I have now truly experienced the small.
Imagine: An LED chip, nay, SPECK, that is 0.6 x 1.0 mm in size, and only 0.2 mm thick.
That is not much different in size than the period in a 12-point font, and not all that much thicker than the paper it is printed on.
I have, however, successfully soldered two 22-gauge wires to this chip (note: the wire is 0.6 mm in diameter), one wire on either end.
And.
It worked. I made it light up.
It only took three tries, too. Fortunately, I started with 150 LEDs, so even a 1:5 loss is not going to be a problem.
Now I have to epoxy it into a bead and I'll have a glowing bead!
You may all now bask in the glory that is me.
So, did I already mention that the Boom Stick crapped out this year?
It's had a rough run -- during a photo shoot, using it to make vortex rings at high speed, the piston component fractured. The PVC glue couldn't cope with the stress of HUNDREDS of firings and just let go.
So I epoxied it back together and it worked again!
Then, at Scare, I dropped it and fractured it just above the piston mount area, where the air is managed.
So I fixed THAT, and it worked.
But, it stopped working. Stiction, it seemed to me, probably aggravated by a misalignment somewhere.
So I tried a new lubricant -- a spray-on graphite, very exciting. Nope.
It killed an O-Ring so I replaced it. I also worked up a new firing protocol, and it worked mostly okay for a while.
But no. I think, ultimately, the stiction (which can be fixed by reducing the diameter of the piston) plus the piston repair which made the O-ring groove too narrow (so the O-ring can't deform, hence making it harder to fit into the target area and eventually damaging the O-ring) conspired to make it just... not... right.
Plus the dropping, plus the long runs. This Boom Stick is now retired.
Next up -- another one! Bigger! Better! Boomier!
I had a great title for today's post ... and some great ideas for the post... or maybe I just dreamed that I did and actually didn't.
Either way, it's gone now.
I started a batch of ginger cider yesterday, er, Tuesday actually, and it's making happy bubbling sounds. I love the sound of fermentation!
I also put up the page for Scare 2008 and for Maker Faire 2008.
Scare is mostly done with strike now, at least, I've stopped working it! And we are hot on the path of next year's planning; there is way more enthusiasm post-show this year than we've usually had.
I'm also hot on the design for MakerBrain.com - my next website - and hope to have a framework in place for development and testing early 2009.
At NI work, my big EtherCAT project was finished and released pretty much at the 11th hour just before I vanished for the Scare build. So that's cool.
My next NI project will be... something new. I absolutely do not want to go work in the area that I worked in when I first came to NI, because frankly, they suck and I hated id. So I'm putting feelers out to a new area, which is in fact an old area of expertise for me. But I'm not saying, 'cause of who reads this and I don't want to jinx it.
Anyway! I may be even MORE sporadic than usual posting (sorry) because I hope to be very very busy in the coming months.
Gonna post soon I think, maybe this weekend.
Get Scare '08 pics in, write up stuff.
Gonna start working on the new website, gonna write a new wiki for it.
Lots of projects on the horizon.
Still dead from Scare; 16 hour days; 280 hours logged in October, over 370 total (from when I started paying attention).
Still more take-down to do.
Ugh.