Tag Archive for hobby

Friday the twenty ninth of April two thousand and eleven

* please note this is in progress – when this initial line disappears, this blog entry is complete!

This entire week has been dedicated to finding the perfect solution for Simon and his drum-lights, as well as making them ‘play’-proof! I inadvertently provided Sie with an opportunity to end his life – personal jokes aside, I thought it was rather stupid of me not to insulate one side of the piezo[electric] from the other…. But I just wonder if that’s where his electric performance on Wednesday came from?!?

When I bought my Dremel I also bought the latest Arduino, because I always wanted to mess around in micro controllers and turn bits of computers into music making! Sorry Bruce, but I couldn’t think of an apt verb to use, so I left it out…
I have always been fascinated with electronics and even though I don’t know any better, I till enjoy taking things apart to ‘see’ how they work mechanically, and then salvage any odd useful ‘crap’ [junk?] to find a use later. This er, later, just happens to be this week! I have wired up a few stepper motors from CD-roms and attempted to figure things out for myself, but it has taken far too long, so now I have been searching for how to do things, and then figure out what the code does from there.

I have found RIAA pre-amps and triggers for a MIDI interface, multiple copies of ONE video and several arduino HOWTOs. I have yet to crash my browser, but I have had more that one HUNDRED tabs open when I have been searching and just somer clicking! Now I know I have a HISTORY in my browser, but that makes things harder than just dumping links below…

Arduino

in no apparent order....
http://www.beat707.com/w/
http://dev.squarecows.com/2011/02/10/make-it-last-build-series-3-prototyping-the-stepper-driver/
http://www.mo-seph.com/node/246
http://arduino-projects-here.blogspot.com/2010/06/arduino-music-player.html
http://www.cultdeadcow.com/cowfeed/
thanks for all the fish: http://wn.com/The_How_To_of_Stepper_Motor_Music__Part_1_Note_Frequencies_and_Accuracy
http://hackaday.com
http://www.musheen.com/page/4
http://retrointerfacing.com/?cat=4&paged=3
http://www.circuitsathome.com/tag/diy
http://www.craigaalseth.com/rnews/index.php?more=32
smaller than google? http://www.amazon.ca/Arduino-Cookbook-Michael-Margolis/dp/toc/0596802471
http://arduino.cc/playground/Main/GeneralCodeLibrary
http://www.bluedust.dontexist.com/armstrong/
http://www.nongnu.org/avr-libc/user-manual/FAQ.html#faq_rom_array
http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Projects/ArduinoUsers
http://www.studiobricolage.org/arduino-1
http://www.windmeadow.com/node/55
http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Basics-Making-Sound/step2/Playing-A-Melody/

 preeend

Simon

also in no real order!!
http://www.sonelec-musique.com/images2/electronique_detecteur_impulsion_meca_001.gif
http://www.hobbyprojects.com/L/Lamp_Light_Control_Circuits.html
http://icc.skku.ac.kr/~won/electro/lights.html#soundlight
http://www.redcircuits.com/Page131.htm
http://www.electronicspoint.com/electronic-basics-f3.html
http://www3.telus.net/chemelec/Projects/Color-Organ/Color-Organ-2.png
http://www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?22451-Color-Organ-Schematic
http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/owl_droppings/index/ColorOrgan.gif
debug: http://www.horrorseek.com/home/halloween/wolfstone/ColorOrgans/clofix_DebuggingColorOrgans.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=color+organ+schematic&hl=en&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=bZK4TYrGE4iaOqui7Y8P&ved=0CD0QsAQ&biw=1280&bih=708
http://www.siddiq.com.np/circuits/musictolight.php
pin: http://www.paia.com/ProdArticles/drumsens.htm
http://www.satsleuth.com/schematics.htm
moo: http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/showthread.php/9059-Using-a-Piezo-element-to-control-Lasers
preeend

Sime was better than Homon

http://www.zen22142.zen.co.uk/Circuits/Audio/vinyl.htm
http://sound.westhost.com/project25.htm
http://www.schematics.ca/

kk

More coming soon!!

Saturday the ninth of April two thousand and eleven

I have a stuffy nose and a heavy chest. The best part, you ask? The sound that is heard when evacuating all the air from my two lungs is really funny when I have almost no more air left!!

How did I get ill? Real easy and real fast!
I used my Dremel to do some sanding of a wooden shaft, without wearing a gas mask.

I sourced the wood from an old grass-broom. Many hands with sweat and oil had made their marks on this ‘stick’, plus it had stood abandoned in the workshop for a long time. The wood was not fun to touch while I was forming the one end, so I decided to sand the whole thing smooth.

The sanding could be done either by a sheet or a small cylinder. I chose the latter because I just wanted to play with my new toy…er Dremel! It took about five minutes and was the easiest sanding I had ever done, but it was thanks to a great attachment – the Detailer’s Grip. Felt like I was painting, painting with a small sanding accessory. I discovered that with the speed setting, the sanding could be rough or silky smooth. It was fun while it lasted.

My next job was to cut squares out of hardened steel – I only needed to make about ten fifty millimeter cuts. Two and a half discs [or more] later, and I was ready to start filing the edges of the holes smooth. I made a start by about 20%, but then the light started to fade. There was a trick to get the fluorescent tube working, but last time I tried and failed. I needed to find a new starter.

Lunch was burgers – R30 for more than eight burgers, Woolies’ style! Chicken, leaves, fruit and spices == mighty fine burger!!

Found two starters and fitted them both, but only one tube came on because there’s a loose wire somewhere according to my father. I came inside after asking about nuts and bolts, and then decided to walk the dogs.

I didn’t get to finish this, so I decided to type this line at the bottom to explain in short why it looks as though I just came back from walking the dogs?!?!

Learning on the job!

I’m busy understanding how Regular Expressions work, simply via trial and error.
Funny thing is that I dont have anyone around me who can teach me this stuff, who is not busy…

So here is what I have learnt (taken directly out of my comments) in the past 30 minutes of getting real angry at spam that the filters dont block :

  • /can you do (this|that)/i -matches, ‘can you do this’ or ‘can you do that’ (case-INsenSitivE)
  • [[:alnum:]]{4,} -matches 4 or more letters or numbers, upper or lower -case
  • \D{3} -matches any three characters
  • something between [ and ] like [a4] will match either same or s4me
  • the ‘in?c’ matches either ‘ic’ or ‘inc’
  • the \b stipulates the word boundary between word (\w) and non-word (\W) characters
  • the [[:punct:]]{1} matches any ONE punctuation character
  • the /D is a non-digit and a \d is a digit, so /D{2}\d{3} matches ab727

Can you tell me what this does??
/^Download Prevxx? S[4a]?f[3e]?[0o]nl[1i]?n[3e]?/i