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Sunday, May 4, 2008, 03:36 PM
The arcade is finally finished (Well mostly finished, I ordered some cup holders to put on and it needs to be moved to its final location). Its running WindowsXP with MameExtended (.124u4) which is an unofficial build of MAME that has added support for hiscores, filters and artworks. I ditched the GameEx front-end I was looking at before because the interface on both emulators was easy to use and I did not need the other functions of GameEx. I also ditched the 22" monitor for a 27" TV that I bought off of craigslist. I ended up having to cut the back of the TV off because it was about 1" too deep. I am especially proud of these 3 buttons . The red one is power, starts everything and turns off everthing with 1 button. I am using a SmartStrip, which basically monitors the "Control" outlet for current draw and turns on or off the switched components. So I have the computer hooked to control and everything else hooked to switched (speakers, fans, marquee lights, power button lights). The only modification I had to do was to the TV which will not power back on by its self if the power is cut off. Some TVs are programmable to do that, this one was not. I was originally going to modify the remote control to push the send on/off signal but I suck at soldering on boards and I messed it up. I got it working again by switching the power to the remote and hardwiring the button but it was very clumsy. I found another solution that was extremely easy, If you hold down the power button on the TV during startup the TV starts up, button does not reset until you release it so you can hold it in as long as you want. I used a screw to hold it down. Sweet. The other 2 buttons are for Exit (Esc) and Pause (P). The controller does not have that interface built into it and it's a pain to open and close the drawer to quit a game or pause a game. I took apart a keyboard and pulled the guts. If you have never opened one before they have 2 membranes laid on top of each other connected to a board. The 2 membranes create a matrix which lets the board know what has been pressed. The board has 13pins and 13 pins which make up all the buttons on the keyboard. I wired the pins I needed to the buttons and voila I have and Esc and P button. I have a marquee and the woodworking guy is still making the holder for it but it lights up nicely on the arcade. I had it done at http://www.emdkay.net/, and they did a great job. One thing I would avoid is buying the acrylite for the bezel. I ordered the Acrylite F-99 which is supposed to be "museum quality" UV protected non-glare plexiglass. Apparently the non-glare comes from a matte finish which reduces sharpness as well as glare. It works ok but I would buy non-glare glass if I did it again. I did spend a little more that I thought I would. I have about $600 in it now, not including the computer and parts I already had. The controller was $179 and the TV was $95, MDF was about $100 and then everything else was nickel($20) and dime($50) stuff. Overall I have happy with the way it turned out and its fun to play. Thanks to SS I had about 300 games to mess around with. Some people were asking for specific games so yesterday I download a torrent that was 16GB and had 5000 games, that should cover everything.
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Saturday, April 19, 2008, 09:37 PM
For awhile now I have been looking for a older (70s) enduro motorcycle to putt around on back and forth to work and such (I had one growing up and loved it). Most of the pricing I have found to be higher than I wanted to pay or at the price needed too much work and parts. I had given up on this idea until my dad came back from Costa Rica. Apparently there is a multitude of dual sport bikes down there, they get good gas mileage, work on road or off, maneuverable and are cheap. My dad being my dad stops and talks to a couple of the guys with the motorcycles trying to figure out who makes them. Comes to find out they are mostly Chinese. So I start researching Chinese dual sport bikes and find that there is a huge amount of junk out there but there are a couple of brands that get consistently good reviews. I picked one that everyone seemed to respect and it turned out to be a Lifan. I ended up ordering from a guy online that also got good reviews (Check out http://www.chinariders.net/). It cost about $1400 delivered which if you have ever priced bikes likes this is about 1/3 the price of a japanese bike. Well some assembly required, no problem I like working on stuff. Hmm, no directions, okay no problem I know what this thing is supposed to look like. So now I have a handful of leftover parts, spares maybe? After a couple of misadventures (some of those parts were not spares and were required for the rear brake) all is well, bike runs great. I took off the stickers and repainted a couple of sections to my liking. Bike turned out to be exactly what I was looking for (it’s a Lifan LF200GY-5(200cc) if your interested).
