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3 Articles

Supercon 2022: Nick Poole Makes A Jolly Wrencher Tube

May 23, 2023 by 5 Comments

[Nick Poole] shared his circuitous journey into the obscure world of homemade vacuum tubes on the Supercon 2022 stage. It began innocently enough when he saw [Usagi Electric]’s single bit computer vacuum tube computer, which uses dozens of vacuum tubes. He got to wondering, could you make vacuum-tube-like devices containing multiple elements? There are some examples, like the 256-bit memory Selectron tube from the 1950’s, but nothing general purpose like a 555 timer or quad NAND gate packages. Unencumbered by a deep understanding of how vacuum tubes work, [Nick] proceeds to fill this void by imagining Integrated Thermionic, a fictitious company that exists in an alternate history where transistors were not invented and the vacuum tube reigns supreme. He also showcases a variety of innovative products that Integrated Thermionics manufactured over the decades, including surface mount tubes.

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Supercon 2022: Chris Combs Reveals His Art-World Compatibility Layer

April 4, 2023 by 12 Comments

[Chris Combs] is a full time artist who loves using technology to create unique art projects and has been building blinky artwork since about a decade now. In his 2022 Supercon talk “Art-World Compatibility Layer: How to Hang and Sell Your Blinky Goodness as Art” (Slides, PDF), [Chris] takes us behind the scenes and shows us how to turn our blinky doodads in to coveted art works. There is a big difference between a project that just works, and a work of art, and it’s the attention to small details that differentiates the two.

Just like the field of engineering and technology, the art world has its own jargon and requires knowledge of essential skills that make it intimidating to newcomers. It’s not very easy to define what makes an artwork “art” or even “Art”, and sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish if you are looking at a child’s scrawls or a master’s brushstrokes. But there are a few distinguishing requirements that a piece of artwork, particularly one revolving around the use of technology, must meet.

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Supercon 2022: Tap Your Rich Uncle To Fund Your Amateur Radio Dreams

February 23, 2023 by 11 Comments

Imagine you had a rich uncle who wanted to fund some of your projects. Like, seriously rich — thanks to shrewd investments, he’s sitting on a pile of cash and is now legally obligated to give away $5,000,000 a year to deserving recipients. That would be pretty cool indeed, but like anything else, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, right?

Well, maybe not. It turns out that we in the amateur radio community — and even amateur radio adjacent fields — have a rich uncle named Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), a foundation with a large endowment and a broad mission to “support amateur radio, funds scholarships and worthy educational programs, and financially support technically innovative amateur radio and digital communications projects.” As the foundation’s Outreach Manager John Hayes (K7EV) explained at Supercon 2022, ARDC is a California-based 501(c)3 non-profit organization that has been in the business of giving away money to worthy projects in the amateur radio space since 2021.

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