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

Category: making things

!!!


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…so while talking to tonight, it somehow came up that I had made floggers / whips out of both network and IDE cable while working at various jobs in the past. Typically they were made simply by bundling the cables (or strands thereof as in the case of the IDE cable) into whatever handle was handy, be it a pen tube or a plastic test tube.

Well, for some reason I decided to make another, and proper, CAT5-based flogger. So, thanks to some boredom and a random burst of creativity, an hour and twenty minutes later I had it done.

Thirteen tails, each twenty inches long, comprised of six grey pieces of CAT5e, and seven of blue CAT5. In order to make them softer, more flexible, and lighter they have had the conductors removed. They are bundled together inside the handle with three large cable ties and friction-fitted into a six-inch metal (aluminum, I believe) handle. A blue / blue & white conductor pair from inside the cables is wrapped on the ends of the handle for finishing. The strands were straightened to eliminate the curling typically found in network cable.

In the end it turns out to be rather solid, with the strands having a texture like that of tanned leather. The strands are very solidly seated into the handle and will withstand a decent tug. It can also be swung with all the force I can exert and nothing budges.

In order to see the other pictures of the completed assembly, either click the photo above or take these links:

· Flogger with measuring tape showing it’s length.
· Detail of the handle and wire wrapping.
· Detail of the strands of cable.

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!!!


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So, yeah. In order to better contend with the extra bright light problem here at work I’ve expanded on my previous monitor hood. This still doesn’t solve my problem of having to sit under such bright lights, but at least I can see my monitor better.

Next I think I’ll make an actual wooden one with a nice matte black finish on the inside.

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Sour Mash Beer…


Click for lots of detail…

Well, there it is, beer batch #4 all fermenting away. It’s been about 20 hours since the yeast was pitched, and it’s happily fermenting. I attached my new digital thermometer to the side in order to keep an eye on things. It’s currently at 70.3ºF which is a bit hotter than the recipe calls for, but it should be all right. Maybe I’ll knock the temp in the house down a degree to try and bring it down a little.

Regardless, it’s fermenting away… Hopefully it’ll be good. Oh, this is the batch that was made with the sour mash. I overshot in adding water, so it’s a little weaker than I intended with an OG (original gravity, or density before yeast is added) of 1.040. The target was 1.045 or something like that. This means it’ll be a little lighter and slightly less alcoholic than intended, but not by much…

Oh, and if you want to see a video of the beer churning around, look here: http://www.nuxx.net/albums/brewing_beer/DSCN0458.mov

That THUNK THUNK THUNK sound in the background is the bubbles coming out of the blowoff hose and reverberating through the bathtub. Each bubble is about half the size of a ping pong ball, so you see that making beer really kicks out a lot of CO2.

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How To Burn Down A House


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So yesterday I was at a friend of mine’s house when I noticed that he was throwing out an audio mixer. Asking why, I found out that someone had smoked it, then attempted to repair it. It’s current state was unknown, so I opened it up. What did I find? Something that made me worry about every single electrical repair the cuplrit may have ever done.

Why? Well, there it is right in the picture at the top… It seems that when the mixer was blown, two caps that are part of the photo preamps cooked. Well, instead of replacing them with the same parts, this “tech” chose to put together a bank of capacitors, then POT THEM WITH CANDLE WAX. Besides the fact that the bank of capacitors worked out to 50μf when the original parts were 47μf, this is so absolutely horribly dangerous. Using a potting compound that melts at a temperature around that of edible food and burns at not much higher? In a type of device which tends to get a bit warm with use? Guh.

It’s a good thing it was never turned on…

Fortunately I was able to replace the fire starters with $3 worth of proper components from Radio Shack. After fixing the cold solder joints on some jumpers that had been installed around burnt traces, I figured it was good. Well, it seems to be, and now this person can have his mixer back.

