Okay, it can be said now... I've been slacking a bit the last week or two, but only because it's the rest after the burst. I've got three articles coming out in the Special Halloween Issue of Make Magazine (check out the cover on my front page at www.simreal.com, then click on it and pre-order yours!)
Nothing too strained in this; a blinky LED firefly; a hot-glue web gun; and the classic Flying Crank Ghost. Foundational stuff, but I was a late addition to the issue, so there. Maybe next year I'll do some wild projects!
Of course, those three are not the end... I've got two more logged for Make and one for Craft, and I don't intend on stopping. I'll keep y'all informed as they come into view!
Other than that, well, this weekend is going to be some quiet time with my sweetie which will doubtless include lots of house-cleaning.
Next weekend... projects again!
A note for folks wandering in from the Dorkbot link: the root of this website at www.simreal.com is me! Also, this journal is mirrored on LiveJournal as ewiserss, and I'm on LiveJournal as MadSpark. Just FYI. I'll see if I can't create a better entry point for the dorkbot link for the next one.
Well, the Sound and Vibration demo, dressed in a Steampunk cloak of disreputability and branching off of Marvin Niebur's Rogue Bio-Mechanics, was a moderate success.
Nik and I worked up a fun story line talking about discoveries of grey goo and how it was a self-organizing amorphous creature, as a wrapper to show the effects of sound vibration in a corn-starch solution, a thick fluid (paint, really), graphite powder, and at the end, salt on a lovely Chladni plate that Nik made for the demo! The demos pretty much worked correctly, according to rehearsal, but some of the tech we put in place did not, mostly due to cosmological considerations.
Basically, it was too bright out for the carefully constructed projected images (e.g. slide show and video of the vibration, plus the shadow-creating flashlight) to work. So folks gathered around the table, maybe saw the vibrations, maybe saw the slideshow...
It was fun to set up, fun to do, and folks seemed to enjoy it. So it's all good!
If you are interested in sound and vibration, I have a few videos of my early experiments (I'm totally going to put the Chladni plate stuff up soon too) on YouTube; just look for EdwinWiseOne there.
Also, Google and YouTube for Cymatics and Chladni. My stuff is downright weak compared to some of the things out there (but strong compared to others; such is life).
I do need to create a better high-frequency driver for the demos, though; the ancient butchered speakers I am using just aren't up to the task.
I'm actually thinking of making museum-style demos of some of it; custom driver, clear box, the works, to go with the Robot Group's Sisyphusian ball-rolling machine.
BOOMSTICK! And other projects...
It's been a week and a half. First, the entertainment news: Went to Alamo Drafthouse (goodness I love that place) and saw "Live Free or Die Hard" -- lots of fun! Boom! Pow! Sifu was there too, and assistant instructor, and her daughter; plus my group of six or so (well, M's group; she started it). Great fun!
Now, in a similar vein, last weekend I did design and shopping for the new boomstick (which is what I'm calling it now). This is basically a potato cannon mechanism WITHOUT the barrel to launch the potato, and optimised for maximum... noise.
I have a double-barrel-sealing design with O-Rings (darn it all to heck) that is as far as I know, unique. Most designs do face-sealing or a combination of face and barrel sealing (e.g. the Supah Valve). Mine is different! Yay me! And it bangs something fierce, let me tell you.
THIS weekend, I re-shopped and am rebuilding it with massive quantities of photos, because it's going to end up as an article. MOST of my effort on the boomstick project was shopping. I had to end up using PVC, which is essentially a hollow bomb in this application, so the final device has to live in an armored box for safety. That's going to suck. However, ABS does not come pressure rated ANYWHERE that I can find (DWV use only; no pressure; no good). Pressure rated materials in this size (e.g. copper, Ipex Duratec or Duraplus) costs ten times as much. That is, a fitting that would be $3 in PVC is $30 or MORE in these materials. So a $100 project would cost $1,000 or more. Argh!
Also, in addition to the boomstick project, we did a bunch of experiments in outfitting my scrap speakers as Cymatic drivers (e.g. vibrating dust, water, glycerin, salt, and so forth) and creating magnet-snapped-in bowls and giant sheets of foam-core and plates and stuff, for optimal display. This is in prep for my demo and show at Dorkbot 9, on July 12th at Cafe Mundi (www.dorkbotaustin.org). It will be fun! Nik and I have tried a number of systems, and are putting together a script now; it will be silly, it will be entertaining. I hope.
My current pain in the neck for the Dorkbot is getting an external camera to work on my macbook pro, so I can broadcast the image on the screen, so people can see it. It's beginning to piss me off; I may have to use M2's laptop PC instead (I've got an Intel cam and a mac ally IceCAM, both of which work on XP and neither of which seem to work on Intel OS-X).
Finally, as if that wasn't enough, we cut the gas chamber off of one of the Fire Tubes (see: flipside, Ruben's tube), made a one-way valve out of scrap sheet tin, silicon caulk, and an overhead transparency, and finally did a burn test of it tonight. It was much improved! I was absolutely UNABLE to blow ANY of the fires out via sound (which, as people who watched me operate it at flip, is saying a heck of a lot).
Next up -- cut off the OTHER end, strap on another gas chamber, one-way valve, and speaker, and double-feed it with double sound drive (both in and out of phase). That will be next weekend, and I'll make video of that.
All in all, a good week vacation.
Oh, and I played games with Nik, napped, and stuff, too.