I think I love this project solely for all of the little bits that are required to put it all together. The write up describes the construction of the necessary parts: laser unit, galvanometer scanners, servo amps, and controllers. All schematics included natch.
Here’s something cool and refreshing just in time for the weekend and that wild Flag Day celebration you were planning. This is similar to the margarita machine that was circulating last month. They’re both based on garbage disposals. fixer’s design uses an external return pipe. It also uses a 4-gallon stock pot instead of the giant plastic drink cooler. I’m guessing this made attaching the garbage disposal a lot easier. Mentally you still have to overcome the fact that you’re drinking out of something that was originally intended to process waste, and a plastic drain pipe coming out of a chip board box isn’t going to make that any easier to stomach. He says it works great, but the lack of insulation probably means that it doesn’t stay frozen very long. It would be cool if I could turn that dewar we had back on the farm into one of these, wait
[zayitz]
Hey folks this is Eliot. I know when I got my wisdom teeth pulled I didn’t want to do anything; So, I’m hoping Vince is going to take it easy today.
Things have gotten pretty heated in the comments recently and I wanted to address some of the things brought up. Just so you don’t get bored I’ve included all of the wallpapers that have been submitted so far. Click on the images to get the full size versions. The following isn’t going to be all bureaucratic drek. I’ve included other interesting links that have appeared during the week. Here we go, starting at the end and working back towards the beginning.
Everyone has at least one extra mouse laying around; why not get some use out of it? Disassembling the mouse you can get two optical encoders plus four infrared emitter/detector pairs. Then you can reassemble your new sensors into a quadrature incremental optical encoder. You’ll be able to tell how much the sensor has rotated and by comparing the signals from the two IR pairs you can also determine the direction. These cheap devices would be good for keeping track of robot wheel movements or doing absolute positioning telescopes.
[thanks joelanders]
Continue reading “Quadrature Optical Encoder Built From A Mouse”
Bill Dudley built this recumbent out of a 20″ bmx bike and a 27″ bike that he found on the side of the road. The only specialized part used was an idler from a commercial recumbent. Bill says the most difficult part was constructing a comfortable seat. It apparently works pretty well; He’s completed several metric centuries (100km/63 miles) on it. I think the first recumbent I ever saw as a child was the BEHEMOTH, which is in class of its own.
[thanks Bill]
Matt Gilbert was tired of using his noisy cassette adapter with his iPod so he added an auxiliary input to his factory radio. Normally this type of thing isn’t possible with factory stereos, but Matt’s 2001 Corolla has the factory CD player as a separate component from the head unit. He starts a CD playing and then uses a toggle switch to swap the sound coming from the iPod with the sound from the CD unit. This would also work with a factory CD changer, but you can’t just plug straight into the head unit because it needs to receive the “everything’s okay” signals from a CD player in order to turn on the input. You might be able to do this with “premium” factory stereos since they usually have a separate amp. All this hack needs now is a clever dock; I bet you won’t even miss that clock.
[thanks Matt]
SplineScan is a cross platform 3D scanning solution. While the target object is rotating on a motion controlled turntable a laser is projected on it. A camera collects images of each step of the rotation. Using simple trig the individual frames’ line data can then be used to construct a 3D model. Andrew Lewis is in the process of porting the model generator to C from VB, but it can already be run in Ubuntu using WINE. If all goes well he will be doing a live demo at LUGRadio Live with detailed source to follow soon after. He expects the final scanner to only cost approx. $90. Sounds like a lot of fun. Thanks for sending it in Andrew.
