So what are you working on right now?

[phaeton]

Just curious to see what kinds of projects more skilled people are
working on. No need to go into detail or give away any secrets, but
what are you researching, building or debugging right now, and why?
What lead you to this project?

I'm in the process of moving, so I'm not doing a whole lot other than
reorganizing and making a restocking list. And reading. Lots of
reading. Picked up an "Introduction to Electrical Engineering" at a
used book store. Previously, I was building a series of small guitar
amplifiers for kicks. I have a few stompboxes and such in the pipe
waiting for when I can get back to it.

I can think of *other* things to work towards in electronics (robotic
toy controls, etc) but for some reason that just seems "childish".
Please help me convince myself that that is the wrong attitude.

TIA

-phaeton

 

[steamer]

--Unskilled, me, but with two Stamp courses behind me, working
on making big-ass "servos" by learning to get location feedback from
large-ish motors. Various applications in mind, including my
tap-dancing Riverdance parody robot project "Paddy O'Furniture".

 

[Tom Biasi]

Just curious to see what kinds of projects more skilled people are
working on. No need to go into detail or give away any secrets, but
what are you researching, building or debugging right now, and why?
What lead you to this project?

I'm in the process of moving, so I'm not doing a whole lot other than
reorganizing and making a restocking list. And reading. Lots of
reading. Picked up an "Introduction to Electrical Engineering" at a
used book store. Previously, I was building a series of small guitar
amplifiers for kicks. I have a few stompboxes and such in the pipe
waiting for when I can get back to it.

I can think of *other* things to work towards in electronics (robotic
toy controls, etc) but for some reason that just seems "childish".
Please help me convince myself that that is the wrong attitude.

TIA

-phaeton

Hey, I'm always working on something. Not always electronics. If I ever get
around to it I will update my web page of things my friends and I are
building. Right now I only have the tag-a-long camper, suspended due to
weather, on the site. Take a look if you like, www.Biasi-Associates.com I'm
not selling anything.
Regards,
Tom

 

[John Larkin]

Just curious to see what kinds of projects more skilled people are
working on. No need to go into detail or give away any secrets, but
what are you researching, building or debugging right now, and why?
What lead you to this project?

I'm in the process of moving, so I'm not doing a whole lot other than
reorganizing and making a restocking list. And reading. Lots of
reading. Picked up an "Introduction to Electrical Engineering" at a
used book store. Previously, I was building a series of small guitar
amplifiers for kicks. I have a few stompboxes and such in the pipe
waiting for when I can get back to it.

I can think of *other* things to work towards in electronics (robotic
toy controls, etc) but for some reason that just seems "childish".
Please help me convince myself that that is the wrong attitude.

TIA

-phaeton

Two VME modules, 16 channel isolated analog/thermocouple input, and 16
channel isolated analog output/thermocouple simulator.

And a tachometer/overspeed trip module for gas turbines

And a small digital delay generator

And an analog scanner for measuring thermistors on a satellite solar
array

And, with luck, a heads-up-display driver for the AC138 and maybe the
F16.

And something for the U2 Dragon Lady, I'm not sure what.

Maybe some fiberoptics stuff.

John

 

[Gordon reeder]

Just curious to see what kinds of projects more skilled people are
working on. No need to go into detail or give away any secrets, but
what are you researching, building or debugging right now, and why?
What lead you to this project?

I'm in the process of moving, so I'm not doing a whole lot other than
reorganizing and making a restocking list. And reading. Lots of
reading. Picked up an "Introduction to Electrical Engineering" at a
used book store. Previously, I was building a series of small guitar
amplifiers for kicks. I have a few stompboxes and such in the pipe
waiting for when I can get back to it.

I can think of *other* things to work towards in electronics (robotic
toy controls, etc) but for some reason that just seems "childish".
Please help me convince myself that that is the wrong attitude.

TIA

-phaeton

Most of what I'm creating these days is software/multimedia. I have been
involved in seting up a system to digitaly record our church
service. I also have been setting up my home PC to post process
the recording into a CD and a podcast. So good so far. But I'm
6 weeks behind on producing CD's. The podcast went live last week.
And then today, we wern't in our usual location and the recording
equiptment wasn't available. Looks like I need to work on
getting a portable system too.

Other than that, I tore apart our old microwave that finally
wore out (the oven chamber began rusting through in places).
The keypad still works and is simple enough to reuse, runs
on 110VAC, has an auxillary 110VAC output and a heavy relay
rated for 18 Amps that switched the magnatron. If I ever need
a touchpad opperated timer with time of day display and a
long duty cycle pulsed output, I'm all set.

 

[Tim Williams]

Same thing I've been working on for the last six months or so, induction
heater. Final version will be 10 kilowatts (running off a 240V 50A circuit)
and operate in the 10 or 15kHz range. Hoping to melt 10 to 20 pounds of
steel (white hot!) in an hour or so.

The current implementation is a prototype board with a space-wired output
stage, using six MOSFETs (the final version will use beefier IGBTs) for the
switching job. This morning I just smoothed out the phase detector, which
controls power output by regulating phase between the oscillator and tank
circuit. Next, I suppose, is detecting and limiting tank voltage, then
measuring, detecting, limiting and protecting current levels (since a 200A
spike on the output isn't a good thing .

To learn more, Google "induction heater". There's lots of basic information
out there; very little of high detail however, what I've developed on my
website is about it! I'll put up a complete, functioning schematic in
public domain when I've got this thing finished.

Tim

 

[steamer]

--Hey are you blogging this on a website or something? Sounds
interesting...

 

[phaeton]

Excellent responses, folks....

What do you plan on doing with these completed projects?

Just curious. Since day 1 had all sorts of drive to design, build and
create things and gadgets "just because". No real problem to solve,
other than to prove i could do it. I got especially excited when I
could use normal everyday household objects for things they were never
considered for. Sometimes I integrated Lego Technic or Erector set
type construction toys into it. Sometimes I gutted cheap RC cars and
used their servos and radios.

Somewhere in my mid to late 20s my desire to do these things kind of
peaked, and now it feels like it's languishing away. I'm trying to
rekindle it and save it. It's just that at age 31 I don't feel much
like a 'kid' anymore and accomplishing things like say, building a
simple bug bot isn't as spectacular for an adult as it was when I was 8.

 

[Jeff Dege]

Just curious to see what kinds of projects more skilled people are
working on. No need to go into detail or give away any secrets, but
what are you researching, building or debugging right now, and why?
What lead you to this project?

I'm building an RF digital 418MHz RF receiver into a Radio Shack project
box to drive a couple of relays.

The receiver has five pins that go high when the corresponding button on a
keychain transmitter is pushed. Range is 75 feet.

The box will have two pairs of binding posts to connect to whatever the
relays are controlling, and a third pair of binding posts to connect to an
external 7-25V DC power source. Or there'll be a clip for a 9V battery
inside.

I'm putting in a socket for a Parallax Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller, that
will read the five receiver pins and which can be programmed to turn on or
off the relays in whatever ways are appropriate. But I'm putting in a
pair of jumpers that will have two of the pins control the relays directly
- so that it provides the default behavior of relay 1|2 is closed when
button 1|2 is pressed when I've pulled the BS2 to use in something else.

It's a simple enough little thing to put together, and I'm sure I'll find
multiple uses for it, in the future. But my initial intention is to wire
this thing into my doorbell.

And the reason for that is to train my dog to ignore the doorbell. The
easiest way to teach a dog to not get excited when the doorbell rings is
to have nothing exciting happen when the doorbell rings. Nobody gets up,
nobody goes to the door, and most importantly, there's nobody there.