DIY Daft Punk Helmet

 For Halloween 2011 I was just about to give up on making something new and just go with an existing costume when I saw a gadget blog post for Volpin Studios Daft Punk Helmet, both the helmets Volpin has built are impressive but the Thomas one looked amazing to me when it was finished.  While I am not the biggest Daft Punk fan, I knew instantly this would not only be impressive to complete, but also be a lot of fun with the required electronic engineering.  With a final costume idea in mind and about 6 weeks of time before halloween I set off on another crazy DIY project.  In the end, while the helmet was not as perfect as others, the electronics made up for it and everyone who saw it give me the thumbs up. (See the build video at the bottom for more pictures)

Fist off I did a lot of research into how other people have made helmets.  Besides Volpin, tekparasite also had interesting build ideas and a lot of documentation.  Between them, many youtube videos and forums, I had more then enough information to plan out what I wanted to do.  Basically it boils down to three options for the helmet itself. There are high end solutions involving casting and molds, which have amazing results, but take too much time and would cost a lot.  Then there is the option to buy an existing mold, saving a lot of time, but still costing a lot.  Finally there is the cheap way of using cardboard and/or other helmets as a base.  I decided that my goal was to go with the cheap option and make the best helmet I could for around 50-60$, the end cost was closer to 75$ but I now have a lot of extra parts for future projects from buying things in bulk, so it was acceptable.

To get started I needed to get a helmet shape, to do this I searched for existing paper craft models I could use.  Luckily it was not hard to find one.  After getting the required programs to view and print the models, I had a pdf containing several pages of shapes to cut out.  I knew right away that the base size would not be large enough, so after creating a scale helmet and trying it on, I estimated that 110% scaling would cover the size I needed while not being too huge.

Next, I printed and cut out the pieces that I had rearranged and scaled in PhotoShop.  Then painstaking glued and re-cut them out of cardboard.  This gave me a sturdy base that I could build on without having to rely on fiber glass like most paper craft builders do.  I grabbed my glue gun and assembled the pieces and ended up with a base helmet that fit nicely but had room of the parts and pieces that would come later.  Because I skipped the ear pieces I cut two large round circles of cardboard and placed them inside the helmet to fill the empty spots.  Then using two soda cans I crafted the ears by bending cardboard in a ring.  Later soda can ends and plexiglass would cove the ends.

After crafting the helmet skeleton I took Bondo and smoothed out the cracks and blockly-ness of the paper craft base.  After letting it dry, I sanded for several hours with a rasp and various levels of sandpaper. Once that was round and smooth I repeatedly used a thick layer of white acrylic paint to further fill in spots, and then re-sanded.  Finally two coats of glossy black paint gave me the base helmet I needed to move on to the fun electrical parts.  (Time: two weeks of nights and weekends)

In between waiting for things to dry I created a set of gloves from black work groves and milk carton plastic.  This was covered by metal duct work tape and hot glued to the gloves.  I based the shapes off of Volpin's glove template and then adjusted it to fit a scanned trace of my hands.

Next came the part I was looking forward to.  I had already ordered 500 3mm red leds, 10 MAX7219CNG chips and other assorted leds and parts off of ebay before starting work on the helmet as I knew it would take 2-3 weeks to get them from China.  By the time I had the helmet ready everything had arrived.  I used my heat gun to bend a strip of plexiglass into shape and then carefully drilled 256 pairs (that is 512 individual holes!) using a 1/32 inch bit.  A rotery tool or drill press would have been nice, but a hand held drill got the job done without any accidents.  I used a paper template to mark each hole before drilling.  Then I trimmed and soldered each red led into vertical column, then after completing each column I would bend the annode and connect it to the previous led in the row.  This created groups of 64 leds, the cathode wires holding in the leds vertically and the annode wires holding the group together in rows.  After finishing each group of 64 I used some spare ribbon wire to build the connectors.

