Big Sproinking Flash light
Been a while since I uploaded something, been busy with work and recuperating.
This project stemmed from my digging around my desk when taking a break from Skyrim (it is very addictive). I found a high amperage switch that I had originally used way back when I had my Honda Civic, on which I had mounted some fog lights.
I had removed them before junking that reliable beast; I could not kill the thing even with driving it as if it were a dune buggy. I realized that I still had one of the lights as well, the other having had its lens shattered by gravity+concrete. I went digging for it and came across a wooden case I had acquired a long time back from a nice old man at my moms church. I decided to re-purpose it again, its last purpose for me being a simplistic multi-rocket launch controller. The power source for the light is a basic UPS battery that I had bought for a UPS I found, whose battery had died, and the new battery subsequently fried the aged UPS, letting the magic smoke out. Its really a basic wire job, the second circuit diagram any one learns (light with switch). Next step with it would be to add a 12v outlet for automobiles, and then after that a charge gauge and recharge circuit. Here is the rest of the photos of it so far.
More arduinoing coming, as soon as I figure out some more advanced trig.
First video for the blorg, also more bumbling arduinos
So I had a friend over, and we were messing with the arduinos as we are both new to them we pretty much botched around getting them to USB connect correctly, and it turns out, I need to acquire more USB B cables.
Parts:
- Arduino UNO
- misc LEDs
- misc resistors
- Speaker
- Accelerometer (MMA7361)
- Murdered network cable (cats ate the RJ45)
- bits of paper clips (in lue of jumpers)
- zip ties
He wanted to play with making them make noises, so I quickly tore apart some crappy USB speakers, and scrounged out one speaker. He managed to throw some maths and programming at it and got some interesting tones out of it, much to the annoyance of his fiance on the phone. We later started messing with the accelerometer. We eventually gave up as the cabling bo-jiggering I was using to put the code on the arduino (I/O errors abound).
Skip to the next day, I being more awake, and remembering I have a USB B cable for the printer, grabbed that and started trying to push new code to the arduino. After some new bits for triggering serial out data, and then some twixing for the tone and accelerometer data, and viola, an annoying noise maker. Also, threw in a youtube vid for this, so I can say I play with multimedia. No pics this time though, literally cant stand to take any (note my leg in the video).
And now for some Arduinos
My Arduinos finally came in, note: don't order from across the largest ocean on the planet. I already have one project planned out to the first stage, an Artificial Horizon for mounting in my MurderWagon. Parts still needed:
- Multiplexer shield/board
- Gyroscope board/shield
- 40+ red/green/yellow LEDs
- 12v-9v power conversion (probably resistor pack)
- CodeCodeCode
Plan is to create a simple circle display (maybe a pair) for tilt and roll. Problems I need to solve include noise reduction from the Gyroscope, auto-zeroing the gyro, and multiplexing the LED display, as the arduino only supports 12 out, and I need 4x that at least.
But for now...ARDUINOS:
Plasma Lamp Part II
So my dad came up to visit me from NJ, West NY is a bit of a haul. But we went on a random wander, and he let me know that Home Depot stocks the flicker bulbs I needed to run the plasma lamp. So we stopped in there an picked one up.
Soon as I got back to the bunker I attached the bulb and fired it up. Ta-da it works, the internet didn't lie to me.
Photos of working setup:
Photos of it Visibly working:
Next step is to build a nifty looking wall mounted lamp for it, should I have moving parts or not...
Plasma Lamp, Part I
Looking through hackaday I found an interesting link to an Instructable, where a someone made a really cool looking steam-punk lamp out of a flicker bulb and the flash component from a disposable camera. I read through it and it looked super simple, so I decided to build a prototype lamp to see if I could get it to work, since it was instructions from the internet which arent always made by real people (trolls don't count as people to me, sorry).
- Disposable Camera
- Bulbs (regular don't work)
- Piece of wood
- zip ties
- Old timey throw switch (just cause I had one)
I decided to use a regular bulb at first, which failed, reasoning being that I wanted a purple glow, and most regular bulbs are full of argon, which should glow purple. My guess, since this was a build by numbers experiment, is that I am not getting a high enough voltage to excite the argon, and a flicker bulb will work better since it will be full of neon instead (feel free to email me if you know better, cause this is aperture science style research). Part 2 will come when I get a flicker bulb to play with.
The basics of this is to use the high voltage out of the camera flash, once striped of some parts, to drive excite the gas in the lamp. if you follow that link at the top, it describes what to pull off and where to add the wires to power the bulb. I basically followed that, then mounted it all on the stick of wood so I could hold it and poke at it. I tried both a single AA and a pair to power it, 1.5v and 3v respectively, and neither made the regular night light bulb glow. So this is a fail for now, until I get the other style bulbs. The wires in the images correlate to the tutorial on Instructables as such: 1 knot=+V in, 2 knots = +HV(400V+), no knots= ground/-, and the switch is rigged across the switch wires.
I'll make a new post when I get around to finding a flicker bulb, should be more around in Christmas time.