TINYenormous – Build it up to break it down again

One of my "always in my head" projects is a CD changing machine. I have seen the myriad of other projects out there, and this always captivates me, in that it is just out of reach, but it seems to be a fairly simple concept. I have been thinking and sketching on this one for SUCH a long time that I have decided to post it before it is fully polished up.

The basic premise is I have an arm that swings up and down mounted on a platform that rotates 180 degrees. Both of those are positioned by hobby servos. On the tip of the arm there is two vacuum aided suction cups and some hdpe tubing.

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So it has been over 2 years since I started my project motorcycle. It's a 71 honda cl350. I bought it in boxes and slowly put it together with the help of a friend over the last 2 years.

Last weekend I actually got to go out and ride the damn thing! I have to admit it was a little frightening, because it's been 2.5 years since I last rode a bike, and even that was only for a 3 day licensing course. All in all it rode well, and most of the problems were with my shifting ability, or my riding ability.

The one issue that I did have was the bike continues to rev high after putting the clutch in. The only way I can get the revs to come down (at a stop sign for instance) is to downshift and brake all the way down into 1st gear. If I get it down to 1-2k then it will generally stay there.

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So this post is a big shout out to Sparkfun Electronics. Not only are they an interesting shop that has tons of stuff I would love to tinker with, but they give really good customer service as well!

Recently I ordered a bunch of stuff from them, including a few temperature sensors, thermistors, and an rf transmitter/receiver pair. I ordered, they shipped, and then fedex delivered it to my front porch where it was promptly stolen. I was super bummed to come home and find nothing. I had the whole afternoon off and I was planning on putting in some serious geek time in the basement. Needless to say, fedex dropped the ball by leaving it at my front door (on a busy street, less that 3 feet away from the sidewalk) and some jerk ended up with an envelope full of stuff they probably promptly threw away.

I left a message on Sparkfun's site and filed a claim with fedex. Paul Robinson from sparkfun got back to me fairly quickly (he even tried to call(!), but I wasn't around) and they shipped out a replacement order.

I was initially really down about not having anything to play with over the weekend, but this is honestly the best-case-scenario considering it wasn't sparkfun's fault that the package was stolen from my porch.

So thanks, sparkfun. I appreciate it, and keep up the good work!

UPDATE Two more things for icing on the cake, my package arrived today(YES!), and I asked Paul a question about hackerspaces in boulder during our emails about the stolen package. He said he didn't know of any but would pass it on to someone who would. Yesterday I received an email from Nathan Seidle, the CEO. I love the fact that their customer service provides service, I love the fact that they wanted to make it right, and I love the fact that their ceo took time to answer my question.

I love the tight dof look that you can get with cine lenses. I have always been greatly saddened by the lack of dof in consumer and prosumer cameras. I have gone through a few iterations of building different half-assed diy dof adapters. This current one is based on a cd player motor spinning a ground down cd blank with one side sanded to a matte finish. The case is a 2 outlet electrical junction box painted black inside and out. It has a nikon lens mount from a $10 macro tube jb welded to the outside, an external battery pack, and a power switch.

The theory of a dof adapter.
Something having to do with the dimensions of the image sensor and the lens optics means that most digital videocameras have very wide depth of field. What depth of field means is that if you are interviewing them sitting at their desk chair, then their desk and the wall behind them are all in focus. The range of things that are in focus is called the depth of field. By using an adapter you can control this field with lens and aperture selection.

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So as I referenced in an earlier post, I bit the bullet and bought a camera so I could test out CHDK. CHDK is a hacked firmware for canon cameras that use one of three imge sensors. I believe it is the digic 2, 3, and 4 sensors. It turns out that all of the powershot line uses the same image sensors. The optics, buttons and features are added or removed based on the price point of the camera. If you use CHDK you can enable them AND add new features the designers may never have thought of! click here to find a compatible camera on amazon More info about my trials and tribulations after the jump.

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I signed up for ponoko a few months ago when oomlout put up the plans for their robotic arm on thingaverse. It seemed like a cool service, but I didn't want to drop a few hundred on a robotic arm with no real need (who needs a need?) for it, so I moved on.

This weekend I thought up a cool project that would be perfect test for ponoko, so I sketched it out, drew it in illustrator, and uploaded it to ponoko. There were a few snags along the way, but all in all it was a good experience, I learned a bit about how one would create 3d flatpack objects, and a good time was had by all. At this point I had mentally written this very same post - except originally it was a glowing review. [Read more →]

I still haven't gotten the grip I mentioned a few posts ago. I don't know if I will. I have figured out a clumsy hack to get the job done and I might just run it this way, or perhaps clean it up a tiny bit.

This is the battery with little aluminum strips taped to it. The battery compartment is too tight for regular wires, so foil was the only way to do it.

This pic shows the "wires" coming out of the battery grip. I have alligator clips on a 7.3V 200Ma cell phone charger. I connect it to the foil and off we go!

The reason why I have the battery in there is because without it, there isn't enough juice to fully actuate the shutter. I think that some kind/type of capacitor would also do this, but I'm afraid I don't what kind would work.

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I was at my local camera shop the other day and saw this lens in a junk bin. Does anyone know why? It is a nikon 135 f/3.5 that has no apparent fogging, oil on blades or fungus. It focuses and shoots fine.

My initial thoughts are: it has the "ears" so it can only go on a few dslr's unmodified. It also is full manual focus and aperture. Is it that the 135 is an odd length? Here's a newer faster version for $1,250!

The other weird thing is that someone has scratched off the nikkor name on the front of the lens. I should have asked the shop, but does anyone know why this lens would be $5? Thanks for your guesses!

After seeing this project from cibomahto a while ago, I finally got my act together and bought a $1 IR led from radio$hack so I could build an intervalometer for my SLR.

For those who don't know an intervalometer is, it tells your computer to take a picture every given interval. This enables you to shoot video with a still camera over a long period of time. Sometimes you have two intervals on fancy ones. Those allow you to use the bulb setting on your camera. Right now it has two potentiometers to indicate seconds and minutes between shots. It is run from a nine volt battery, and I expect it to have fairly good battery life. Only time will tell. The IR LED can't take too much juice! It has a status led to show when it is firing (for trouble shooting) and not a whole lot else.

This currently needs a housing and a interface. I am debating the merits of a small lcd vs just using a printed label to mark the pot positions. It's pretty much spray and pray right now. At least it is adjustable!

I'm thinking about getting one of these and eliminating the pots completely.

Which would end up making my project very similar to this one but for a nikon.

One last thought is possibly adding the functionality to use the bulb setting and then add a bracketing ability. Isn't technology wonderful!

I had a lot of time to kill over break, so I shot a bunch of timelapses. Here they are!

This is from a coffeeshop that I spent a lot of my time in.

This is of some clouds at dusk. This one has two separate positions, and it is really interesting to see the color shift towards the end of the video. I also have it on auto-something(ISO?), so it isn't very consistent frame to frame.

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