Each of the four groups had two connectors and which went to a separate MAX7219CNG soldered to a protoboard. Each board and headers where custom designed and hand soldered.  I could have ordered a custom PCBs, which would have shaved several days of work off, but that would have cost a lot more, so in an effort to keep the build costs down I did everything by hand.  There is a lot in information on using the 7219 chips with arduinos and the Led Matrix library does most of the hard work for you.  On the hardware end, basically they are chained together and require a resistor and two capacitors, beyond that it is just a matter of connecting the right pins to the right led row.  Once that was finished, I connected everything tested out a few patters and attached the array to the inside of the helmet.  Using some night shade car tint spray and another bent piece of plexiglass, I had the helmet all covered and almost finished.

The final parts where the ear and side lights.  Using a separate fifth MAX7219CNG, I created 4 led  protoboards (two for each side/ear), the side lights where directly connected back to the 7219 board and the ear lights had separate headers as they needed to be threaded through a slit in the cardboard.  I mounted the side lights and build a little reflective holder that would defuse the bright leds of the colored rows.  Next, I had to cut out and round some plexiglass by hand to match the ear shapes.  The ends of soda cans covered the plexiglass and ear leds.  Then I masked off each exposed plexiglass piece on the helmet with masking tape and gave the entire thing a final coat of  rustoleum metallic spray paint.  Once again I could have worked out some form of chroming as others have done, but chroming along would add $100+ to the build price.  The metallic paint actually looks quite good despite laking the complete mirror reflection, the only issue is that it needs light spray passes, takes several days to dry, and can still be dulled by touching even after dry.  I just used the ears to put on the helmet, which kept the dulling in one place and avoided touching the main body as much as possible.  The lights tend to distract people anyway so it is not much of a problem unless you plan to wear this all the time. (Time two weeks of nights and weekends)

The final touches where the power supply and the programing.  I used a pololu power regulator as it covers the amperage requirements and could be reused as a breadboard power supply.  For the power supply, 8 AA batteries supplied 12v  to the regulator and where still ok power wise after all the Halloween festivities where over.  Then I wired up an arduino to all of the MAX7219CNGs and also to a separate row of three buttons that I could use to switch patterns. The arduino sketch can be found here.  It was interesting as I figured out a nifty way to use a array of vertical 8 bit char and then bit shift them into rows based on an offset, this let me create a quick java program to visually create the patterns and then enter the numbers into the array.  A few patterns needed special handling code but most where covered.  I have to give tekparasite extra credit, as while I had a few animations in mind I was looking for extra example from the actual Daft Punk helmets, he had actual videos of many very creative choices, some of which I included in my build.  (See video below!)

The end result was everything I expected.  The helmet had a few cosmetic inperfections here and there, but looked fine over all and the light effects made sure no one noticed right away as everyone was too busy watching in surprise.  I also believe I get some partial bragging rights as unless someone has not posted their project, this is the first DIY helmet to include all four working light sections (front, both side parts and ears) and be on youtube/blog for others to use as a reference.  Both Volpin and tekparasite who have have impressive helmets (with actual crome finish) where missing one of the four in the end result videos that where posted.  Hopefully this will inspire others to not give up due to cost and make budget restricted but still functional helmets in the future.

XBox 360 Dual Firmware Mod

After months of having a 360 that works except the Samsung dvd drive, I finally bought a spare dvd drive off of ebay and decided to try and transplant the firmware from my broken driver to the new one. While I am at it, I might as well make it dual boot between the good firmware and another hacked firmware for other obvious reasons.  Now you might be asking why go through all the trouble when you can just flash the new drive.  Well my old 360 dvd drive was quite dead, to the point that I literally ripped the plcc chip off of the board with full intention of doing a complete brain transplant!  Otherwise there was no easy or cheap way to get the drive firmware key.

The above picture was all the remained of the old board, the traces where ripped up by the epoxy that was placed quite evilly on, around and under the plcc chip.  I had removed this a few months ago and has it in a safe place, waiting to have the time to use it.  Now, if you are reading this planing to do the same, I give you a big warning, if you see blank epoxy on your board, give up now.  My replacement drive had clear epoxy that was nice and soft after heating with a heat run.  However the black on the original board only got brittle making it impossible to not break parts.

