arduino, robots, cameras, and life
This is one of those projects I’ve been working on for quite a while now, but never well enough to actually put it in a box! Well.. it still has no box, but it’s much closer to a boxable form.
It is a RBBB arduino clone (but any
Here is an example of one of the timelapses I have shot.
Continue reading “$17 Arduino-based nikon IR intervalometer + code”
I have had my little hackintosh for almost exactly a month now. I saw how the wired editors soured on the idea of their tiny notebooks, and I figured I would check in to share my experience.
Continue reading “Hackintosh one month review: Hp mini 1000”
My newest project involves reincarnating a very old (1998) cd duplicating robot. It is a DTP-1000 that was originally SCSI only. Due to the fates smiling down upon me I was able to pick it up on ebay for $11. I bought it intending to put an arduino in the place of the control board and probably have to do a lot of reverse engineering. The next day I happened upon this site where, amazingly someone has already opened one of these up and has instructions on how to enable serial control! I still am in awe of how lucky I got and really happy that DarkBane dropped all of that knowledge on the world.
There are a lot of pics below, since that was the one thing I could do to add to the fine directions DarkBane has already provided. Another thing is that in his command set he has two typos. I will quote his post after the pix and note the command set in bold.
Continue reading “CD robot V 2.0! Adding serial control to an old scsi cd duplicator.”
I just moved to Colorado, and being new to the area I was really excited to find out that there is a Denver maker’s meetup. For those of you who don’t know, a makers meetup is where inventors and fans of Make magazine get together and talk about their inventions, ideas, and plans. It is held at a hacker space called Club Workshop on the gritty side of denver. The shop is amazing! I didn’t even get a tour, but I saw a full woodworking room, a metal shop, a multi-lift automotive shop, a small textile area, and their laser cutter. This place looks like the kind of place I could definitely spend some more time.
The meetings are loosely structured, and the point is to bring and show other people what you’ve been working on. This particular meeting was largely filled up by Ron Kessinger. He is an artist/inventor/sculptor/prototyper and even that description doesn’t even begin to properly describe him. He brought a big binder filled with photos and sketches of his previous creations. He had pictures of the giant dome house he built, really cool collimated flow water sculptures, knives, and prototypes for a variety of industries and products.
The project that really took center stage was his ping-pong ball gun. You can think of this as a variation on a potato cannon, however his is built to run on compressed air, and it runs on much tighter tolerances.
hackintosh explained
A hackintosh is a computer that started its life as a pc and had had osx massaged onto it. This has been made possible by apple’s move to intel based machines. If a machine has a similar enough hardware profile to existing apple hardware, then it is generally possible.
who should do this?
This process (creating a hackintosh) is best sited for people who don’t mind getting their hands ‘dirty’ in the ‘guts’ of a computer. It could (note the implied possibilities of could) be a painless install process, but since you are putting an operating system onto hardware that it wasn’t intended to be run on, one will inevitably run into problems.
At the very least this requires someone who is good at following directions, very good at googling (to find other people in their specific situation) good at finding files online (bittorrent makes this much easier) and easygoing about minor-to-major flaws in their computer setup. If you are the kind of person who gets angry that the f12 key doesn’t start up your widgets, maybe this isn’t the procedure for you.
If this is the kind of project for you, read on…
Continue reading “Hackintosh HP Mini 1000! OS X 10.5.8”
Two days ago I got an HP mini 1030 netbook (1000 family)
I will definitely add my 2 cents for the install path and my problems, but that will come in a few days. The good news is that this post is written on it, and it is running along splendidly! This is just a quick tip to help others who have done the same thing (or those who just have tiny screens) gain a bit more screen real estate.
Continue reading “Hackintosh pre post – reclaiming screen real estate”
If you are wondering what we are talking about, click here to read the back story. Then come here and do it the easier way
So I took my own advice and tried to find a way to send mail from the command line. This way the mail.app doesn’t keep flicking to the forefront every few hundred seconds. That was getting old quickly. It turns out it wasn’t very difficult. From what I have read, different people may have a different experience due to their isp’s policies on sending mail and how google reacts, but I digress…
This one is simple!
It is two terminal scripts, a text file, and a loop in automator. DONE!
Continue reading “Gmail Pop email refresher – UPDATE – now smaller and easier!”
Update! After reading the theory on this page you should go to this page to find a simpler, better solution.
Ok this hack might not be for everyone, but if you have Gmail set up to check your pop accounts they don’t let you set the polling frequency anywhere. This can be bad because it makes you go to the settings page to be able to hit the refresh button on each one of your accounts! After a little digging it turns out it uses a weird formula to determine the polling frequency. Let’s say it checks your account and finds an email. The next time it checks it will wait for _slightly less time_ before it checks again. If it finds email a second time it will continue to shorten the interval until it is checking every 5 minutes or so (maybe even less!) The purpose of this is so that google doesn’t waste resources checking an account that only gets one email a month.
The downside of this approach is that if you are eagerly waiting for that one email you might be waiting for a long time (i have seen wait times up to 58 minutes!)
The answer is very simple once you know how it works – get more email! I didn’t want to test to see if the spam filter counts spam received as real mail. I doubt that it does. So I did the next best thing – I automated sending myself email!
I have thought of two different ways of doing this both are mac only, but there must be a billion ways to skin this cat!
Continue reading “Increase the frequency that Gmail checks your POP mail account”
UPDATE!
Check out my new(er) cd robot project here. I grabbed an old scsi changer machine from ebay and have been working on adding serial connectivity to it. If it works, it will be a much simpler route!
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.
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.
Continue reading “Honda CL350 – loves to rev! maybe a bit too much.”
