nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Category making things

Sequentix P3 Wooden End Cheeks


My Sequentix P3 with the wooden end cheeks installed.
(Click for more…)

Yay! My Sequentix P3 is finally complete! This afternoon I was surprised to find one of the typically labeled packages from Sequentix waiting in the mailbox. I’d been waiting for the wooden end cheeks for the P3 I’d finished a few months ago and they are finally here. I’m really, really happy with them, too.

As you can see above, they make the sequencer look really finished. This project can also now be considered totally, completely finished. Yay!

electronicsmaking thingsmoved from livejournal

110 Slides

The downside to a nice scanner is that I can see precisely how the Kodak Pocket Carousel slide projector grabs the slides. Top-center, leaving a couple small scratches on almost every frame.

On second thought, it may be from the processing. There’s no marring of the carrier at that point, and it seems to go under the carrier. Hmm.

making thingsmoved from livejournal

What’s that sound…

Continuing with photos of things in my basement, I give you this: a photo of one of the speakers now hanging next to my workbench.

I’ve had these speakers hanging around in a closet for a few years now after acquiring them during a quantity purchase from ABC Warehouse where they were being sold for cheap. They were briefly used in my office back in my apartment, but were put away when I moved here.

In the end I only had to spend around US$4 to get everything hung, and all of that was spent on eye hooks and some 20 gauge steel wire at Lowes. Partially because I was too cheap to buy ~100′ of zip cord (and partially because I knew it would work) I cabled them up with a single run of CAT5, one pair for each terminal. Suspension was done via eye hooks and some measured, cut, and bent wire. It seems to have worked out well. As expected, the hardest part was the cable run across the basement. During this I was reminded something I already knew: construction people are lazy.

As I was being lazy myself, I decided to just run the speaker wire parallel to the mains power, through the same holes in the joists. Since the speakers aren’t that great to begin with, I shouldn’t notice any interference. Well, in running this I found that (as expected) all the holes drilled by my dad and I were nice and clean, parallel with the floor. All the holes drilled by the original electricians were sloppy, mostly pointing upwards with the original Romex simply rammed through.

Anyway, it’s done, and now I can listen to music at my workbench without having to turn the home theater stuff at the other end of the basement up. I’ve been somewhat worried about bothering my neighbors, so I figure that this is a good way to cut down on such noise.

Now to get a good night sleep, something I haven’t done in all too many days.

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Cypress PSoC


Cypress PSoC ExpressEval Kit (CY3210-PSoCExpEVK)
(Click for more photos…)

Thanks to LJ’s new AJAX-ness breaking and the built-in autosave stuff failing, I just lost what I wrote here. So, I’ll try again:

Upon arriving home from work today I found a small box on the porch. Upon opening it I remembered that last week I had ordered a eval kit for Cypress’ PSoC Express. I had figured that it would just be a CD or something, but it turned out to be a lot more. What I received is the package you see above, containing two CY3210-PSoCEVAL1 boards, a CY8C29446 PSoC, a CY8C27443 PSoC, a 9V battery, cables, jumpers, and everything else one could need for getting familiar with PSoCs.

Thus far I have to say that I’m pretty impressed with PSoC Express. It’s a bit clunky to work with, but in a few minutes I was able to bang together a blinking LED, the turning on/off of LEDs at various positions on a pot, latching an LED on or off with each button press, etc. It’s really quite nifty.

If you’re interested in seeing more photos of the eval kit, take a look here: Cypress PSoC ExpressEval Kit (photo gallery retired)

If you’d like one, they can be acquired from Cypress’ Get PSoC site.

electronicsmaking thingsmoved from livejournal

Magnesium!


75′ of Magnesium Ribbon, purchased via eBay
(Click for more Magnesium photos…)

The coil of magnesium I mentioned a little while back showed up today. It’s just as I expected. And yes, I’ve already burned a small piece of it. I’d forgotten just how brightly that stuff burns.

Today has been pretty busy thus far, too. First I mostly finished up the blueberry cider (photo gallery retired), transferring it from the fermenter to the carboy for aging. Before making this transfer I pressed the remaining juice from the berries using a Italian fruit press a friend loaned to me. It worked very well, leaving a bowl of pressed, almost-tasteless, raisin-looking blueberries in its wake.

I’ve got pretty high hopes for this cider. Compared to the plain cider + honey I made a few weeks earlier it has an amazingly deep purpleish color, and its taste is just great. Sort of a tart apple/berry mixture with a hint of alcohol taste. With another month of aging and carbonation I think it could end up being a really nice beverage.

When I pulled the lid on the fermenter I got to see something which looks more like dirty socks floating in the brew. Those are actually natural cotton sacks which I put the berries into (well, most, I accidently dropped a few) to make collecting them for later pressing easier. It seems that most of the yeast grew while attached to them as well, as there wasn’t really much left in the bottom of the fermenter.

Also, here is a picture of Danielle, taken by looking in the wrong end of a pair of binoculars while she stood at the other side.

Now, I think I’ll go acquire some Thai food, or something of a similar nature. Tomorrow will be spent troubleshooting the Casio SK-1 MIDI Mod I assembled today and am having issues with. And doing laundry. And maybe finishing up some things with the webserver. I’m not sure where the problems with the SK-1 thing lies yet, but I haven’t tried much troubleshooting either. Anyway, yes. Food.

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Mg

So, I just purchased 75′ of magnesium ribbon on eBay for just under $21, shipped.

Heh.

This is much safer than the pound of metallic sodium I was considering purchasing a few years ago. I’m really glad I didn’t do that.

Anyone having a bonfire soon? Mg is great fun there.

acquired thingsmaking thingsmoved from livejournal

PCBFABEXPRESS Update

Huh. So I just got off the phone with Shiva at PCBFABEXPRESS. After discussing the problem with him and explaining that four of the five boards appear fine and only one was bad, he understood that this is simply a manufacturing defect. He said that he will take a look around PCBFABEXPRESS’ backstock and see if there are any more copies of my board available. If one is, he will send it out right away for me to take a look at. If not, he’ll have another run of five boards made and will send those out to me.

This is looking a lot better. Of course, my PCBFABEXPRESS Review has been updated accordingly.

electronicsmaking thingsmoved from livejournal