Episode 1

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The original audio for this episode [49:23] has been lost. Show notes preserved below.

Show Notes:

Guest: Greg Crist

Theme Music By:

MCLars: www.MCLars.com

YTCracker: http://www.ytcracker.com/

Email to ebikenerd@troyrank.com

Special Thanks to Chris Gammel and Dave Jones for the mention on The Amp Hour. I’m a big fan. Be sure to check out their show!

The Amp Hour

How to get a free LCD Monitor

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Step 1: Find a monitor in the dumpster at work

Step 2: Plug it in

Step 3: Hmm… the backlight doesn’t work

Step3: Take it apart

Step 4: Measure the input to the high voltage transformer, while being careful not to vaporize yourself on the 750V line

Step 5: Crap… ridiculously noisey

Step 6: Look at capacitors on the bus, notice that they’re bulging and leaking

Step 6.5 : replace 450uF 25V Caps with 450uF 50V caps

step 6.7: turn back on

step 6.8645988884: works like new

Step 9: Replace your crappy, 12 year old CRT

The only thing that’s badd now is frog and toad

Dance Master 5000 – Halloween 2010

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Over the past 15 years  I have had maybe a total of 4 Halloween costumes. Halloween is no doubt my favorite holiday and it was time for something new.

Halloween 2010: an excuse to build something electronic.

Lately I’ve really wanted an excuse to play around with the Arduino boards. I really love that whole movement. I’m pretty hardcore as far as electronic design goes, so I was a little apprehensive about sinking some cash into a development board aimed at ‘beginners and artists’. However, I found some “Shiftbrite” units (I2C shift register controlled, tricolor LEDs) from Adafruit.com and since these would make a great costume,  and since there was some arduino sample code that would save me hours of register programming, I picked up an Arduino Uno and 6 shift Brites.

After soldering the headers onto the shiftbrites, I connected it up to the UNO board. I did however melt one of the LEDs in the process. Damn unregulated soldering Iron…:( After downloading the Arduino IDE, I loaded the sample code,  compiled, and loaded into the Arduino. Within an hour [while listening to podcasts] I was up and running.

They weren’t kidding about the Brite part…

Next, I got a huge box from work, cut it down and added some decorative paper (actually Kerra did all that) and mounted all the junk in the box.

I also added a switch for mode changing and a bunch more little green LEDs to take up the rest of the idle ports on the Arduino.

The final result:

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