Next I went online looking up everything I could find on the firmware.  On the Samung drives, It is stored on a plcc chip next to the large hole in the board. Each chip has a unique key, so you need to have this before you can use any other drives. With my drive not talking to anything, transplanting the entire chip was my last resort.  Next I found http://dwl.xbox-scene.com/tutorial/tightmod360installation.pdf it contained the steps to dual boot my old chip with the new drives one.  This way I did not need to try and remove the current plcc chip, which may destroy the board in the process.  However, it is quite a bit more work and on a whole different difficulty level.  Another warning, do not try to attempt a dual firmware setup unless you have a good soldering iron with temperature control and a very steady hand.  It is easy to get solder everywhere!

I started out with thin ethernet wire to connect the two chips. I connected all of the top lead first but quickly found it was too thick and needed to use the tiny individual strands from twisted christmas tree light wire.  Then it was easy to use long strands and connect the bottom lead first and then stretch and line it up with the top lead.  After each pair of pins where all attached correctly on a side I would trim the extra wire.

This was very delicate work, and preparing the leads was not easy, more then once I needed to carefully clean up a bridged solder connection between leads or wires.  Also it was important to completely tin each strand before trying to connect it, otherwise it would not stick.  The above picture shows how small each wire needed to be, with a penny for reference. These pictures where shown with a magnifying glass.

After that following the rest of the guide was easy, I found some spare 10K resistors and attached them to pin 4 and 15 as the guide shows.  This may differ from what others need to do, as I later needed to switch it to pin 5, as 4 caused the driver to make the 360 show a E65 error. Luckily I was persistent and kept poking otherwise I would have just assumed the drive was dead due to some error on my part.  So you may need to play with pins to get it to work on different drives.

After that I closed up the drive and connected it to the 360.  The drive boots up and reads disks, the old firmware reading games, and the new firmware without the correct key only shows everything as a dvd.  Next I need to get the drive key, but that is for another day.

X-TRONIC 4000 Digital Hot Air Rework & Soldering Station

A little while ago I purchased an X-TRONIC 4000 off ebay to upgrade from my simple craft soldering iron.  Now that I have use it a few times I can properly review it.  First off, after doing my initial research there are far better soldering stations you can purchase, however they will be far more expensive. I was not willing to pay $250+, so I was limited to the this and the Aoyue 906 which did not include as much and was a little more expensive. So with that in mind, for a hobbyist who is looking for something better than your cheap plug in iron, the X-TRONIC 4000 is not a bad choice.  It also includes a very good warranty, and while still being manufactured in China at least it is held up to some level of ISO standards and is sold by a US based company. I was able to grab one for a little over a hundred dollars, so it is not so cheap that you would expect it will break in a few uses.  Plus the included backup heating elements prolong that even further.

The hot air gun works as expected, and was pleasantly quiet.  At worst I was expecting a fish tank pump.  At high air flow, which was way too much for circuit work, you could hear the light hum.  Yet at a normal air flow settings it was rather quiet, at the lowest it was whisper quiet.  I had no problem removing a surface mount chip off an old test board with some careful blowing and medium heat.  I expect any future part removal will now be done with hot air, as it make it very simple, or possible in the case of surface mounted chips which cannot be easily removed with an iron.  I also used it to heat some epoxy for removal and that worked as well.  With the three different air tips that are included, you will be set for basic use, though it does not beat a specialty nozzle for even heating.

The hot air gun is nice, but the main feature is the iron.  After using a craft iron for even delicate work getting a serious one is amazing to use. The soldering iron heats up in about 30 seconds, which is so much faster than the three to five minutes my craft iron would take. Also using the lcd read out and the control dial, the temp is more or less kept constant.  It is important to note that the temp displayed vs what is always applied still depended on the surface area in use . The ten included tips range from tiny to very thick.  For small leads, the small tips worked well, however for a lot of normal use you will need to use a thicker tip which keeps the temp far more even.  I understand this is not so much a flaw, as it is something normal with any iron of this level and power draw.  The included stand is nothing to brag about but it does keep the iron handy and away from burnable objects.  The cleaning sponge is thin and pointless, I will be replacing it with a brass sponge eventually, until then I will stick with a damp paper towel.  In short, this will be the start of many "why did I not do this earlier" life moments.

