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Colors of the Internet
Allison and I had been thinking about decomposing scenes, art, and geometries into representative colors, textures, and features. Then, during an inspiring walk around the MOMA, I spotted a woodblock print (below) by Sherrie Levine. In her prints Meltdown, she decomposes paintings by Duchamp, Kirchner, Mondrian, and Monet into their constituent colors. Can you guess […]
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LeCroy AP031 Differential Probe
While setting up my lab, I’ve been reading about safety when making measurements using oscilloscopes. At first I was planning on wiring up my bench with a few isolated outlets (via an isolation transformer). Or using a GFCI to try and protect me from toasting myself when poking around off line regulators. I kept reading, […]
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Leica GZ6 Stereozoom Microscope
Been repairing quite a bit of discarded equipment recently – it’s yielded some good finds. Pulled a broken Leica GZ6 outta the trash- with cracked plastic gears (apparently like every other GZ6). It was super easy to disassemble and remove the gears – which I tried to super glue back together and use. The glue […]
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Vaisala RS80 Radiosonde Teardown
An interesting piece of gear passed across my desk, a Viasala RS80 Radiosonde. The RS80 radiosondes is a small electronic payload which is typically lofted into the upper atmosphere by a helium filled balloon. During its journey, it relays to the ground (or records) environmental information, such as barometric pressure, temperature, and humidity. Its location […]
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Star Point Grounding
I was poking around inside a D-Link DES-1228P fast ethernet managed power over ethernet (POE) switch. I’m looking into building a few pieces of equipment that are POE and curious how the “big boys” do it. Opening the device reveals a large main board with several large Marvell ASICs. The large TQFP in the upper […]
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Bitcoin Adventures
I’ve been following the Bitcoin ecosystem for a few years now, and seeing as a coin is now worth well north of 100USD, I decided to finally explore bitcoin wallets and mining under OSX. What are Bitcoins? A lot has been written about Bitcoins over the past weeks as they’ve broken the $100/฿ mark. Without […]
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Agilent E3631A Power Supply Accuracy
During the course of my thesis, the need for distraction – plus the need to save some labor inspired me to develop automated testing methods. I wrote a little previously about setting up PyVISA on OSX, but didn’t show any real examples of its use. Here, as a proof of concept, I measure the linearity […]
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I Graduated!
It’s been quiet for too long around here… since my last post, my thesis was accepted September 20, 2012 and I received my diploma early February 2012. The title of my thesis was “Low dimensionality spectral sensing for low cost material identification and discrimination”. It really took a lot out of me. I learned a […]
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PyVISA on OSX
So after some persistance, I’ve managed to get PyVISA working under OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard on a late 2008 MacBook Pro. Download and install NI VISA 5.1.2 for OSX In your home directory, create the file .pyvisarc with the contents [Paths] VISA library: /Library/Frameworks/VISA.framework/VISA Download and untar PyVISA 1.4 Install as root with easy_install […]
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Keithley 2000 DMM Repair
I’ve been shopping around for a nice bench DMM for a while now, so I bought a busted Keithley 2000 off Ebay thinking that it would be an easy repair. I assumed that all the input protection in a modern DMM should fail first to protect anything important, and all I would need to do […]
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Flying Android Project
In 2009, I was challenged by [govt agency] via GTRI to develop an Unmaned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) which is piloted by a smartphone. In particular, only the sensors on the phone may be used and the flight controller must run on the smartphone. Custom electronics were allowed to interface the phone to the airframe (PHY) […]
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GIT URL Changed
I’ve started using Cloudflare and this has required a small change in my git url. I’ve fixed the url in all posts describing my repositories. If you have been collaborating with me on a project, read on to update your repos. In the past, you might have checked out a repo from me like git […]
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LaTeX on WordPress!
Yay, now I can blog like I think… in !
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Bike Thief
So I just caught a bike thief. Here’s what happened. I roll up to the bike racks between E15 and MIT medical. No spots under the overhang, so I park near the repair station. Then I see a green bag with a pair of bolt cutters peeking out of it leaning up against the wall […]
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RoboCup Electronics Museum
When I flew home to Atlanta over Thanksgiving, I had the opportunity to visit the “RoboJackets RoboCup Electronics Museum”. Really a nice trip down memory lane. I was on the team from its inception in 2007 till I graduated in 2009. I had the opportunity to lead the team from 2007 to 2009 (system design […]
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Teaching Ale Update
After a few (far too many) weeks, we finally re-racked the Teaching Ale. It was fairly straightforward. Just as before, we meticulously cleaned and sanitized everything that will touch the young beer. We cleaned the keg and a hose. To siphon the beer, we first moved the carboy to a the counter and the keg […]
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HP 5257A Detail
I received a question from Ary Lems about the HP 5257A Transfer Oscillator I tore down a few months ago. He writes, About this one I do have a question. On one of the pictures there is a pc board with nr 05257-60211. On this pc board is an plastic srew and washer placed on […]
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Teaching Brewing
Photos from the brew courtesy of Micah Eckhardt This Friday and Saturday the Media Lab hosted its first Festival of Learning and I volunteered to teach beer brewing. I’m hoping to use this post as a repository for some of the content covered and some of the information I skipped over in the handout. This […]