Electronics on

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.

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.

Toor Camp 2009 in Review

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:55:18 +0000

Well I’ve been home from Toor Camp 2009 for a week now and I’m feeling it’s about time to post my personal review of all of this.

In Summary

\t- **In Short: **It was awesome

\t- **In slightly less-short: **It was rough in terms of heat, closed silo and drama

\t- **The Bottom Line: **I’ll be going next year

\t- Photos Here

The Good

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.

Awesome CMOS illustration applets found!

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:19:12 +0000

So I’ve been dragging my feet, trying to really wrap my brains around how nMOS, pMOS and the ever awesome n&p party called CMOS really get along, when I came across THIS freaking awesome page that really provided the illustration for how these things work that I’ve been looking for! The page that hosts this demonstration page I’m talking about is for some university in Hamburg, so I’m really thankful their page was written in English.

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.

HackADay WebServer Project

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:44:25 +0000

So I found this article on HackADay.com that discusses how to build a small computer on a PCB about the size of a business card. So I went ahead and managed to order a PCB for it and all the parts.

It took me awhile to scrounge the stuff together, but eventually it all arrived. Then I spent a very careful 10 hours soldering on all the tiny little surface mount components. I must admit, this was a great introduction to that world. Anyway, here’s a YouTube video I made just showing this thing hooked up to some power. At this point, I don’t have a programmer, so I can’t actually program the board to do anything other than look like a work of art.