Overall if you are looking at getting a hot air gun and nice soldering iron this should work for you.  If you do not need the hot air then there are more actuate irons you can get for the same price.

Converting an PIR outdoor light circuit for 12v

Being lazy I did not want to turn on and off my circuit tree on my desk at work, so I was just leaving it off.  However, with the Christmas season upon us, people started to bug me about not leaving it on, so I decided to get creative and convert a PIR circuit from an old outdoor motion activated spotlight to run on a safer 12v and control the tree on my desk.

First off, after eagerly prying the circuit from the lamp I quickly realizes that it did not use a transformer like I was expecting.  Most newer lights I looked at did.  So I went out looking for a datasheet on the PIR controller ic, but the one used here is either too old, or is just unlisted. This was not going to be as easy as I was expecting it to be.

This was trouble some as every PIR ic has different pinouts, and some use a first/second amp other do not.  So I went back to the basics and traced out the circuit with my multimeter and carefully sketched out the paths so I could better see what was going on.  The first thing that stood out was the four large diodes which are clearly a rectifier, to convert ac to dc.  After this, it passes through the biggest resister (blue tube) I have ever seen, which drops the voltage down to around 13v for the relay which is switched by a transistor.  From there it is dropped further to 8v and smoothed out by a capacitor for the rest of the circuit. Which is odd as an ic usually takes 5v max, but as it was unlisted I only have the trace readings to go on, so I will assume it was built to handle a larger voltage.

After figuring out this much, it was not hard to see where I would need to apply 12v to have the circuit work exactly the same but at a far safer voltage.  So after removing a small resister to break the original +120v (black) path, I now had an isolated PIR circuit and a separate circuit switched by the relay.  Right now the relay will only deal with 9v, but this leaves it open to once again control higher voltages, for potential use at Halloween.

You can see the final result below.


I am quite happy that my digital/analog circuit skills have not gotten too rusty with all the programing I tend to focus on.

Adding an AUX to a Clarion PF-2597A-B

Originally I had planned to just buy a new after market head unit for my car, do to its lack of an AXU input for my iPod, however after seeing nothing within my price range that was decent looking, I realized that I may have been on the wrong track.  While doing some research, I stumbled upon this forum posting about adding an AUX input to an old car tape deck.  After digging some more on this topic I found that people have been successful with hijacking both the AM/FM and CD input on stereo circuits.  The CD methods seemed like a bad idea due to needing a silent cd to play constantly, which is just asking to wear out the stereo cd drive.  So I went with hijacking the FM audio out pins of the stereo.  The interesting part about using the AM/FM method is that due to the Auto Gain Control built in, when a MP3 player is connected, its stronger signal seems to overrides the AM/FM on the board and effectively shuts it off without any extra effort on your part. From what I have read, this seems to be the case with most car stereos, however your results may vary.

Here is a good place for the standard warning:  I did this project knowing it could potentially destroy the stereo and/or the mp3 player, if you attempt the same thing or something similar you face the same risks.  Do not blame me if you break anything by following my information or pictures, I express no warrantee on this information's correctness or usability.

I started off my taking the stereo apart and looking up the chips on the reverse side of the board shown here.  There is a lot of mixed opinion on where the best place to connect to is, and it seems to vary from different stereos, so it is best to see what you are working with first. While this gave me some good extra info, I quickly realized that this was not necessary, due to the pinout being printed on the back of the board.  I did some voltage checks while the stereo was plugged in and running, the FM outs gave a normal voltage variation between 0v and 3.6v, which means that I would not overload anything with a mp3 player's small voltage output. After figuring out on paper what I wanted to do and finishing my voltage checks, I did a quick test run with a temporary 1/8 inch plug connected and an older expendable mp3 player.  While I was expecting this to work out, it was exciting to hear it function, when the player was plugged in, the FM cut out and the mp3 was clearly playing unplug it and the FM comes back as normal.  While the signal is stronger, the max voltage from the mp3 player is lower than the FM, so the mp3 player needs to be set to at least half volume to be heard well, not bad, but definitely not perfect.  There may be a better connect point that uses a lesser voltage, however I am sticking to the ones on the edge due to it being easy to access and solder.