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Monday, April 7, 2008, 10:52 AM
It finally stopped raining long enough to put my arbor in the ground. The rain did make it easier to dig the holes with my new post hole digger. It is surprising sturdy, the posts are sunk 1 ft into the ground and have a dirt/dry cement mixture that I refilled the holes with, this will harden up over time as the cement pulls moisture out of the ground. Trick I learned for laying out flat path way stones to keep them stable, without making permanent concrete. Only need to make the path to it and I'm done. Go vegetables. Well almost done, I am setting up a rain barrel water catching system. So far I have the barrel and the device to fill it, I have a pump from harbor freight I just need to run the lines for the drip irrigation to the garden and figure out where to mount the pump. I got the barrel setup before a big rain, 55gal filled up in less than 30mins.
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Thursday, April 3, 2008, 10:20 AM
I built a baby. Ok I started building a baby, wife is probably going to finish it.
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Saturday, March 29, 2008, 05:33 PM
The CNC machine lives and is operational. I decided to get rid of the die grinder and put on a Rotozip. This way I don't have to use a collect adapter since the Rotozip has a keyless chuck. I also hooked up the V-Clamp (see CNC Update1) and I am using it hold pieces on the worktable. Both items seems to be working well. I cut some wood, some ABS and some acrylic with it on Friday. Here is the machine in action. I was cutting out a template that when finished will make a 3d puzzle of a butterfly. It is finished, actual time only took about 30 minutes once I figured out what speed to I could run at. I did not cut deep enough though so I had to finish the last 0.5mm by hand; fairly easy though since I was using 3mm Birch plywood so most of it was cut already. Of course I messed up a couple parts with the knife/dremel pulling it out. Next time I know the settings I need. I am thinking about a dinosaur this time. All in all it came out pretty good considering I don't really know what I am doing. Oh yeah here is a picture of the butterfly. I think my wife is going to paint it and seal it to put out in the garden. Also this is a link to the dxf file , its an excellent getting to know you CNC piece, since you should setup multiple layers for outside cuts and inside cuts in order to get the slots to fit correctly. Of course I did not so everything was a little loose, but I know better next time to think about these things before jumping into cutting. I got my dxf file from http://www.cnczone.com . If you are interested in building a CNC this is a great place to get information. It can be done on the cheap and still get pretty good results.
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Wednesday, March 12, 2008, 09:03 PM
So the wife had me busy outside last weekend since it was such nice weather. I built 2 flower boxes in the corners of our property for some hibiscus bushes than my dad gave us. Apparently I am into various geometric shapes, currently I have a pentagon, a rectangle and an attached square (to the rectangle). I built a triangle and a I guess what we are calling the boomerang. It could be referred to as a irregular hexagon, whatever. These were made with standard landscaping timbers. We also created our garden based on the idea of square foot gardening. Basically it is for creating gardens in a small space, uses less water, allows easy access to all the plants and is easy to create. We built four 4'x4'x12" squares using a kit from framitall. You can buy the anchor joints and supply your own wood or just build your own without the joints. I liked the composite plastic timbers because you never have to worry about them rotting (so they should last forever), don't leach like pressure treated and they use recycled plastic (slightly higher priced than cedar but cheaper than the plastic timbers at Lowes). I also built a center dual layered 3'x3', 2'x2' for strawberries out of cedar. The plan is to create a path inside the giant square and build a small arbor at the front entrance. I think it will look real nice and we get fresh vegetables. Yum
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Tuesday, February 19, 2008, 08:04 PM
I recently found the need to mold and cast something, I needed a gear for this drive mechanism that had broken, I had 3 but needed a 4th. Anyways I had seen plaster of Paris molding and know it to be slightly annoying due to originals and parts sticking in the plaster. I have seen some easy to make vacuum systems that use a household oven (wife probably not happy with that option). I ran across this website while looking and found the silicone rubber for the mold and urethane for the cast. Now I have never done anything like this before and was more interested in the process than the actual product, I mean this could be useful at work for parts I need for instruments they don't make anymore. It actually turned out to be one of the coolest things I have ever seen. I will go over the proces below: Steps 1. Make a frame to hold the part preferably not much bigger than the item ( I used MDF). 2. Hot glue every edge that will touch the mold (So it does not leak) 3. I hot glued the gear to the base but it is not necessary 4. Stir the silicone Rubber a lot, Shake the catalyst 5. Add the rubber and the catalyst together and stir until it turns a beige color. 6. Pour the liquid mixture into the box. 7. Wait overnight 8. Break open frame and take out original (This is the great part you just push and pull the rubber/part until it slides out.) 9. Alright this is the trickier part I used to the Alumilite Regular which has a 90 sec hold time. Shake the "B" container (This is a blend of polyols) 10. If you are using a dye add it to the "A" side (Isocyanate) 11. Add equal parts of A and B to a secondary container and stir quickly for 15secs 12. Pour the liquid into the mold 13. Wait 5 mins. A little Chemistry... Now the mold/liquid is going to get hot as this is an exothermic reaction. The first time I did this I it was in the back of my mind that this was a polymer reaction and I remembered doing a polymer reaction in PChem back in college (God, I hated PChem). What I remembered about that lab was the near instantaneously of the reaction, had this been at the front of my mind I might not have ended up with this.. A urethane linkage is produced by reacting a isocyanate group with a alcohol group. So to get a polyurethane you need a polyisocynate (usually diphenylmethane diisocyanate) and a polyalchol (usually polyproplyene glycol) (Plus some catalyst [an amine like triethylenediamine], maybe some chain extenders, cross linkers etc. depending on the type of polymer you are looking for) Basic reaction looks like this Results The original part looked like this. I don't have any picture of the frame but this is the mold it produced. The end result looks like this. Pretty damn cool.