Still, I just can’t get over the idea of potting together electronics with candle wax… No matter how goth it is, it’s still a fucking stupid idea.

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Help!

To all the electronics geeks, I need help finding something. I’m looking for a 1U enclosure for a project I want to work on, and I’d like it to be plastic. I’ve seen them around online, but I can’t find a place to buy them.

Do you know where I could get one?

I’ve got a piece of gear I want to mount in an enclosure, and a plastic box would work great… And being rack-mountable would be even better. :)

So, again, what am I looking for? A 1U rack mount plastic enclosure, similar to the one seen here. (No, it doesn’t need any knobs or switches or whatever, I’ll take care of mounting those.)

Thanks!

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!!!


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Well, it’s finally done. I got the PAiA FatMan finished. yay! It turns out that the problems with it were related to a bad EPROM, the bit that holds the program for the MIDI to CV conversion. I got a replacement chip, and everything was (eventually) good. There were only a few additional bumps, namely the replacement chip having it’s pins bent as hell. Fortunately it made it here, as the package it was in hadn’t been sealed. But, it’s here, assembled, and all is good. Take a look at just over a page of wonderful construction pictures here.

Or, there’s a few treats for you to listen to. Namely…

· PAiA FatMan Filter Jam (Just some random filter masturbation…)
· Eric playing the Super Mario Brothers 2 Theme Song

So, yeah. It’s done. I’m all happy about it and stuff. Now, as long as it gets good use and happy tunes are made with it, well, woo!

Also, it makes a surprising variety of sounds. You can tune it all different, have the two oscillators offset by all sorts of nifty amounts, all sorts of neat wacky filter goodness, etc.

Now, time for Luna! Woo!

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So, Friday morning, or was it Thursday night, I received a bunch of information (two massive pieces of email, in fact) from Scott at PAiA about troubleshooting a FatMan. After running down voltages and checking to be sure I didn’t have any cold solder points, I decided to swap EPROMs with another FatMan I have here. (It’s a friends and I’m looking into fixing it up.) I had tried swapping the microprocessor earlier, because I had suspected that to be a problem, but it wasn’t. This time, on suggestion from Scott at PAiA, I did, and poof, the problem was gone. So it looks like either I have a blank, or at least misburned, EPROM.

I just sent off some email to PAiA asking for another EPROM. Hopefully this one will work fine… Thus far I’m finding them to have great customer support and nice kits that are easy to assemble, but a bit of a problem packing the orders. Missing parts, unburned EPROMs, etc. They seem good about replacing bits as needed, but it still shouldn’t happen in the first place.

So, as soon as I get the new EPROM, I can get the thing tuned up and ready for use. Whee!

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..oo..

Today I feel defeated by…

…a synthesizer kit!

I’m trying to think of what to check, but it’s just. not. coming.

All ICs seem to be receiving appropriate voltages on the pins you’d expect power to be coming in on.

Something seems weird with the voltage regulator ICs, but I might be metering them wrong, I think.

< sigh >

Next is to ask the smart people at PAiA for help.

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..//..

So I got the PAiA FatMan assembled… And it doesn’t work. The power LED lights, the MIDI LED blinks when a signal is sent, nothing smokes, but it just doesn’t work. Needless to say, I’m slightly disappointed. I’m going to email PAiA with a link to all the photos. Hopefully they’ll be able to help me out or something.

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So, the PAiA FatMan arrived today. Of course I had to start on tonight…

Well, after 176 solder points and a few hours of work cataloging parts, writing down what’s missing (this frustrates me to no end), cutting, bending, and soldering, this is where I’m at. All jumpers in place, all resistors (except the couple which I’m missing) in place, ready to start placing the caps tonight. Hopefully PAiA will come through right-quick with the replacement parts. I’m missing things like the socket for the CPU (for the MIDI bits), a set screw for one of the knobs, an op amp, etc.

Oh well, at least there’s parts of the kit to work on in the mean time. :D This is fun.

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