Stuff Andy Makes – DIY, make, tinker, play

Hack the SparkFun Big Red Dome Button!

Jan 08

AndyElectronics, Projects button, dome, hack, led, sparkfun, upgrade 2 Comments

Needs more shine! The light bulb inside is medium OK in its ability to attract insects and people with ADD, but I wanted a little better (not too much, though). I also wanted signage. This is a super-simple project that anyone with even questionable soldering skills can pull off. Plus, there is enough room behind the red part of the button to put most any LED you like.

Finished Dome Button Upgrade: Lower power, better

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USB Foam Dart Launcher Assimilated (Partially)

Jan 07

AndyElectronics, Projects atmega, avr, darts, hack, launcher, man cave, upgrade, usb No Comments

A coworker walked up to my desk and handed me this USB-controlled Nerf-esque dart launcher thing from Think Geek because it wasn’t working. If it was dead, I thought I’d at least get a number of little motors and gears and whatnot. I took it home, removed all the screws and completely dismantled it to see how it works. It’s ingenious inside. I won’t get into it, but it’s pretty cool.

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12VAC Power Supply from Ikea Wall Wart Light Power Supply

Dec 06

AndyElectronics, Projects, Woodworking/Shop 12V, hack, lighting, power, salvage 1 Comment

I recently rebuilt the lighting in my office because the crappy 12-volt strung lighting from Ikea that the previous owner installed was insufficient for working comfortably in my Man Cave™. Here’s the NEW lighting above the sound-proffed barn door window shade things:

New Man Cave™ Lighting

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My First Amplifier Circuit: LM386 Easy Amp

Dec 06

AndyEducational/Interesting, Electronics, Projects amplifier, audio, breadboard, circuit, lm386 1 Comment

It’s no secret that if you read at least two articles on this blog you know that I know just slightly more than diddly-poo about electronics. That’s OK, though! I’m learning and it’s WAY fun! It’s like making cool stuff with Legos™ but with the caveat that you could electrocute yourself or start a fire.

The other day, I tore down an RCA radio and CD alarm clock that my wife had owned for a while. Its LCD display was failing. We didn’t really have a used for it, so I took it apart. I got a great collection of little tactile buttons and motors and other cool circuit boards full of capacitors and diodes and whatnot. But, two of the coolest parts I got were a couple of pretty beefy but small 8-ohm speakers with really great range. They sound awesome when hooked up to something that can drive them properly.

I decided to build a quick amplifier circuit around the LM386 amplifier IC. It’s an 8-pin DIP and it is really easy to get going if you’re past the super-newbie stage. Or, at least if you are me. I fried two of these in the very early stages of my electronics experimentations. That’s an accomplishment, since the versions I have of this IC can withstand up to 15VDC or 18VDC (I can’t remember what the National Semi datasheet said). I was young and stupid and needed the lesson.

Here is the breadboard of the circuit…

Simple LM386 Audio Amplifier

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Tony Stark for Halloween 2010: The Arc Reactor (RT Mark II)

Oct 28

AndyArt/Design, Electronics, Projects, Woodworking/Shop casting, costume, halloween, led, pcb, propmaking, resin, smd, wearable 10 Comments

I have been dying to post photos of my latest colossal time-sucker-of-a-project: My Halloween 2010 costume is Tony Stark. Iron Man would have been a pain in the mechanical arse, but Tony Stark’s only challenge is that crazy super-glowy round life-saving thingy thing in his chest which is visible under a shirt. This is the most ridiculous and complicated build I’ve done to date.

This post is about building the arc reactor Tony Stark needed to survive in the Iron Man movies. The particular version I wanted to build was the RT Mark II, which Tony built in his home lab once he got home from his captivity in the desert. It’s more refined than the first version he built in the cave and every bit as swanky. Mostly, I liked the look of the second one better, myself. The one I’m talking about can be seen in the movie fairly up-close when Pepper Potts has to remove the old one and replace it with this new one.

