Like I said last post, I’m going to be posting random stuff here, so get used to it.
I’m a big music fan, I am always playing something whether in the car or on the PC. My main genre is rock and punk. Sub genres include post-hardcore, pop-punk, classic rock, 80s rock, hard rock, alternative rock, etc. Anything with a solid beat, good riff, guitar and good lyrics. I also like Techno, kinda an oddball but it’s high energy and goes well with coding. Right now I’m rocking some Senses Fail.
If anyone else out there likes music when they work but doesn’t want to be tethered to a desk via normal headphones, check out some bluetooth headphones. I got a pair of Motorokr S9-HD headphones a while ago and I freakin love them. A full charge lasts for like 6-7 hours, so you can rock pretty much all day at work. I work with car systems, so I am always working on the PC, then the car, then back to the PC. These things don’t fall down, are light and sound pretty good, I know I am not at a live show, but they sound better than any other headphones I’ve had.
I use a version of this AZiO adapter with Windows, it works well and has a pretty good range
I’ve also used the Motorola s805 over the ear headphones, they last forever and the sound is great
I had a realization over the past few days. I realized there is a bunch of stuff I do that never makes it to full projects and write ups but would be pretty cool to post online for fellow electronics and software peoples. Then I wished I had a personal blog. Then I hit myself and asked why I’m not posting here more often. So I’ve made the decision that myBitBox is going to have more short posts on cool things rather than wait for the once every 6 month post. And I’m talking about everything, so don’t be surprised to see things on cars, software, analog hardware and even “music of the moment” when I am coding.
So I’m an embedded engineer and work with PIC processors on custom hardware. This hardware is designed to be in cars, connected to other PIC boards, not connected to a PC. Because of this, the communication protocol between the boards is packeted with commands and data payloads. This works well in the system, but is kinda a pain in the ass when you want to test things from a PC. Because of this, I wrote a little terminal program in Python to wrap serial commands in packets to talk to my systems. Yesterday I was doing some research on pyserial and came across this site with a few write ups on serial packets and framing in Python.
http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2009/08/12/framing-in-serial-communications/
http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2009/07/30/setting-up-python-to-work-with-the-serial-port/
This guy has a lot of info on frame wrapping, byte stuffing and how to build a pretty robust serial receiver class, anyone who does serial with Python should check it out.
As for my python terminal program, I don’t have code I can post right now, but I do want to put something up for everyone at some point.
Holy crap! Has it really been a year? Damn, I’m not good at this whole blog thing. Eh, well can’t keep a crazy engineer down, over the past year I have been working as an embedded engineer working on battery systems for hybrid electric vehicles, really cool stuff. For some of my other projects take a look at my site on electric and vegetable oil powered vehicles: http://thesmartdrive.com
If you take a look at The Smart Drive you will see I have an electric car I built with friends and family back in 2001. A while ago the speedometer started to give out in it (hey, it is a 91) and I got the crazy idea of replacing the gauges in the dash with an LCD to show speed and cell voltage. This back burner project has started to get some traction and I wanted to share my endeavors with everyone else. Take a look at the full article!
After making the Standalone Voltage Regulator I decided to see what else could be made on one of the single IC boards from RadioShack. About a year ago I built a mini-guitar amp using an LM386 audio amplifier and a small 8 ohm speaker from an old computer, you can see the post on geeksinside.com. Since the LM386 only needs a few capacitors and a resistor I wanted to see if it can be crammed on to one of the boards. After a bit of study the answer is yes! This week I soldered the unit together and mounted it an acrylic box you can find at craft stores. I plan on doing a write up like the regulator, with part numbers and part layout, however for now I have a gallery up showing the finished product.
Here is a short list of the parts I used, for the ambitious:
- RadioShack single IC PCB
- 100 uF electrolytic capacitor
- 0.1 ceramic capacitor
- 4.7 uF capacitor
- 10 uF capacitor
- 10 ohm resistor
- 8 ohm speaker
- 25 ohm potentiometer
- 9v battery and snap
- 1/4″ mono phono jack
- LED
Here are a few links to simple amps using the LM386. LittleGem Amp CigarBox Amp
This week I dug through my electronics box and realized one of those Dual General-Purpose IC PC Boards from RadioShack would hold a LM7805 and requisite Caps. and LED very nicely. After a bit of soldering I had a working unit. Rather than just keep my new unit to myself I did a detailed write-up on how you can make this standalone regulator using parts from RadioShack!
I am also excited to announce that I have partnered with C Code Systems to provide component kits for these boards! While you can go to the store and get all the parts (any good hackers should already have most of them) C Code Systems has put together kits that include all the parts required for the project. I think this would be great for an introductory soldering or electronics course! Visit the C Code Systems Product Page
So I guess the Esquire E-Ink issues came out a little earlier than I thought! blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/09/esquire_eink_cover_hackin.html. Who knew the October issue would be release like September 8th!
I’ve been waiting for these issues since they were announced a few months ago. For those who don’t know Esquire magazine has put an E-Ink section in the cover of their October magazine, some people have already opend the cover and went over the guts. Looks like the whole thing is run using a PIC16F629! I am going to go pick one (or two) up and see what I can do with it!
Today I added myGallery to the files section of the site. This version will run from any directoy on a webserver, just upload JPGs and run convert.run. Here is the link: http://mybitbox.com/files/s1axter/mygallery.tgz; it is TARed and GZIPed.
Cool Stuff | s1axter | 
August 30, 2010 9:33 pm | 
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