Category: Electronics

Barometric pressure

I was reading an elektor article and ran across the “BaroStick” Article. ( http://www.elektor.com/magazines/2013/may/barostick.2457910.lynkx ) — I have a Raspberry Pi on my birthday wishlist which I’m fairly certain I provided adequate hinting that it was the “to buy” present. It was the CanaKit that comes with all the typical goodies. I’ve been a long time user of the Microchip PIC chips and I’ll continue using them in designed but I felt that I need to break out of my VB.NET and assembler shell. Python actually looks worthy enough to tie up some neural connections; in the process of reading Simon Monk’s “Programming The Raspberry Pi” . The very same elektor also has an interesting article on BASIC to Python (May 2013 pg 26). Those of you who know me know I’m not a huge fan of C. You can keep your C and just chalk me up to a lost cause if you desire.. C is just not for me. I’ve done all the handy C introductions and hello worlds and manipulated it where I HAD to…but I’ll stick to assembler and BASIC thank you. I’ve also dabbled in plenty of PERL and COBAL and was formally educated with Pascal. While we’re talking about ridiculous aversions; I also have a huge, totally un-based, beef with Arduino… Like Apple vs. Microsoft beef. So you won’t catch me with an Uno unless I needed it to test the dielectric properties of FR4.

Okay stay with me… almost there.

Because of that distaste for all things Arduino; I never visit Adafruit ( http://adafruit.com ) unless I want to be reminded how perfectly lovely female EE’s can be. That being said I had purchased a BMP085 from my favorite website to visit when I’m feeling project-idea-block… Sparkfun last March. ( breakout board found at: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11282 )  I love their breakout boards.. a second stop would be http://www.tindie if you’ve been under a rock and find yourself trying to consider some “fun” projects to take on. With this BMP085 breakout board I have on my “to-do” list to build a altimeter for hiking. Is it heavier, yep.. going to use more power? Yep… look as attractive as that Suunto $500 watch? No where near.. but it’ll come off my bench. Turns out in my web expeditions to save myself some coding out dearest Limor has taken all of the work out of it.. ( http://learn.adafruit.com/using-the-bmp085-with-raspberry-pi/overview )  with a small fix: ( http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=38293#p191390 ). Will I be visit adafruit more often? Maybe so…

I’ll report back on this project once my birthday rolls around.

8088 PC Computer

Under the hood of a 8088 XT PC desktop computer
Under the hood of a 8088 XT PC desktop computer

A friend of mine was moving and no longer had room for this treasure. I generally only like to collect older computers in particular I’m fond of S-100 equipment or CDP1802 based items. This was too much to pass up though. On the top you’ll see the 5-1/4″ floppy to the left, followed by the (I believe to be) 20MB MFM hard drive which is tiny (in physical size, typical for memory capacity) for it’s day… the DIP memory to the right, I’m fairly certain by memory part numbers I’m looking at 640kB of memory. .. then in the 8 bit ISA slots on the bottom you have the MFM hard drive controller card on the left, then the floppy… a serial port adapter (25 Pin D-SUB) and finally 9 pin monochrome video adapter with a built in parallel port. Unfortunately the monitor he gave me has a 15 pin D-SUB which I thought they started at VGA but perhaps it’s an EGA monitor–it’s poorly marked. At least it came with the 5 pin DIN keyboard. As soon as a built an adapter for the video I’ll give it a chance at a boot-up. I’m considering a trip down to Alphatronics this weekend to see if they have an 8087 co-processor since they weren’t typically installed and that seems to be the only stuff Alphatronics has any more (old chips everyone’s long moved past, try getting an OP Amp there released in the last 5 years). After my visit there I’ll hit up  RE-PC in Tukwila; perhaps they will have some spare cards and extra memory if I’m really lucky. Another score for my personal museum collection.

3 Axis CNC Controller TB6560

So I bought this controller on eBay a few weeks ago. I honestly haven’t done anything with it as I’ve been a little focused on the mechanicals. It seems a little in the cheesy side as the labeling an keypad aren’t complete secure. I’ll provide an update once I power it up. I put the USB to parallel port adapter near it for a size reference. I guess we will see if this was a $130 mistake?

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Winter Hiking

It’s really tempting to sleep in tomorrow morning. A cold rainy.. and up on the lake snowy morning awaits me. The price you pay to thin the herd I suppose. I’m looking forward to visiting Lake Serene and perhaps we’ll bag a peak if we have the energy for another hour and a half..

My electronics projects have really taken a stand still. I’ve gotten just enough everything I need in to create a CNC mill to mill some PCBs but life has been really needy! Hopefully I’ll build that shortly.

Dear Future Me: .223 ammo is $900/1000rounds. I hope I made the right choice to pass for the day it’s back at a sane value…

Parts Storage

My wife found these photo holders which convert into great parts storage. This is half my parts minus boxes with the big stuff..

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I need to buy some more of these soon. I love these for parts storage. I’ve gotten more since but I think I’ll definitely need more when I bring back more parts from South Dakota (my house back in Sturgis has a lot of my storage yet). These are actually 4×6 photo storage cases bought at Hobby Lobby for some where in the neighborhood of 30-40$. It took me forever to separate my 74 series logic, 4000 series and linear parts.

 

Hello World?

Ugh, Hello World. Really? Sometimes those eleven characters* can drive you insane. I was debating buying a Suunto altimeter watch; They are painfully expensive for the number lackluster reviews. God they are gorgeous though huh?! I decided that I’ll just have to pass and build my own altimeter. I’d also like a barometer with that fancy alert system… so no problem right? Sparkfun barometer board.. PIC16F1590 breakout board and some random 16×2 LCD I pulled out of my box of goodies. Hello World is kicking my ass for some reason.. granted I’m only 4 hours into it.

*The space between words is considered a character