After testing and finding out that this did indeed work, I drilled a hole in the back of the stereo and added a 1/8 inch plug and then ran a short shielded audio cable to the pins I used in my test.  The board picture above has the final wiring, which pokes out of the side and is soldered to the correct pins coming from the separate AM/FM board and ground which is a larger solder point connecting to the metal housing.  By using a shielded cable inside the radio, it will prevent any extra interference due to the wire stretching across the board from the back panel. After doing one final check, I reassembled the stereo, now with its new AUX plug.  Finally, I put together a separate cable to plug into this AUX port and run it to a more convent location in the center console.

The wire runs down from the back of the stereo and connects to another 1/8 inch plug from which I can easily plug in an mp3 player or another other audio device. After making sure everything was in order I snapped all the console panels back into place leaving just the new 1/8 inch port left in view.  This is nice, because it means that there is no obvious indication that the stereo is no longer stock, making it a far less likely target for theft, not that the radio is easy to get out to begin with.

After doing some actual road testing and letting it run for a while using my expendable mp3 player, I am quite satisfied as well as confident that there is no chance it will harm my iPod, so now I am ready for the commute on monday morning.  I must say that the only down side to this setup is that the mp3 volume needs to be over 50% and the stereo volume ends up being about 12 higher than cd or radio (25-30 vs 10-15 out of 40).  Not that this is a problem, it is just the only flaw to the design and may be fixed by using a closer point to the volume control chip.  Either way, I am happy and my car now has a handy AUX port, all at the cost of $3 for 1/8 inch plugs.

Other possible options instead of this and costs...

DIY AUX ($0-$50 depending on your extra parts supply)

Clarion CeNET adaptor EA1251B ($99 and cannot have CD Changer option installed)

New separate head unit with AUX ($60-$500)

Powering an Xbox 360 dvd drive

While I was waiting to be able to power my experimental/half working xbox 360 I decided to see if I could easily get the firmware keys off the drive (Note: this not for piracy, the dvd drive is not working and I would like to replace it at some point.) First off, the dvd drive is a sata drive, however it does not run off of a sata power connector, instead it has a 12 pin connector where 10 of the pins are used. Pins 1-2 are not used on the connector, pins 3-4 & 6 are +3.3v, pins 5,7,9,11 are ground, pin 8 is +5v and finally pins 10 & 12 are +12v. I was able to figure out this pinout using the post here.

Sadly, I was not able to get the key off the drive this time, however I was able to create a simple xbox 360 dvd power adaptor which was powered by a standard computer power supply, or in my case a power adaptor for powering a single computer drive. In the picture you can see my simple power supply on a breadboard, most of this is straight forward, the only tricky part is you need a 3.3v regulator to drop the +5v line down to the 3.3v the drive needs. You can see the regulator at the top of the board with two capacitors keeping the output clean at a stable +3.3v.  I did not use a switch to eject the drive, because from what I can tell, the drive motor controller is damaged and will only make a minor movement before freezing and not responding again.

While an interesting side project, it was somewhat pointless as now I can just use the 360 to power it. However it was convent to move this smaller adaptor vs a whole opened 360. Eventually I will take another stab at getting the key off, but not till I have had my fill of xbl arcade.

Coinco 9300-CL Reverse Engineering Part 1

A while back I was able to get several parts to a vending system off of school surplus. Which I was quite excited about, because it was something I had always wanted to be able to play with. However I quickly ran into problems in trying to use it as there was nothing online to help. But, finally with the arduino that I now have, I believe I can make it all work. So I started out by seeing if I can get just the coin changer to interface with my computer via the arduino.

