Do-it-yourself projects and technology updates

Well, I start residency soon. I will be starting on July 1. I have been out of the country for a few weeks, and it seemed that my site went dead for a few weeks. It is rather unfortunate. I have lost a lot of traffic in the process. It seems that some of the search engines dropped my page. Hopefully I can get it put back up.

I had a chance to go visit Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. They are truly great places, and very different than home.

I just recently talked about me starting a saltwater reef aquarium. A lot of time and money goes into starting such a device, and the rewards are great. There is one problem though with having a piece of the ocean sitting in your living room. You have to have a constant supply of electricity. (I have actually found that even on my little 20 gallon tank, that it cost about $25/month to run.) Anyway, if the power cuts off for more than 4-5 hours, it could have devastating results on the poor inhabitants. I almost feel a moral obligation to not let that happen.



I had to start thinking of what I would do in case of a power outage. The oxygen saturation in a saltwater aquarium is much less than that of a freshwater, and if the water stagnates, it can have devastating effects. I also live in a hurricane zone, so that could be a disaster. The obvious solution is to get a generator. This would work for any long term outages. But what happens when the power goes off at 8AM, and you don’t come home for 9 hours?

I thought about getting a battery backup UPS system for a computer. I quickly found that they are very expensive, and don’t contain enough energy to last very long at all. I need at least my main circulating pump to run, and I want it to run for up to 24 hours. The first thing I did was go buy a 13$ battery back up air pump that plugs into the electricity, and turns on if the power is cut. This would at least keep some of the oxygen levels up, and was a quick and cheap fix.

The next thing which I have not built yet because I don’t have the time or money is to build my own battery backup. The design of one is relatively straight forward. All you need is a marine deep cycle battery, which will allow for multiple charges and discharges. I need a trickle charger to always keep the battery topped off, and I need a power inverter. I simply plug the circulating pump into the inverter, and it will run off the battery.

Now that doesn’t make much sense. I need a way of detecting if the electricity is on or off.

All you realy need for that is a double pole double throw switching relay. You connect the coil to the electricity in the wall. If the power is on, the switch will swing one way, and if the power is off, it will swing the other way. Then you connect the “on” switch straight to the electricity. When the power is connected, the pump will be plugged in, and will get its power from the outlet. You also will connect the “off” switch to the power inverter. If the power is cut, the relay will change, and your pump will continue to run off of the battery power through the inverter. You simply buy a nice charger that will turn itself off when the battery is charged, and you now have a great DIY battery backup.

Here is a simple parts list found

here.
-Marine 95ah deep cycle battery $45 (auto zone)
-Battery case $10 (auto zone)
-Schumaker auto trickle charger $25 (auto zone)
-Inverter- I used a really nice one that runs about $75, but you can get a 150w for about $40
-120v 3pdt relay (I found cheap 4pdt) $5 (all electronics)
-Extension cord for line in/out of the xfer box $5 (HD)
-misc. components… electrical and project boxes, ac outlet, wire, spade connectors, in-line fuse holder and connectors $20 (all electronics, radio shack)
___________________
~$150**

This could also be used for a battery backup for a computer. See this great project here.

Well, I found out that I matched for Residency in Neurology. What a relief. I am also in the process of getting a house. Yeah, it is true that the fourth year of medical school is much easier than the earlier years, but there is stress, and time consuming things of another kind. Just thought I would give a quick update.

I have started a 20 gallon Long salt water reef aquarium. It has been a blast so far. I will write an article telling how to do it soon. There is a fairly steep learning curve involved in starting a reef aquarium.

I have done several posts from the Cornell University electrical engineering senior design site. Here is a robot that follows sound. It sounds like a really cool project. It apparently has three microphones, and a microprocessor detects which microphone is receiving the strongest signal. It will then turn the robot to the microphone that hears the noise the most.

” The PeanutBot robot consists of three microphone circuits, three servo motors, an MCU and a PC. The three microphones were used to triangulate the angle of the source relative to the robot. The audio source plays a continuous stream of pulses. Pulses were chosen over a continuous tone because, instead of detecting phase difference in the audio signal, our system detects the arrival time of the signal at a certain amplitude at each microphone. The robot is designed to be autonomous and is, therefore, not synchronized with the pulse generator. As a result, the time of flight of each impulse is not available and the robot is unable to quantify the distance to the source. Instead, the robot advances by a small predetermined distance and listens for the signal again. To find the sound source, the robot listens for the arrival of an impulse on any of the three microphones. Once an impulse has been detected at one of the microphones, the robot records the microphone data at 10 microsecond intervals for 10 milliseconds. Using this data, the arrival time of the impulse at e! ach microphone is calculated and the direction of the source is obtained. Once the angle of the source has been identified, the robot rotates and pursues the source for a short period, and then promptly resumes triangulation of the signal to repeat the process.”

