Electronics

…fixing up a Roland Juno 60 synthesizer

September 18, 2011
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A couple of years ago I bought a Roland Juno 60 from eBay. It was in “fairly good” condition but was very dirty and the faders did not work properly. There also seemed to be a sticky (beer?) substance on all the keys that was less than attractive. Additionally the programs weren’t being saved correctly [...]

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…quite possible the most complex thing I’ve ever built.

August 24, 2011
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As part of the “Great Create” I was challenged by my buddies at Make magazine to complete a set of projects only using parts from Radio Shack. For my first project they tasked me with reproducing the rather excellent 555-timer “Whack-a-Mole” game created by Jim Chen. This one was tough… oh yes… very tough. Eventually [...]

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At the Maker Faire in Detroit

July 31, 2011
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Spending the weekend up at the Maker Faire in Detroit. Check out the Maker Faire Daily stream for more info. UPDATE : Just got back from the Faire – always a pleasure to go to these, and nice that they’re more local than San Francisco now… Wow lot’s of stuff to see and do. The [...]

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The Clock Of The Long Weekend…

July 25, 2011

I’ve spent a lot of time on the “The Long Now” website lately – I would urge you to check it out if you’ve not seen it – one of the things that caught my attention was the 10,000 year clock they are trying to build in Texas. Inspired by the design, I thought I [...]

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Jarre at the royal wedding : 1, laser harp : 0

July 5, 2011
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I got an email from Dan Wilson about the recent Jarre gig for the Monaco royal wedding. Looks like an excellent concert, although the laser harp had some issues – and JMJ didn’t look too happy about it. I found this video on Dailymotion (with apologies in advance for all the ads they make you [...]

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The Arduino controlled Electromagnetic Pendulum Clock

June 5, 2011

OK, only about 100 years too late – but I finally managed to assemble the clock works for the electromagnet-driven pendulum clock. The primary drive is a 15-tooth ratchet. This is connected to two 60 tooth gears that creates the second hand drive. A 60:1 reduction gearing comprising 10:108 +18:100 (the largest gears) creates the [...]

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Electromagnetic Pendulum – making it tell the time

May 31, 2011

A while ago I posted a video showing a pendulum driven by a pulse motor: It worked by using a single coil to detect the field from a magnet embedded in the pendulum base. An op-amp (wired as a comparator) detects when the pendulum reached the equilibrium point (vertical) a voltage (5-12v) is applied to [...]

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Upgrading a Laser Cutter from China…

April 15, 2011
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I recently wrote about some of the problems I’d had with the Chinese Laser Cutter I bought over eBay. It became apparent that I was going to have to replace the X/Y controller board, as this was not functioning correctly. The Challenge – adding a new controller I just pulled my old CNC out of [...]

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Microsoft to release Kinect SDK tomorrow?

April 13, 2011

Just got an email from my buddy Bob – he’s currently attending MIX11 in Vegas… The just handed out Kinect sensors and the new SDK to all attendees. The demo was neat. Looks like body tracking is part of the SDK. This is pretty awesome news. As some of you may remember I got myself [...]

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Strange Wiimote camera…

March 29, 2011

Patrick van der Poel wrote to me with some pictures of what he found when he opened up a Wiimote recently. Instead of the normal Pixart sensor he found a strange daughter-board configuration. It looks very easy to remove, but it’s nothing like the regular sensor. Fortunately they labelled the board pinouts on the underside [...]

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