The coin changer is a coinco 9300-CL which from what I can tell is the same as the 9300-L model, but with it requiring 117 instead of a lower voltage. Both seem to have the option of a 15 pin or 12 pin plus, the CL has a 12 pin plug. Using the service manual found here. It explains the pinout and basic operation of the coin changer. However the image for any details of the communication is rather blurry and almost impossible to understand, so I had to do some poking to figure out what was what. To start out the 12 pin plug has 6 vertical pins and then 6 more pins that alternate vertical and horizontal. Pin 1 is the first vertical pin of the all vertical group, starting on the left and then 2 in the middle and finally pin 3 on the right. The rest of the pins follow suit in numbering from left to right on each row. Luckily I had a connector that came from the vending device, so I simple had to use my multimeter to find the connected point on the female connector for the main board. Which was nice as it had the two 117 volt pins removed so I could not accidentally destroy anything!

Using the service manual I have compiled a much easier to read version for the pinout as it was on the female header end of the plug.  You will notice pin 10 and 12 are missing as there is no need for them because another pair of separate wires run to my power supply for those pins.  For basic use it looks like you simple need pin 1 and 2 hooked up to +5 and ground on the arduino and then 3 to a digital output pin and 4 and 5 to digital input pins.  Pin 3 is your TX pin for the serial communication where pin 5 is the RX.  However pin 4 is used as an interrupt that signals when data is going to be sent.  Sadly the service manual only covers a single example of when a coin is used.  This states that when a coin is entered it will send an interrupt to the controller via pin 4 and then wait for a signal on pin 3, which after receiving it will finally send a message with information on the coin and other states.  This is nice, but what I needed is how to connect to it at startup as well. It looks like when the coin changer is first turned on it sends a status request to the controller and will not fully activate until the request is answered.  This is preventing me from actually using it in any way.

So to get around this I hooked everything up to the controller board I already have, that came with the parts, and started intercepting the communication between the coin changer and the controller, using my simple oscilloscope and the arduino to read the serial communication.  For the most part the serial communication is simple enough, however I have yet to figure out the actual protocol used.  From what I have seen online I believe the 9300-CL uses some form of the MDB protocol however I have not been able to quite narrow it down to the 9 bits it should be using if that is the case.  I have tried many different timing setups in order to catch the correct bits, 2400 and 3300 microsecond delays between bits seem to get the best results so far, which I would happily use, if not for the fact that I also need to talk to the coin changer, not just read what it spits out.  So I am now waiting for a reply from coinco tech support to see if they can shed some light on the matter, otherwise it will be a slow process of trial and error till I get the right timing and figure out the correct protocol.

iBook Photo frame Controls

I already had the frame and iBook screen setup and running from my iBook Photo frame project, however it required a keyboard and mouse to really do anything, this is a problem. So I had been planing on trying to add controls at some point, however as usual this was not as easy as I had hoped. The ibook keyboard is connected via a flexible printed circuit, which means that soldering is out of the question and conductive epoxy would cost me money. My next idea was to attach wires under the connectors and use some kind of clamp to keep it connected. So I carefully removed all the keys and extracted the plastic switch membrane but that idea went out the window when upon trying to part the two membrane sides it also ripped a few of the printed circuits... sigh.

So left with a non functioning circuit I finally opted to cut off just the connector ribbon after getting the correct pinout; tracing it reminded me of my ddr pad controller project. Once I had the pinouts I had to think of some way to connect wires to the conductive paint. After a few failed ideas I finally settled on crimping small coper connectors onto the exposed paint. With a magnifying glass and a fine point xacto knife I carefully scrapped off the top layer of thin plastic glued to the thicker back which the circuit wires are printed on. After that I cut a small strip of copper and bent it into a U shape and crimped it on with pliers. I tested the connection with my multimeter after each one. I had to be careful that each connector was only a small strip, as too big and it would not crimp on properly.

Finally I used some extra cat-5 to get the six wires I needed, for the up, down, enter and esc keys to control xbmc, which I had loaded on it after enjoying the xbox version so much. Then I attached the lead wires to slightly larger clips to crimp the smaller ones in. I did not dare solder to the smaller clips because they might melt the plastic, so I figured this would work best. Finally I put it all back together and tested it. Sadly I did not have any buttons to finish up the project with, so I will leave that up for part three in the future. At least now I have a workable way to connect printed circuits to wires, which I bet will come in handy in the future.

