Time!

Time marches on! I've been bad about updating my blog but hope to get into a weekly habit..

What's happened in the last few months? Well after months of prep, Vancouver had it's Maker Faire. Above are the rock stars responsible. (though two excellent people and a whole slew of volunteers are in fact missing form this photo)

I was lucky enough to be involved in the 2011 Illuminares festival. This fantastic yearly event has puppet makers and performance artists gather together for a night of incredible sights and live music. My small contribution was the lighting and sound systems for a giant heron puppet as well as some RGB LED controllers for a number of glowing columns. Lessons learned included;

-always buy about %15 more stock then needed when making wiring harnesses, especially if you're getting volunteer help

-lead acid batteries aren't happy discharging at even 1/2 their amp-hour rating (ie; a 5 Ahr will see a serious voltage drop if 2.5A is drawn) and this gets worse in cold weather

-don't let feature creep carry you away to the lala land of unachievable goals...

Pneuman works!

Control system changed to a PLC, optical encoder changed to a sealed industrial unit from Omron. Still plenty of work to do but it's running!

Downtown Eastside Illuminations

Working in cooperation with Still Moon Arts Society a series of illuminated halos were placed in trees to decorate Vancouver's streets. Local community centers ran art workshops to create the images mounted around the halo. The structure was made of fiberglass rod and lit with USLED modules and a small switched power supply hidden inside. The halos can be seen at Victory Square Park, Pigeon Park, the Strathcona Community Center grounds and inside the Oppenheimer Park clubhouse for six weeks starting December 16th.

The Digestion Game

Several years ago this game was created to teach about various digestive tract problems. When the start button is pressed a pneumatic cylinder launches a pinball into play. The ball must be navigated through the maze while avoiding the holes. The initial electronics were screwed down to a wooden plank and based on multiple relays.

Trouble shooting this was a pain so a couple months ago I ripped the whole board out and started from scratch. The control system is based on a PLC with sound being produced by a CFSound III board.

Also swapped out was the center fire solenoid that flips the ball back onto the play surface after going through an underpass in the center of the game.

Transpo PLC Program

The PLC inside of the Transportation game has a Relay Ladder Logic program running inside it. I finally got around to making jpegs of the whole thing in its most recent state;
http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/8530194/1/Transpo_RLL?h=8fb5ef

SAM

Working together with our intern, the Sound Amplitude Measurement device was made. Guts include a PIC16F873A, servo motor for the dial, active filter at 1.5Hz based on an opamp and RGB lighting inside the head. This is the first thing I've ever had to stuff (%100 polyester fiberfill) and I found it oddly soothing to staple swathes of puffy stuff to the MDF framework inside.

Pneuman update

Working on this when I can, Pneuman's controller has been upgraded from a chunky old PC with a synchronous serial connection to an Arduino (OMG Arduino!!!). A WiFly shield communicates with the user interface (a PC kiosk somewhere) and a 6-channel Darlington driver board fires the solenoid valves to pump his legs. Three analog inputs are used to capture the values from optical pickups aimed at a 3-bit grey-code encoder wheel fixed to the cranks of the bike. This gives a starting position for the uC to pedal from. Two digital inputs are used for the front and back travel limit switches.