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Friday, February 15, 2008, 09:37 AM
So I started a new project a couple of weeks ago, parts are starting to come in and I currently have all the hardware I decided to build an Arcade Machine. If you have ever looked at PC Arcade games before you know there are emulators out there that allow you to play older arcade games. The software is called MAME and there are a couple of different versions out there MAME ,MAME32 and others to play nintendos, playstations etc. I think I also am going to run a front-end called GameEx which seems very nice. Anyways I was going to build my own controller setup and I priced it out 6 buttons apiece, 2 joysticks, 1/2 player buttons and a card that converts to usb. What I ended up with instead was this which actually cost the same I was going to spend and comes with the trackball for games like missile command. I was also going to build the cabinet myself but I have a guy here at work that is a woodworking whiz and he is going to build it (own his own dime since the machine is going to stay at work). I got a 22" flat screen CRT monitor from another guy at work who did not want it anymore. It weighs almost 70lbs since it’s an older style but resolution upto 2048. Slightly injured but functional. I have so many leftover computer parts that I had enough to build a decent machine for the project P43.0, 512Mb, 40GB, 128mb Graphics Card, On board Sound. I am currently working out software, hardware, controller issues and I will update when I have a cabinet. I am hoping the end result will be similar to this. (thats only a 17in monitor)
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Tuesday, January 29, 2008, 09:38 AM
So my picture frame / wireless laptop thing is working great but I decided that I did not want the screen up all the time because of burn in issues. I ended up with a wireless USB trackball that I can hit a button on and take power saving off on the laptop whenever I want. I was looking for the smallest wireless system I could find and I think I found it. The unit is barely 1.5" square by 1" deep. The depth comes from the receiver which is meant to be worn on your wrist while the trackball is supposed to be attached to your finger and your thumb rolls the ball. Quite possibly the dorkest looking think I have ever seen. I reconfigured it to be more compact. It works perfect for this application, if you are thinking of using it as a normal use trackball I would skip it though, the trackball is very jerky and imprecise. On another note I have restarted the CNC rebuild and I am in the middle of procuring 100lb slab of aluminum to use as the new base.
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Friday, December 21, 2007, 10:01 AM
Yeah, Yeah I know it was been a while but I am back. My latest project is fairly simple. I created a webpage on our intranet at work to check the status of all our instruments. They are updated in real-time so you can look at the page and if the instrument needs attention it turns yellow, if it has an unexpected error it turns red and it shows you what’s running and when it started and other interesting things. Anyways I usually pull it up on my desktop but I lose it frequently because I run dual monitors and have open apps everywhere. I decided I needed a dedicated screen in my office for it so I went to trusty eBay looking for a cheap laptop. I found one for $50+$15S&H, PII 266Mhz, 128mb, 6Gb HD, 13.1" screen. Because this thing is older than dirt I did not want to bother with a windows install and went looking for a Linux kernel that would run on this system. What I ended up with was Puppy Linux, which I have to say is awesome. It will run completely in memory in 64Mb Ram only takes up 100mb disk space and has apps to open work/excel/music/video/internet built in plus you can install lots of other stuff to it if you want. If you have any desire to remake an old pc this OS is excellent. Once I got the laptop up and running, including install a wireless PCMCIA card I disassembled it and got rid of all the extra parts to save weight and room. I went to Michaels and bought a shadow frame box and a picture mat (had to be cut some to fit the screen) and mounted everything inside. This is what the end result looks like. So now I have a 13" digital picture frame with wireless internet access for 75(comp)+15(frame+mat)=$90. Sweet.
