Diy on

Geekery Datacentre Project Completed

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:55:27 +0000

When it was but a closet

The Initial Setup

And Finally…

Shortly after moving in to my house, I opted to use a room for my Geekery (formerly known as “Nerdery”).. I dedicated circuit for power installed to make this closet remotely suitable to set up my hacky server “rack” (AKA Ikea Shelf) in.

Update (Apr 26)

This hack has been posted on Hackaday, Howtogeek and geeknmod (I suppose some others too). Coolness.

Throwing Down an LED where the Potential is great

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:15:14 +0000

I saw this post on Instructables where someone asked how they could add an LED on to a high-voltage source. And for reasons I can’t explain, I just felt compelled to take a crack at it…

On the surface it’s a pretty boring/simple question. But on the other, as much as I’ve answered this question for myself several times, I thought I’d provide my approach for the world to judge. Supposedly I’ve learned how to do this (and a lot more) in school, but it seems to me like the basics like this are worthy of most of the attention.

MakerBot Plastruder Modified For Slightly Enhanced Awesomeness

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:35:21 +0000

Hello world, so I’ve been working very hard at getting my most awesome MakerBot working. It’s been a patience invoking venture and also extremely educational. The MakerBot employs some rather brilliant little tricks that make it simple, strong and friggin cheap. It’s a great gadget to have, though it’s definitely NOT for those who want everything now and aren’t capable of taking their time to do the job correctly.

Meet My Mod

So, in trying to get my MakerBot rockin, I’ve had to debug some stuff in my assembly. The instructions given on assembly are outstanding considering how much stuff you need to do to build one. That said, they’re not flawlessly exhaustive either - and this isn’t yet an exact science. I found myself frustrated by the positioning of the circuit board (I’ll just call it a PCB for now) positioned on the thing that outputs the plastic (Plastruder/RepRap). As you can see in my included photos, I’ve moved the PCB off to the side and flipped it behind the Plastruder.

PCB Etching Progress

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 16:43:15 +0000

HappyThawts

Transferred Toner

Well, a few of us Protospacers met up and worked out some more home-made cheap Printed Circuit Board progress.. Vast thanks to the help of my esteemed friend HappyThawts, we finally got out a board of usable quality! Woot! We used a single sided Arduino pattern I found (saved me some seri

ous time). And followed a fairly well documented process involving use of Ferric Chloride, Acetone, Clothing Irons, Cheap Magazine Paper, Water and patience.

World, meet my first home-made circuit board

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 07:02:04 +0000

My very first PCB

Well, with the priceless aid of my dear friend HappyThawts, I’ve managed to produce my first home-made Printed Circuit Board!

How it went

There were a bunch of weird issues that came up in making it and thus it’s not all that ideal, though I could hack it to work. The main challenge was that my copper clad boards were actually covered with PhotoResist (for masking boards via UV). The process we used entailed working directly on a layer of Copper. Thankfully Happy realized that Acetone would probably send the PhotoResist on it’s merry way to aqueous exile in my trash-chemicals bucket. She was dead-on there.

Behold: The Flash Rat

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 22:00:39 +0000

Here’s a USB Flash drive I created - really just hacked the guts out of a flash drive, soldered on an LED & wires and jammed it in the guts of this ugly stuffed rat I had.

World, meet the HypnoOrb

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:44:35 +0000

Using the toys I’ve been enjoying ever so much lately, I’ve managed to really nicely smooth out the programming in my Arduino for my RGB LED. It’s so awesome that I’m given it a name! Meet the HypnoOrb!

At this point I only have the raw prototype, but I’m considering going ahead an making more of them. I have to work out pricing and smooth of some aspects of the design. If you’re interested in getting one, please contact me or post a message here - the more interest I see on this thing, the faster I’ll work at finding an inexpensive means of producing them.

Goofin' Around with 7-Segment Displays & my Arduino

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:09:09 +0000

I’ve taken a few little steps forward towards my plans of building some cool stuff I’ve yet to announce. Yesterday I focused on testing out a tutorial I found on the Arduino website regarding driving multiple LEDs via chained shift registers. This setup is pretty cool as it only takes 3 pins off of the arduino (excluding power, which could be easily driven separately). I used the tutorial here to get the potentiometer going.

Arduino/Freeduino Play

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:24:18 +0000

Here’s a video I decided to toss up on YouTube just showing some of the results of some of the goofing around I’ve been doing with my Arduino board (it’s actually a Freeduino).

I had a lot of trouble getting the board to work at first, but once I ran it through an ultrasonic cleaner it seemed to smooth out a lot. Though, some times it still has a hard time programming, in which case I can just apply pressure to the FTDI chip and then it’ll program. I’ve tried re-soldering the pins on the FTDI, but that didn’t entirely resolve the issue enough. Not to worry though, it consistently works perfectly enough for me.