I’ve decided to begin to post my latest findings in music here. It’s pretty personal, but also might be a good way for me to keep track of these songs. For starters:
Major Lazer – “Get Free” cheesy but it’s my tune for the summer nights with my girl
Tupac feat. Gramatik – “Stairway to getting money” great instrumental and a great track for my bike stereo
I stumbled over both listening to sets by [Barb Nerdy]. I’m a fan now :)
I framed some of my [Diskokugel] speakers today…
no functionality yet, but looking good :)
Coming closer to the point where the electronics for [Diskokugel] are settled, I start worrying about how to get sound and power into the turning thing. While with the sound I’ll most probably go for a wireless solution, with the power that’s highly unlikely. So I did an experiment with some ball bearings I had aquired for the (still pending) [cnc project]. I soldered wires to the in- and outside of the bearings to power a turning 1W LED. That resembled the setup I would have liked to use building a second [LED lamp]. Unfortunately even with a 1000µF capacitor on the LED end it wasn’t possible to keep the power straight. It might be helpfull to get the plastic caps of the bearings and apply a certain pressure on one side to keep the contact constant, but in general I abandoned the idea for high power connections. Considering the fact that the Diskokugel might use up to 200W at 5V there seems no way to keep the supply steady this way…
2 ball bearings on an axis as sliding contact
As promised, Christian and I went to testing the new Diskokugel board last weekend. We started by soldering one of the LM4863s he bought on eBay to the new board. Christian had his concerns whether the stuff he bought from Hongkong would actually work :) During the last week I finished soldering most of the parts to board (my first smd project!).
Next week I will test the board as a whole to determine whether the actual delay of 6 months was worth it. If it turns out that the new design doesn’t meet my requirements I will simply go back to the old design and continue there. Progress needs to be made!
testing the lm4863
my first smd board!
I should apologize for my long blogging abstinence, especially since no blogging usually means all the more has happened.
I was extremely busy with my new job at KOMA, learning a lot at the same time. I tried to attend an online electronics engineering class of MIT at the same time, but I had to let that go because my time didn’t suffice to make up for all the math I would have had to relearn to understand what they were talking about.
Meanwhile I continued to work on the new Diskokugel board. Christian sent me a schematic using a BT4863 as amplifier. The ones he got are a smd chips, so I redesigned the whole board for the use of smd parts. I sent the result to Christian and maybe we get to test it this weekend.
It was my first project using Kicad instead of EAGLE for circuit board design. We use Kicad at work and I actually found it better to use than EAGLE, even though I had to run it on a virtual Linux because I was to lazy to compile the latest source for Mac.
On other news: the CNC project is delayed until further notice due to missing resources (meaning time and motivation). My work at KOMA inspired me to do more with music again, which led to the idea to build a dub delay and a modular OSC controller. Let’s see what happens there. Actually, I wish these new ideas would stop so I get to finish some of the stuff done that I came up with in the past…
Greetings from Thailand! Live long and prosper!
And what did you do today?
Having at least a plan for the cross table I started working on the parts. I struggled for a while trying to find a place with the means of doing precise cuts and drills into aluminum. In the end I did the cutting in a former workplace of mine and had to do the drilling at [c-base] of which I am a member for about a year now. There I had to cope with a cheap drilling stand. I built me an improvised guide to at least have some precision in one axis. Some holes I had to turn into long holes to be able to adjust to tolerances. Those don’t look so good but I hope it will do.
I found some basic flaws in my design already. I made the mistake of not taking sideway pressure from the drill itself into account. The telescope slides have a sideway tolerance of about 1mm. I will continue anyway, maybe I find a way to correct this by adding guides or the machine will at least give me the means of drilling exact holes and help me build the next one ;)
the drilling guide
a long hole. a crater, rather
21st of december: all parts drilled
Searching for a control solution for my CNC mill I found a whole bunch of possibilities. My requirements were these:
Most CNC configurations still rely on a computers LPT port. This is due to the fact that a program can access this port in realtime as opposed to the USB port, which is buffered. There are several solutions on the web using microcontrollers to execute the code given through the USB port. I went for the one done by [planet cnc] in combination with classic l297/298 motor drivers by [PMinMO]. Both provide ready to use parts, kits and schematics to do your own board designs. I went for the kit solution instead of designing my own boards because I wanted to spend more time on mechanical design. PMinMO provides a truly great documentation with his boards, by the way! I got a PCB and a preconfigured chip from planet cnc. He provides a software with drivers for windows (costs though) that should also work under Parallels and such.
I soldered one driver and the controller board together but haven’t gotten around to do any tests yet…
soldering the smd parts to the driver board
the controller (w/o chip) and one driver, waiting to be tested
I started making plans for a CNC mill some weeks ago and totally got sucked into it. Here are some pictures of the plans i made with sketchup. More soon…
the bottom axis
the second axis
It’s been a while since my last post, so i think you deserve a little update on my where- and whatabouts.
After spending most of the summer doing technical coordination for the [Festival Über Lebenskunst] I went directly to helping the team of Tomas Saraceno set up his exhibition at [Hamburger Bahnhof], Berlin. I really enjoyed that, Tomas having a nice team and his works keep impressing and inspiring me.
Right now, badly in need of a job to earn as much as I can before going to Thailand in January, I started a soldering job at [Koma Elektronik], helping them to assemble their circuit boards .
Of course, I kept working on the [Diskokugel], trying to improve the circuit. Read more about that [here]. I also contemplated some on my actual intentions with this object. I will share that with you soon.
And, to make things worse, I got inspired by an [instructable] to build my own CNC-mill. That is just another example of how I constantly underestimate the time and effort (and money) of the tasks I keep imposing on me. I’ve already invested 3 weeks into it without any visible result and I keep going… Il post some pictures soon, however.
On other news: Halloween came and after laughing my ass off watching this [cookie monster video] repeatedly, I had to refer to it with my costume for the annual party in Frankfurt.
God's away on bizniz...
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