Check out this cool robot here.

This article was found from DIY Live’s friend Alan over at Hacked Gadgets

Things have been kind of crazy here lately, and finally I have gotten some breathing room. I passed step 2 of my boards, and have realized how much I miss writing for DIY Live. I have not forgotten about it. I have plans of writing some here very soon.

I decided to do Neurology, and am hoping to stay here at my school. My wife and I are even looking for a house. I am sick of living in an apartment. Anyway, maybe I have not lost all of my readers, and in time to come, I can do some cool stuff again.

Greg

Well, I have been extremely busy lately. I have had my step 2 of my boards to study for, so I have not been updating. I am taking the 9 hour test on Thursday. I then go to an Anesthesiology rotation away from my school, so I may not be updating much for the next month either. Eventually life will be easier.

Greg

Alen from hackedgadgets.com wrote about this laser listener device. A microphone is simply a diaphragm that vibrates with sound waves. The theory behind this device is that when people are talking in a room, the window will vibrate. If you shine a laser on the window, it will bounce off with the same vibrations. Using a cadmium sulfide photo voltaic cell connected to a stereo plugin, the laser can be converted to sound recordings. View this cool DIY project here.

John over at hackersbench.com has gotten his hands on a bunch of small lcd screens off of ebay. Trouble is that he has no idea how to use them. He can not find any data on the devices. He decided to host a contest. If anyone can send him the data that he needs to get one of these screens to work, he will send 6 of them to that person.



Here are the rules for the contest:

1) To win the controller half of this deal, the documentation that you send MUST include all of the internal registers, initialization and set-up commands, timing, and voltage levels. You’re no dummy, it has to include everything I need to know to make one of these things work.

2) The controller half will be considered ‘won’ after I successfully get a display to work using your information. That should only take a couple of days.

3) To win the connector half, the seller must be in North America (The USA or Canada), have a low or no minimum order, and be willing to sell the connectors 5 or 6 at a time.

4) The winners will be determined by the time/date received as indicated by my email software.

5) If the winners are in the U.S. or Canada, I’ll pay the postage. Otherwise, you’ll have to cover the shipping charges.

Here is the information that he has on the device:

* Plenty of folks sell this display on eBay, but I can’t find a single project using them.
* The display is a 128X128, 65,536 color, TFT display with a white LED backlight.
* It was used on the Nokia 6230 cell phone but NOT the 6230i.
* The Nokia part number is 4850339
* The display was manufactured by Sharp Electronics, and their part number is LS015B8UA02C
* The display connector has 24 pins and from the Nokia 6230 service manual they are:
o 8 data lines
o 1 data clock
o 1 ready
o 1 write
o 1 reset
o 1 TearingEffect (whateverthehell that is)
o 2 LED lines
o and 9 various power and ground lines.

Email your results to John at: 6230LCD (at) hackersbench.com

Here is a link that was sent to me from a post of 100 DIY sites. It contains do-it-yourself projects from multiple genres. Go see this list here.

Do you yearn for self-sufficiency? Is your time and talent larger than your bank account? Then the following sites will appeal to you, as we’ve gathered some of the best and some of the most eclectic do-it-yourself sites and tutorials on the Web for your convenience. The first category contains general DIY network sites that help you learn about any project under the sun. From there, you can learn more about anything from how to raise goats to how to wire your house for sound. In between, you can revel in the fact that you save money when you tackle parenting and herbal remedies on your own.

Well, we have all seen USB flash drives stuffed in various objects. I think I am going to stuff one in my sock and do a write up on it. Nonetheless here is a USB flash drive stuffed in a PEZ dispenser from Katie over at craftbits.com

Well, if that doesn’t do much for you, maybe you will like this retro iPod. There was so much potential for this project. Sadly the insides were gutted, and the ipod was simply put into the case. Oh well, maybe another day. You could use the amplifier of the speaker, and actually listen to the ipod. Now lets figure out a way to change the song by changing the tuner.