Jyetech oscilloscope DIY KIT

A while back on gizmodo they had this oscilloscope kit for $33 from SeedStudio, which I had planed to purchase and try my hand at putting together for a while now. If it worked, although simple, it would work well for the basic circuit projects I occasionally work on. Also it may allow me to finally use the coin and dollar bill collector I have laying around. Oh, and if your are not sure what an oscilloscope is or why you would want one, click here



So after two weeks of shipping from Hong Kong it arrived and I got to work. First off I had to break down and buy some thin solder (0.32), as the thick kind (if you know me you have probably seen it) I am used to using for everything just would not cut it this time. Looking back I probably should have gone with an even thinner diameter and also grabbed some liquid flux as well, as there where a few places that the solder just refused to stick to easily. However the hardest part of the whole project was the tiny components. It was almost frightning how small most of the resistors and capacitors where when I opened the kit, and there are a lot of them to solder in very small places very close together. Going slow it took over nine hours to get everything connected and working, but was worth it in the end. Check out the picture below to see what I am talking about!



When everything was in place on the back of the board I plugged it in and checked the voltage and everything looked okay, but it was slightly unnerving as there was no way to completely tell if it would work when the panel was connected. Luckily after finishing the front side and adding the covers, I powered it up and low and behold the boot loader showed up and started graphing. Then after playing with it for a while I was satisfied that I had connected everything correctly and it was functional.

The image below is what the finished back may look like, however my kit was slightly different in that it had a few changed parts. I must confess that my connections where less nice and more painful spiky, but for my first big SMD soldering job I think I did quite well.




You can grab your own kit from SeedStudio in do it all yourself ($33), do only a little of it ($36), or already done ($49) flavors. Also I highly recommend looking at this site for more detailed pictures. I know I would have been in worse shape with out them. My final advice, you should to go with the SMD exempt kit for 3 dollar more unless you really want bragging rights. ^_^ as it quickly gets very annoying for several hours.

Simple Rectifier

In one of my my side projects to do some research on alternative energy I had a bit of fun playing with a spare AC motor that was lying around. I have wanted to construct a wind generator for a while now, however still do not have the parts, sadly motors do not work well as then require high speeds and torque to get any decent current. Still I wanted to see just how bad it was.

I had hooked it up to my multimeter and spun it. However I was confused for a second as the meter was reading all over the place, somewhere from -47 to 38. Suddenly I realized that of course it would do this, it is AC. So off I went and grabbed one of the old dead circuit boards from one of my parts drawers and pulled a few diodes off. If I was going to be able to poke around further I would need a Rectifier to convert it to DC. So a little while later I had my rectifier build and hooked up. Now I was able to get a decent reading around 0.05V, which is rather small. Later I hooked up a capacitor so I could charge it up as well, not that you can really do much with 0.05V anyways. Still it was a fun little experiment and gave me an excuse to build a simple rectifier.

RCA to S-Video Converter

A small side project that I had worked on over the break was a S-Video to RCA adaptor. I had wanted something that would not only send all the video outputs from the receiver to the tv as it is set up to do, but to the projector as well. I do not do a lot of projector gaming as it is a bulb life waster, but still it is still nice to have the ability, and it lookd like a interesting project. So I started searching for instructions online, and while there was little information out there, one place I did find is here. The only problem was that the instructions are a bit fuzzy and the pictures do not help, so it took quite a bit of time to get the right pin out.

See the above pin out, which is how I have it wired, and for what I need it seems to work quite well. Also the ceramic capacitor I used was not the exact one specified in the instructions, instead it was a 221B, however it was mentioned "values form around 400 pF to around 10 nF should work somehow acceptably." so I was not concerned as it falls in that range. Plus it was the best I could rip off of an old circuit board laying around.

Now I must say that as was warned, the video quality is not amazing, but it works and was completely free, made from spare parts laying around, so beggars cant be picky. Also I think it would look better if it was S-Video converted to RCA, not the other way around like I am using it for.