Adventures in PCB Burning
In some of the projects I’ve been working on I’ve had to design a basic to intermediate circuit to control the electronic components of the project (typically a bunch of LEDs, which you don’t want to use a Raspberry Pi for because the resulting current of multiple LEDs will be too much for the board,…
What’s in the Box?! Inventory of my Sparkfun Dumpster Dive
Sparkfun does an inventory clean-out/Dumpster Dive event once per year, it’s like Christmas for the Maker. They come in two variants, a 1.5lb box and 0.5lb box, and sell out pretty quickly. This was my first year but I’m a fan of the various Sparkfun contests and “unique” events they hold so I figured this…
Semi-static Website Hosting in AWS S3 Buckets: SanAngeloSheep.info
Amazon Web Service’s S3 object storage is a fantastically easy and robust way to host a simple website. The only catch is that it’s an object storage so you can’t use any server side scripting like php or python; Simple object storage also means you can’t use any databases either so your data must reside…
Testing Failures and Fault Recovery of PHP and Mysql
Often I’m tasked with having to architect highly available and fault tolerant systems of varying styles; architecting and designing is one thing, but when it’s built you then have to test, test, and test some more. In the course of doing this over the years I have a number of horror-stories, and I’ve also picked…
Arduino Board Assembly Time Lapse Video
I got an Arduino kit in from Sparkfun.com, specifically the kit was this: Arduino-Compatible PTH Kit I setup my Nikon on a tripod to the side to take a shot every 5 seconds. Here’s the final result, I’ll save my thoughts on how it came out and the tech specs for after the video: The…
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Finished Project: Scrappy Science Caddy – First Hackster.io Project
After a long delay I finally finished a new project, this is my Scrappy Science Caddy, a basic data acquisition box powered by a raspberry pi and the MCP3008 an Analog to Digital Chip. I created an instructable for the project, viewed here (which got selected as a featured project): http://www.instructables.com/id/Scrappy-Science-Caddy/ and this is my […]
Project: Data Box – Wiring an IDE Connector for GPIO
This past weekend I continued working on my Data Acquisition…
Project: Data Box – Reusing Motherboard Standoffs for Mounts
In this project I’m making a data acquisition box using…
Thoughts from the SXSW Partner Sessions
I was lucky enough to attend some of the Partner…
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Linux Tips I Wish I Knew Long Ago: $_
This is one I constantly forget, but $_ in a bash shell (and other languages like Perl and I know it’s in Windows Powershell but may have a different usage) is a special parameter, it gives the last argument to the previous command. This comes in handy all the time when editing and executing on […]
Linux Tips I Wish I Knew Long Ago: tmux
tmux is a terminal multiplexer. What does that mean? It means you can essentially start different “sessions” in the terminal and switch between them, and they continue to run in the background. It also means you can detach a session and reattach it on a different terminal, which is awesome. I use this feature all […]
Project: Jellyfish LED Build Status
I’m trying something a little different. Typically I’ll work on a project, it’ll take a bunch of time, and only when it’s completed will I post all the photos and do a write-up (sometimes rushed or shortened). Now, I’m going to make posts as I hit milestones or complete certain key aspects of the project. […]
Project: Flight Simulator Joystick Refurb
I got an old joystick that was custom built for use in a flight simulator, I am trying to rewire and refurbish it to a working condition. Mostly this will be rewiring the buttons, but the nav buttons may be interesting in how they have to be wired. It’ll also be interesting to calibrate the […]
One Day Build: In Case of Apocalypse Break Glass
This was my first contest entry on Instructables, it was for the Apocalypse Preparedness Contest. I put the whole thing together in under 12 hrs, by the end I did rush a bit, it wasn’t noticeable or a problem, but I can’t expect to work that long on a project without the results suffering. This […]