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Objective-C/iOS/iPhone: UIColor from NSString

Oct 15

AndyiOS/iPhone/iPad, Objective-C/Apple Development, Programming/Computer cocoa, code, ipad, iphone, mac, objective-c, programming, software 2 Comments

Until I find a home for my little snippets of code, here is where they will go.

While building an iOS (iPhone) application, I needed a quick little method in Objective-c that would take strings of color codes from data provided by web developer peeps and convert those string values into UIColor objects. For instance, sometimes we’d get “#ff7401″ from the data for our app. Sometimes it might be formatted like, “0xff7401″ or even just, “ff7401″. I simply created a category on NSString to make is super-simple.

NSString+meltutils.h

//  UIColor+meltutils.h

//  Created by Andy Frey on 10/15/10.

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

@interface NSString (meltutils)

- (UIColor *)toUIColor;

@end

NSString+meltutils.m

#import "NSString+meltutils.h"

@implementation NSString (meltutils)

- (UIColor *)toUIColor {

  unsigned int c;

  if ([self characterAtIndex:0] == '#') {

    [[NSScanner scannerWithString:[self substringFromIndex:1]] scanHexInt:&c];

  } else {

    [[NSScanner scannerWithString:self] scanHexInt:&c];

  }

  return [UIColor colorWithRed:((c & 0xff0000) >> 16)/255.0 green:((c & 0xff00) >> 8)/255.0 blue:(c & 0xff)/255.0 alpha:1.0];

}

@end

So, to use this, all you have to do is import the header file and send a message to your string that contains the color code:

#import "NSString+meltutils.h"
...
UIColor *c = [@"#ff840a" toUIColor];
...

Hope that helps someone out a little!

My Very Own Useless Machine Ever!!! (Finally!)

Aug 10

AndyElectronics, Projects, Woodworking/Shop brass, engraving, finishing, gift, servo, useless machine, woodworking No Comments

I finally finished my own UME Mark II for my own desk for me! Woohoo! My flavor of useless machines ever has a “presidential” look, as some have put it.

Latest UME Mk II (Useless Machine Ever)

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DIY Workshop Stereo Boombox Kinda Thing

Apr 29

AndyElectronics, Projects, Woodworking/Shop 12V, car, diy, garage, pc power, speakers, stereo, woodworking No Comments

Workshop car stereo boombox

I had a couple of car stereo speakers sitting in the cabinet in the garage and some other miscellaneous parts relating to those. All I ever used for music in the garage was an old AM/FM radio that worked well, but it didn’t allow for using my little portable XM satellite receiver or my iPod or iPhone. So, I ran out and bought a low-end Pioneer 2200 car stereo and a 600-watt computer power supply and BOOM! Semi-instant garage stereo system with XM and iPod capabilities.

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Adjustable Workbench Cigar Holder

Apr 29

AndyProjects, Woodworking/Shop cigars, holder, magnets, woodworking No Comments

I usually put my burning cigars across the top of a ceramic mug on my workbench when I’m in the garage. The great thing about ceramic is that it’s pretty much fireproof. What fun is that? The real problem, though, is that the cigars got short enough toward the end of smoking that they wouldn’t fit across the mouth of the mug. So, I built an adjustable holder that IS flammable:

Adjustable cigar holder complete with rare earth magnets

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Turn a Servo Into an Inexpensive Geared Motor

Apr 29

AndyElectronics, Projects hack, servo, upgrade 1 Comment

In my UME Mark II’s (UME = “Useless Machine Ever”), originally I would program an Atmel AVR microcontroller to turn an RC servo forward and backward using timed pulses like you’re supposed to. But, when you want to build many machines, microcontrollers are not the way to go. Simple polarity-changing circuits are the way to go. But, you still want the RPMs of a servo without the hassle of the pulsing control. So, you hack the servo and make it a geared motor. Easy! Here’s how…

Futaba S3004 servo intact

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