MOPTAW 47: LED Color organ for an electric violin
Submitted by machack on Sat, 05/03/2008 - 02:24.
Porkshanks commissioned me to design an LED color organ driver for a functional art-piece modification of an electric violin, for Maker Faire. She herself had been commissioned to convert an electric violin to a tubepunk aesthetic, and was looking for a lighting effect more sophisticated than a plain glow. I built one that drives brightness based on loudness and huge based on pitch.
MOPTAW 44: Flickering LED
Submitted by machack on Sun, 04/13/2008 - 09:48.Direct link in case flickr is being obnoxious
I'm working on a commission that calls for a 3-color LED to respond to audio input. With appropriate parameters, it produces a fairly convincing flame effect. Here it is inside an egg Naj made for entirely unrelated purposes.
MOPTAW 42: Spectroscopy
Submitted by machack on Wed, 03/26/2008 - 02:35.This week was a research phase. I'm putting together parts for a spectrometer.
Ingredients:
- The Optics of Spectroscopy - A TUTORIAL By J.M. Lerner and A. Thevenon
- Inexpensive 102-element photodiode array with built-in ADC
- Inexpensive holographic diffraction grating film
I just need some mirrors and I'm mostly set. I'm going with what is mostly a Czerny-Turner monochromator design, with two differences. First, the grating is a transmission grating, not a reflection grating, so the bottom half "flips around". Second, I'm using an imaging sensor rather than a single exit slit, so it's not actually a monochromator.
And here's a bonus photo I took of some lightbulbs through a diffraction grating. Incandescent on top, CFL on the bottom:
MOPTAW 41: Accelerometer test harness
Submitted by machack on Thu, 03/20/2008 - 07:22.www.flickr.comMOPTAW 40: Stacked and DourSubmitted by machack on Sat, 03/08/2008 - 01:05.I present to you: http://www.stackedanddour.com/ Quite some time ago I was at a restaurant with a friend. We got to talking about the waitress, who, we observed, was both busty and grim-faced. "There should be a magazine called Stacked and Dour", one of us said. Later, a friend promised to pose if I put up a website, so I registered the domain, but didn't do anything with it. I finally put it up. It's not really a porn site. MOPTAW 38: Thing-a-day week 3Submitted by machack on Fri, 02/22/2008 - 09:02.Thing-a-day stopped being fun, and I found myself rushing to find the bare minimum I could count, so I stopped doing it part way through the week. Here are the things I did do. I'll be back to regular MOPTAW schedule and content for the next entry. MOPTAW 37: Thing-a-day week 2Submitted by machack on Thu, 02/14/2008 - 08:17.http://www.thing-a-day.com/2008/02/03/day-02-vibrating-bot/ -- Check out this one if nothing else MOPTAW 36: Thing-a-day week 1Submitted by machack on Mon, 02/04/2008 - 07:29.For February I'm doing thing-a-day, so I'll be counting those for my weekly projects. Here's the first one: http://www.thing-a-day.com/2008/02/02/day-01-stellated-icosahedron/ Ferrofluid log: supplementalSubmitted by machack on Thu, 01/31/2008 - 22:20.What's ferrofluid? "A ferrofluid (from the Latin ferrum, meaning iron) is a liquid which becomes strongly polarized in the presence of a magnetic field. It is a colloidal mixture comprising extremely small magnetic particles suspended in a synthetic oil. The particles are coated with a soap or detergent to prevent them from clumping together." -- Wikipedia entry on Ferrofluid MOPTAW 35: Let me show you my ferrofluids!Submitted by machack on Sun, 01/27/2008 - 03:55.As promised: Yes, this is cheating. Think of it as being like a "clips" episode. 
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