December 18, 2005
Lately... News
Learned to do a bunch of crimping with female headers today at JYM's. Second last day till I take off to Korea this Winter. JYM promised me my own space and desk to work on when he comes back in Feb. He's moving to a bigger studio. I'm so excited. I'm helping him for the last time this year on Monday. He ran through his thoughts on his next project. It sounds simply amazing. I can't share here but will update as we jump on it. JYM has a very interesting working process which I've got to learn...
Went in for the interview at the Med School for the inner-city high school teaching, intern position. Met ITP alums, Heather and Gabriela. They were really nice. The talks went well and I'm quite thrilled about the program. I'll get to assist Todd! Can't get better than that.
Show preps are going ok. Our pcomp candles made through the auditions. I've pulled out of the 3d project. Just too much work and stress that I can't handle right now.
I'm really excited and looking forward to the semester to come.
Posted by min at 02:05 AM | Comments (0)
December 01, 2005
Shift Registers, SN54HC595, SN74HC595
Posted by min at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)
MicroCode Studio Examples
There are some cool sample codes in MCS, using USB communication. Must try.
Posted by min at 05:23 PM | Comments (0)
Analog multiplexers and Demultiplexers
16 pins
6 separate ports built into one chip.
Analog, physical router.
A, B, C = address
X0-X7
X(no number)
Using multiple photocells, to get analog inputs. To give out sound signals.
Posted by min at 04:36 PM | Comments (0)
Digital Potentiometers
6 separate pots built into one chip.
A digital potentiometer adjusts and trims electronic circuits similar to variable resistors, rheostats and mechanical potentiometers. Sometimes called digital POT, RDAC, or digipot, these compact devices can be used to calibrate system tolerances or dynamically control system parameters. Nonvolatile memory parts provide wiper setting retention after a power OFF to ON cycle. In addition, fuse link parts offer a one time program trimmer feature.
For using RGBs, sounds, etc. Something that needs to be kept constant. Not changing in state. Get things to dim in- and- out really quickly. Automate voltage referencing.
You can designate the pot to go to an exact value.
Posted by min at 04:31 PM | Comments (0)
Conductive Markers
Pretty cool. Don't know how durable they are though.
Posted by min at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)
November 30, 2005
Voltage Divider
Learning new things every day.
Posted by min at 01:46 AM | Comments (0)
November 26, 2005
WES51 Soldering Station
I've had it. Normally, I'd go through about 5 different soldering stations in the lab before getting to a decent one. Yes, I've tried brushing the tips and that didn't help much and I've even been burnt on one, quite bad. After careful consideration, I decided to treat myself to an early Christmas binge. After talking to Todd H and James Sears, I decided to go with the Weller. I spent just under $100. It's totally worth every penny!
My one and only
And, I'm completely in love with it. It's amazing what a good soldering station does to your solder jobs. Clean, no mess, no fuss. I'm happy today.
Posted by min at 09:57 PM | Comments (0)
The Mess
After our meetings, our labs. Let's cleanup after ourselves...
I've been through hell 2x so far at ITP.
Posted by min at 07:26 PM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2005
Qprox
Everyone's using the qprox lately.
My order of 10 have arrived. Anne's giving me 6 this week. I have to test these out soon.
Posted by min at 02:51 AM | Comments (0)
H bridges
have arrived!
Samples from TI.
Data sheet to come soon.
Posted by min at 02:48 AM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2005
To be hacked...
Soon to come. I want to build a moving light box...
Ebay is so cool. I got these 2 remote controlled cars for just seven bucks.
Fino had a lot of fun with these.
Posted by min at 10:42 PM | Comments (0)
Coming together
All the wiring is finally done. I just need to build a support for it so that the wires and the breadboard could sit on it ok.
Hopefully, I'll get this done by this week.
Note: I hate the cheap 3 dollar soldering guns. Looking brand new below, after 5 mins, it turned balck. They burn out so quick and all the smoke! Hence, the bad soldering job above... :(
Posted by min at 10:31 PM | Comments (0)
November 09, 2005
Shift Registers, A6818xA
Shift registers are a type of sequential logic circuit, mainly for storage of digital data. They are a group of flip-flops connected in a chain so that the output from one flip-flop becomes the input of the next flip-flop. Most of the registers possess no characteristic internal sequence of states. All the flip-flops are driven by a common clock, and all are set or reset simultaneously.
There are different shift registers such as Serial In - Serial Out, Serial In - Parallel Out, Parallel In - Serial Out, Parallel In - Parallel Out, and bidirectional shift registers. There is also a special form of counter - the shift register counter.
Thanks to Todd H (WE LOVE YOU TODD!), I was able to get hold of the A6818 shift registers to experiment with.
Essentially, there are 5 important pins on the shift register. The 2 power, logic supply, Serial Data In, the Strobe pin, the Clock pin and the Ground pin. . Here is the code from Todd H and code from Mluck.
The connections to the PIC.
Posted by min at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)
Midi and shift registers
Just finished reading the data sheets for the A6818 shift registers from Allegro(they don't make them any more...) It WAS actually fun, finding out all the details! It turns out our whisker switch project may not even need the PIC, since we aren't using any senors as our inputs. We only have digital inputs as the switches. But our great Todd H, lent me one of them to play around with.
I'm going into the lab tomorrow to figure this all out.
Must get some good sleep now.
Posted by min at 01:37 AM | Comments (0)
November 03, 2005
"SOUND" function in PIC
I just found out that there is a SOUND function in PIC. A lot more pleasant than the FREQOUT. But still, I'm sure the MIDI would do much better.