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Monday, September 10, 2007, 08:36 PM
I was looking over this blog and saw that I was definitely behind on house projects being updated to the blog. So lets see what I/Wife has been doing lately. First off is the retaining wall which is complete and planted. It took 5 yards of dirt and 3 yards of mulch, one load at a time in my little truck but the result is very nice. We redid one of the bathrooms with this slate tile floor and another bathroom with this hand scraped bamboo. The latest thing I built for Erin was a garden cart that she could roll around and do her planting on. This is it folded up and this is it unfolded. I really like the giant wheels, I got them at harbor freight really cheap. The rest of the lumber was from a workbench in the garage that I took down and rebuilt using a door from work.
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Thursday, September 6, 2007, 09:40 AM
Alright, so I have not done any projects recently but I have excuses, lots of them. First off it has been way too hot to do anything productive, we had two weeks where the temps were 102-106. There is no air conditioning in my garage nor in my work's shop area. The pool was even up to 95 for a while. Then for most of the month of August I was on vacation visiting various parents and parents in law. I tried windsurfing while down at my parents. It was not quite as hard as I thought it would be but I was seriously sore the next day. Also I bought one of these while visiting the in-laws, but one of the cheaper ones that I could not find a picture of, so that should be interesting. I was originally looking at one of these but they were $17,000. Way too much. It has cooled down considerably here and looks like the start of project building season. Hopefully I will have progress to report on various items soon.
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Tuesday, June 12, 2007, 01:55 PM
I have found it hard to really get to any projects lately. I think my main problem is this sitting in my back yard. It just seems hard to get up the energy to remove myself from the pool. Oh well. Projects around the house though are pushed through by my overeager wife so I have made some progress on those fronts. For your perusing pleasure continue on. First off is the flowerbox/pentagon flower bed built from left over wood beams when we bought the house. This was a simple project that got rid of random junk lying around and provided places to plant things. Second was the flowerbox/lattice assembly. This obscured the neighbors view into our pool and again provided places to plant things. Third was a retaining wall behind the pool. This was needed because the stones in the back were constantly being pushed into the yard by dogs and weather. Its not quite finished yet but is on going. This also provides planting space (see a pattern here)\ Fourth was some shelving for the garage. Nothing fancy just shelves. Fifth was a desk built into a small nook. I got to use my new router and router table on this project. It turned out surprising well for my first time with the router.
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Friday, June 1, 2007, 10:32 AM
Well Canoe Trip 2k7 went well although I was a little disappointed with the gas powered blender. I think I tried to make it do too much. I should have left off the propeller device and stuck to the main goal of heavy drinking. I had routed out the wood to hold the propeller support stationary; little did I know that this affected the height that the blender coupling engaged. So OTB (on the boat) modifications required the blender to sit lower to engage the coupling, this required shaving the block with my knife which destroyed the routed section which helped stabilize the blender during startup. It ended up taking 3 people to run the blender, but it finally worked. I believe Stef has pics, If you are reading this email them to me and I will put them up. Thanks! Also props (haha props) to Bean for his automatic margarita dispenser which kept everyone well lit.
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Tuesday, May 22, 2007, 02:04 PM
Catastrophic failure of propulsion device happened today during water stress testing. (Blending device still intact)
I had stepped up the size of the prop because I thought last years device needed a larger propeller. When the prop was inserted into the water the small 1" piece of drive shaft not covered by the drive shaft support bent at 60 degree angle. Straightening and shortening the drive shaft worked (although a slight bit wobbly) but the load under water was too much to keep the engine going even at full throttle. I calculated and the max prop size I could have is theoretically 3" with a max speed of 6.2 Knots using my 1hp weedeater engine spinning at 8000RPM with a perfectly pitched prop.
