch. I’ll be using this to generate a signal when the pressure in a tank falls to less than a certain fraction of the supply — which can vary from 20 to 100 PSI — so that the pump it is driving can cycle. It’s heavy metal with 3/16 by 1.25 inch steel straps, and 1 inch OD fiberglass reinforced vinyl tubing doing the pressing. This is a part of a much bigger project of course, which I’m gonna be coy about for now :-)

  2. im setting up a fedora server i installed a stereo on two cars i fixed the cable on my laptop i re soldered the pci slot back onto the board i fixed my jeep i ordered some parts for the guitar im building and wrote some plans up for a noise canceling attachment i could use with ear buds on my i-pod, oh and why not use a scooter battery.

  3. The easiest way to prevent a security camera from working is to saturate the CCD with a laser pointer. Most of these cameras seem to have a small enough aperture that even a cheap keychain pointer will completely blind the camera. With a little bit of putty on the back end and some tape around the switch the thing should be able to be stuck to a wall and aimed at the camera. As for infrared cameras. I don’t know how much light from the visible spectrum they use, so an ordinary HeNe may still work on them. If not, an infrared laser diode at the same intensity would probably suffice

    Some cheap optics to widen the beam may be necessary for some cameras, but a laser is really the way to go. Laser light is coherent, meaning all the photons are traveling in the same direction. This is what causes a laser beam to be so intense.

    It would take a bunch of LEDs to match the intensity of a flood lamp to pull this off, requring a decent battery to run it.

  4. this weekend i was going to find the vehicle speed sensor on my car and see if i could fix what ever’s wrong (it sometimes stays at 20 mph and doesn’t record on the odometer), and if its not fixable (or if i can’t fix it) replace it…i didn’t get around to that though, too busy with school and trying to make a real coke and mentos bomb.

  5. Working on a gravimetric mixer for plastic extrusion using load cells, an arduino and the AD7705 16 bit ADC. I basically need to mix 4 ingredients to +/- 0.5%, 3,000 lbs at a time. I’m hoping to get a howto written on interfacing the arduino to a load cell / thermocouple when I finish.

    The AD7705 is a pretty sweet part for load cells, thermocouples and such. It has a 1-128 gain preamp and has two inputs per channel allowing differential measurement in bipolar or unipolar modes. For $8 it’s pretty jam packed with crap.

    Digi-Key has it as AD7705BNZ-ND (sorry, I bought the last two, more in a week or two):
    http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail?name=AD7705BNZ-ND

  6. retailmenot.com has a 10% discount for restorationhardware.com:”HNM08FS8″
    Expires on Oct. 15th; but they tend to keep popping up.

    Thanks for the source, I think I’ve been looking for goggles like these all my life!

  7. i’m working on a windmill to charge a 12v light system in a bathroom i’m renovating. i’m using a 90 degree drill chuck to send the energy down the shaft, instead of having the motor on top, which saves alot of weight. also, those are some awesome goggles.

  8. I’m finishing an FM Stereo transmitter, finishing as in packaging the layout from breadboard into a nice Hammond aluminum enclosure.

    I’ve found all of the over-the-counter iPod transmitters to be awful – either poor audio or limited distance. But I used SparkFun’s FM transmitter IC, along with an Arduino to control it, and an LCD display. Here’s my writeup: http://mikeyancey.com/FM-Stereo-Broadcaster.php

    Mike Y
    Dallas, Texas

  9. I found ’em cheaper! $8 bux on the hasn’t-failed-me-yet McMaster.com
    part number:
    5444T2
    Though there are different darkness’s available, so you might just wanna search for welding goggles, they’re right there. :)
    -Taylor

  10. I got a pair of these a while back for making a pair of Infra-Red Vision goggles by changing the filters.

    I went to a local welding supply shop and found a pair for about $5, and no shipping charges.

    google product search for “cup style welding goggles” and set the price to less than $7 or so. I found a couple pages of results in that range.

  11. 36 LED times 2 = 72 LED times at least 20mA per LED (more for IR) = 1440mA, that had better be rechargeable batteries there then, in a shoulder or belt-attached bag or something.
    I don’t think those 12v remote batteries would last more than a few minutes, assuming you combined several of them of course else they’d lack the capability to source such amperage.

  12. You can get one of those Cellboost for Camcorders. The Cam1 is a bit bulky, but has screws, and inside is 6 aa sized batteries. Replace the batteries with rechargeables, and you have a nice self regulating battery pack with camera mounting screw.

  13. I’m working on mounting a MMIC frequency multiplier in a surplus Philips 39 GHz downconverter for a 47 GHz radio that I’m building. I’m going to see if the crappy Arctic Silver epoxy will suffice for MMIC use. The real good silver epoxy has to be ordered, costs more and requires refrigeration. I also ordered some 1 mil gold bonding wire to try and do some wire bonding.

  14. I’m working on a simple project, putting a cheap bluetooth headset inside of an old car phone just for kicks. I can resolder the speaker and mic to work with the old phone’s original components, but I’m having trouble figuring out a way to mount it so that i could push the sync button and change the battery inside easily. What would you use?

  15. Its fully RC. Live video feed, audio feed. heads up display in the paintball helm or on a transmitter. night vision. 1/2 mile range tested so far. when it fires…. its amazing! lol! our next model will have 4 barrels. and we are looking into a 4X4 version also soon.

    jared

  16. built a 5volt 3a power supply for my car’s instrument panel. (** Mercury Cougar)It used to use a bi-metal strip to regulate power.(??) Good old LM323K and a few caps.
    Also worked on my Steampunk’d computer monitor.

  17. I did not know this was a holiday…
    …anyway!
    I am working on a Backpack that carries 4 sound systems and runs off of 4 12v DeWalt battery packs and with a standard headphone jack for input. The idea is to make sounds that influence those around the backpack with out them knowing that the sounds are influencing them so much.
    Peace!

  18. I’m working on so much right now… pleh my whole work area is a mess from it. I’m trying to get a set of decent hard drive speakers working, I’m building an amp for them, also building a portable amp for my electric guitar, I’m modding my other real amplifier to have a talkbox, and I’m trying to build a radio jammer. Also trying to get my computer to run at a little lower temperature. And I’m having fun trying to do all this with stuff I already have, haha.

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