Saturday Jul 18 at 10Bit

[Don Smeller]

The Art-In-The-AM-Saturday crowd is featured this week.  Militza is doing a yellow flower; Peggy, a mission scene; Don, a shrew.

  

Sue has been adding an art deco look to her digital clock.  She plans to rout out the back of the light colored wood, to thin it down, and install capacitive sensors back there to serve as the on/off switch and the what-time-is-it-anyhow switch.  The brain behind the clock is an Arduino Trinket.  It’s a clock for people who don’t really care what time it is.  

 

I’ve been trying for a year to learn what Sue does for a living.  She’s a programmer for SouthWest Research Institute.  Someone else uploads her work product instructions up to satellites and/or spacecraft.  Forever trying to be helpful, Kevin showed everyone on the big screen at 10Bit a website that would explain everything. http://stuffin.space  (Have patience. Given enough upload time, the dots will whirl around in their animated orbits.  It worked on my Safari browser but not on Chrome. ) The red dots are individual geosynchronous satellites.  The GPS satellites are not red, they are blue, they zip in and out of the red region.  Sue seemingly is semi in charge of 4 dots or so, give or take. 

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 Kevin issued a progress report on his resuscitation efforts with the LPKF circuit board mill:  Ta daaa. He carved a triangular track in a piece of cardboard using a .5mm (.020 inch) diameter mill bit. Where he got the half dollar is a mystery.

  

Ryan produced and posted a time-lapse movie of Les’ electro coagulation reactor.  20 minutes are compressed to 14 seconds. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM6eosPKtbU&feature=youtu.be

GnuDon held a soldering class for Cameron and Giovanni.

Jason picked up a bag of Munchkin games.

James started the ZIM doing a 3D print of a part for his model engine.

Jeff, Air Force pilot, brought his wife Jennifer, and baby William in for a tour.  Nice people.  We’re going to miss them when they move back to Alabama in a few months to be near the maternal grandmother.  We all know how that movie plot goes.

Ken Runner and daughter Adrianna discovered that 10Bit’s sad old inkjet printer wasn’t going to suit their newly-born T-Shirt transfer needs. So what did they do?  They went out and bought a new HP inkjet printer.  Brought it in.  Unboxed it.  Tested it out.  Declared it good. Donated it to 10Bit. Thanks Ken.

Greg Bluntzer is going to laser cut a bird feeder if it kills him.  He may be at the point where he’s even willing to consider giving up on Blender in favor of a CAD program that requires (gasp) typing in actual numerical values.  

George Burkhardt visited and we talked about his latest invention.  It seems there’s a need in the world for a dog leash that will allow the human to choose a limit on the dog’s range, while maintaining the take up reel action.  Current embodiments require the human to repeatedly lock and unlock the range switch to re-activate the take-up function.  George designed his solution in Solidworks and allegedly he has 3D Printed the prototype.  We need proof, George.  No one is going to believe hearsay.  Also George told about $150 software called “Simplified 3D”.  It does the job of Slic3r but much much better especially in the realm of building support structures.

Chris got wheels.  All he had to do was cut the lock off a trailer hitch and steal the tow vehicle.  Piece of cake for a hacker with a die grinder and a really capable red haired Texas DJ momma.  

We got to meet Jonathan’s mom and dad, Patsy and Marty respectively, and give them the nickel tour.  It’s nice when the pick-up-and-drop-off support crew can take a few minutes and come on in and see what their kids are learning.  Jonathan and Andres and Brian wailed away again at their pesky 3D printer.  The stepper motors have decided to display a strange choppy behavior instead of smooth controlled rotation.   Ken got involved in trouble shooting.  He thinks crossed wires.  Gotta admire the stick-to-it-iveness these guys are showing.

Brothers Emelio, an airplane mechanic, and Esteban 15 year old student came by for the first time.  Big brother discovered Chris was a quadcopter dude and little brother discovered that the same Chris was into swords and costumes.  They’ll be back with vector files, you can bet on it.

Mark Tellez, another first time visitor, has moved to SA from UC San Diego with a newly minted EE degree.  He’s looking for gainful employment, probably designing circuits and a place to play, probably designing circuits. We can help with the latter.  His wife is a doctor.  

Robert, yet another first timer, is some sort of technician working for companies that support military city USA.  He showed interest in 3D printing.

I counted 29 and maybe 33 if you include the unnamed sisters and cousins and moms who ran in quick to say, “The car is waiting.”

Don S

Again: this is being archived on http://smelle.privat-server.net:8080/  Click on 141.

[Les Hall]

Les, in his nursing home room / lab, taught an Arduino how to play "Twinkle Twinkle LIttle Star" for his 1.5 year old neice AVA who loves books.  Every morning when AVA wakes up she goes straight for the books.  So Les plans to Make a series of 3D printed books each with a different theme.  

This first one is "AVA's Music Book" with different songs, one for each page.  The book will have interactive controls from capacitive sensors (currently working) and perhaps CdS cells (planned).  This will enable AVA to either listen to the song as-is or touch interactively to do a little bit  of baby rock-and-roll jam!  So far tempo and frequency are modulated by the capacitive sensors and planned are a few light sensitive controls such as wah or perhaps distortion or delay, depending on ease of implementation.  

The source code, schematic, and bill of materials might be printed into the book so that as AVA grows up she can learn how to make such things herself.  

Les

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[Les Hall]

I like to see these summaries, they make me feel like I'm really there and the pictures in this edition really add to that.  

All the projects are interesting, even the drive-bys from vaguely interested persons, gives the place flavor.  This week I was particularly impressed with Sue's clock project becuse I am very interested in Adafruit's custom Arduino processor series - the Trinket, the Pro Trinket with backpack, and the Metro Mini.  Also I have an innate appreciation for Art Deco, being from Miami.  

Les