SOUND Pin,[Note,Duration{,Note,Duration...}]
Generates tone and/or white noise on the specified Pin. Pin is automatically made an output. Pin may be a constant, 0 - 15, or a variable that contains a number 0 - 15 (e.g. B0) or a pin name (e.g. PORTA.0). Note 0 is silence. Notes 1-127 are tones. Notes 128-255 are white noise. Tones and white noises are in ascending order (i.e. 1 and 128 are the lowest frequencies, 127 and 255 are the highest). Note 1 is about 78.74Hz and Note 127 is about 10,000Hz. Duration is 0-255 and determines how long the Note is played in about 12 millisecond increments. Note and Duration needn't be constants.
SOUND outputs TTL-level square waves. Thanks to the excellent I/O characteristics of the PICmicro, a speaker can be driven through a capacitor. The value of the capacitor should be determined based on the frequencies of interest and the speaker load. Piezo speakers can be driven directly.
Example
SOUND PORTB.7,[100,10,50,10] ' Send 2 sounds consecutively to Pin7
Copyright ?1999 microEngineering Labs, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Posted by min at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2005
Whisker Switch Project
Alice and I have been working on this for a while now. It's getting there. We soldered for hours. We didn't think that this "side" project would take so long. But we'll have it running very soon.
I still have to figure out my shift register to work with this, since we're playing with about 50 inputs and 50 outputs. The final would be with a black piece of plexi, mounted onto the wall. Idealy, we'd like for the project to be self-contained in a box, but we'd have to think more about that.
Here are some cool close shots of the whisker switches and red leds.
I absolutely hate the guns in the lab.
Gauge 8,9 guitar wires we experimented with from Sam Ash.
So far...
Posted by min at 12:39 AM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2005
Infrared sensors
These arrived in the mail. Sharp GP2D12 Analog Distance Sensor
NOTE: MUST HAVE THE CUSTOM MADE CABLES!!!
Posted by min at 04:07 AM | Comments (0)
Shift Registers
Alice and I are still working on our whisker switches... It's really tidious and taking quite a long time. We just spent 5 hours soldering in the lab!
Here's the shift registers we will be using to accomodate the big number of LEDs. I ordered them from Jameco.com
We'll soon have our project done! :)
Posted by min at 04:05 AM | Comments (0)
My one and only melabs programmer
Oh this one really gave me a headache to start off with. After getting this programmer, it had so many errors because my vaio does not have a serial port! I've had to get a specific usb adaptor that would make the programmer work with my computer.
But after much help from everyone at ITP and emailing melabs over 30 emails, it finally functions right! Yay! It's great to be able to do some chip programming at home... just in a relaxed setting.
Here's my one and only melabs programmer.
Posted by min at 03:05 AM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2005
Final Midterms from Mluck's Class
Everyone in the class did a great job with the mid terms. Really great group work and like what Mluck said in class, I really enjoyed seeing everyone's process.
Some really high-tech projects, such as Alex's, using SMS and video image manipulation. I don't even know as to how they ended up teaching themselves Jitter / Max in a few weeks!
My favorite was the glowing chair (iChair ^^). Max, Tracy and Diana really pulled through. They were having similar problems to our group, using the mic as an input. But they were really successful in getting the translation across. The light reacted very well to the noise around the chair.
The umbrella from Joo Youn's group.
Lisa's group's hat for the blind.
Thank you Mluck for the cookies!
Posted by min at 11:47 PM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2005
Qprox
Thank you Todd for your great demo!
Todd H, showed us these cool touch sensors, qprox. They are simple to wire up and very effective, I really liked it in the "toggle" mode. As you touch the input wire, it lights up and goes off according to your touch. Cool stuff! Here's the data sheet for the qprox 113.Download file
Must do some projects using these. I've put an order of 10. Email me if you need to borrow a few.
Posted by min at 12:48 AM | Comments (0)
September 30, 2005
Korean Electro- Acoustic
I went to a sound performance by the Music and Performing Arts Professions at Steinhart this past Tuesday. It was a performance by Doo-Jin Ahn and Donoung Lee. Mr Lee performed the piece, Alco XII. This was a performance of algorithm Composition and composition series by unique algorithm that the composer himself programs and controls with sensors.
The sounds of the materials are directly sampled in the concert hall and transformed in real-time. The piece was controlled with various sensors, such as the infrared and a multiple of potentiometers designed for this piece. The artitst used MAX.
All the sounds for thie piece was recorded and played real-time on stage by the artist. Mr. Lee recorded samples of his breath, water drops and pebbles in a bowl... etc. On stage, he was manipulating the sensors to produce different layers of the sounds that he had recorded. An interactive performance!
Posted by min at 02:38 AM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2005
Bitforms
I went to the bitform gallery this past weekend to see Danny Rozin's new piece. He's opening a gallery in Seoul, Chungdahm so I was very eager to see this new piece.
The piece uses Op art circles that rotate around and as you get closer to the piece, your profile appears on the piece. Well fabricated and I really loved the sound of those discs turning. Simply perfection...
Posted by min at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)
Parts for Pcomp!
rainbowkits : a great place for little kits we could use in projects.
Posted by min at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2005
ikea, long island
I just came back from a day trip to Ikea. That place is FILLED with materials we could work with! :)
Cheap glass, large mirrors, fabrics, cushions, metal stuff etc...
If you are working on projects that need a lot of different materials, check this place out! There's a free shuttle that goes from Port Authority (gate #5) on Saturdays and Sundays, running every 30mins! Call 1800-bus-ikea.
Posted by min at 09:01 PM | Comments (0)