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Phased Array RADAR
This IAP I had the opportunity to participate in a phased array RADAR course taught by MIT Lincoln Labs. Our team was named winner (best imagery) by the director of MIT LL, Dr. Eric Evens. I’ll follow up with a more detailed post, until then, click through for a video.
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NI USB-6009
So I was handed a National Instruments USB-6009 and I had to tear it down. It’s a fairly nice four layer design, with only a few major components. The board is marked USB-600X and there is an un-populated header – can a USB-6008 be easily upgraded to a USB-6009? On the right, we see a […]
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How to Make (almost) Anything
Duplication of my final post for HTMAA. