For a long time, one of the USB ports on my laptop has refused obstinately to work. When I peeked inside, I found that the pins had been forced back inside the computer and were beyond being forced back in the right direction. So I made this little modification:
It’s a four pin female header, the kind you might find sticking up out of a circuit board somewhere. I also put together an adapter, four male header pins soldered to a female USB port. I guess my warranty is void now!
Ain’t she pretty?
It arrived a day or so ago, appearing as if by magic (and by magic I mean the considerable efforts of Seth Hardy). Can’t wait to start cutting and etching everything in sight.
Come on by on a Thursday night and check it out if you’re around!
Mitch Altman swung by Site 3 last night and gave a great soldering workshop. Mitch is the inventor, among other things, of the TV-B-Gone, the television remote that has only an off button. Lately he’s been touring around North America giving soldering workshops and visiting local hacker/makerspaces. He’s a great teacher. Also, I like his work lamp.
Site 3′s got a growing lineup of upcoming courses, including one on how to make stained glass, an intro to KiCAD, and a Chiptunes workshop. You should come to all of them.
Yay, new boards!
The first iteration of the RoboDoor 9000, an RFID access control system I’m putting together.
…and a slightly wonky BeatSneak prototype board.
Thanks, China!
Here are some wide shots I took of Site 3, the new collaborative workshop that I’m a part of. The space is pretty cool, as you can see.
Site 3 is a new communal workspace opening up in Toronto. As it happens, I’m a member. We moved a whole bunch of furniture and tools into our new space today, and things are looking pretty great. The space is wonderful, as evidenced by these pictures on the official site. We’ve got a solid handful of tools to start us off, a pair of super welding tables, and more storage than we know what to do with.
If you’re interested in checking us out, we will be holding an opening party in late July at which we’ll show off the space, our projects, and just generally have a good time. You should come. There will be more specific information available at some point in the near future, I’m sure, so check back at the official site in a little while.
A while ago, I started selling some hand drawn t-shirts. Then, I got lazy and stopped. Now I’m bringing them back! Check them out.
Of all the many, many LED projects out there, this is one of the more interesting/impressive ones that I’ve seen. Maybe it’s the video with its dramatic music, but regardless, it seems like a well-executed, elegant installation. Certainly the scale is much larger than your typical hobbyist project. It consists of several 81 cm cubes of LEDs, controlled by a computer through six XMOS ethernet boards talking to the various LED modules. It lights up and is pretty, and despite the glut of blinky matrices of lights to be found on the internet, is a genuinely compelling piece.
It was put together by rAndom International , with a chunk of the software work done by Frank Petrini.
via hackaday.
DIY vacuum tubes
This crazy person, French radio enthusiast Claude Paillard, makes his own vacuum tubes. Ooh. This video’s been kicking around the internet for a while, but if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth at least the time it takes to watch it.
The process is quite beautiful. So much precision, patience, and attention to detail.
Paillard’s website is full of writing on tubes and radio, their history and their function. There’s even a detailed guide to making a vacuum triode by hand, just like he demonstrates in the video below.