Since I am cheap and limited on time I think I will try to cut down the 6" 2 bladed prop that I have to something like a 3".
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Monday, May 21, 2007, 12:24 PM
It's Alive. If not a little ghetto looking. After a few iterations of the drive shaft, I got it working without tearing itself apart and flinging parts everywhere. Actually it eats ice like crazy now. I found that the featherlite weedeater does not contain any type of clutch (although some other brands do). I also found that no clutch is necessary when using it as a blender. I was afraid it would be difficult to pull start if there was ice around the blade but the blade characteristics shoot the ice up with very little torque so no need for the drill clutch. Sweet. If you note the high tech bungee cord holding apparatus you may wonder why I choose this holding method instead of something more permanent. Well I also made this attachment. The bungee cord was the easiest method I found for attaching both. First attempt at using it in my pool caused the prop to fall off. I have since revised and left theaded the attachment point. Total cost: ~$10 plus blender top.
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Thursday, May 10, 2007, 02:55 PM
Occasionally I get bored at work. I happened to have this 3” neodymium donut magnet (it was supposed to be used to manually open a solenoid valve on our water system if the electric mechanism ever went dead. It works but is completely unneeded). It has been used in various stupid tricks and was most recently my paperclip holder. Well I turned it into a great game called Lilliputian Darts. It's surprisingly fun, I won the tournament today but I do get to practice more than most. Here are the instructions we have come up with also. Oh yeah I got the magnet at http://www.allelectronics.com which has awesome deals on random crap.
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Thursday, May 10, 2007, 10:14 AM
So big canoe trip going on at the end of the month and I usually like to take some random thing along that I have built. Last year I made a small electric power outboard from PVC. It worked but not well, I think I needed a larger propeller. Anyways an idea was brought up this year for a gas powered blender. Been done before and can be bought commercially but much more interesting to do it myself. First thought was to use the gas lawn mower engine I had earmarked for the generator but the design would be the same. The unit would have to fairly large since the shaft is downward facing and I would have to use a pulley system. I figure 24x12x18, I don't think the canoe rental people would be welcoming with such a large contraption. Turning to trusty ebay (Paul suggestion) I found this and got it for 5 dollars. Sweet. I disassembled my blender at home, took the entire think apart trying to get off the drive coupling from the motor before I realized that it was just a left handed screw. Twisted right off, no tools needed. This unit should be small enough to fit in a dry bag I have and can be sneaked on the boat easily. I am fairly concerned about operation though. I don't have any type of clutch system so the coupler will always be turning. Do I have to shut off the engine to attach the pitcher and then try to start with the ice in it or can I attach the pitcher to the already spinning coupler. Does the weedeater have a built in clutch? Maybe I need to figure out a clutch, I am thinking a clutch from a drill.
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Fridge/Oven/Peltiers that bean said would not work
Tuesday, April 17, 2007, 11:49 AM
So I finally got the components for making my peltier fridge. Both items I got off of ebay extremely cheap, the heat sinks are from Pentium3 coolers and the peltiers are from who knows what. There is a picture of the items here. Now I also have a picture of the Liconic robotic oven in question which I also got off of ebay real cheap about a year and half ago. The oven does work nicely, I wrote a program to control all robotic functions and graph temp stability and sensor positions which works nicely as well. On a side note, I love Ebay. Now the idea is to sandwich a peltier between 2 heat sinked fans (with some thermal paste), one to blow the cool air in the fridge the other to cool off the peltier so it can continue to make coldness. I have enough to make 15 of these little guys and they can be powered off of 8Vs although they require 3 amps. That may make it tough to find a transformer. oh well I have a adjustable power supply for testing anyways (Got it off of ebay also).
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Thursday, March 29, 2007, 03:28 PM
Well I made some progress on my CNC machine the other day. I got the spindle mounted to the Z axis. It actually a die grinder. , spins at 30000rpm has some crazy power. I was cutting though some steel with a 3 in circular blade on it and it was just eating it up. I have a more limited Z axis than I did before so I will have to see how that works out but I don't want to run until I have the water cooling because it will burn up bits. I am probably going to have to make a speed control for it also... I also procured this. Its a vacuum clamp that uses compressed air to operate. It has a ventura valve in it and will hold any non porous material. Its surprisingly strong and gets good reviews best of all it fairly cheap. Check it out.
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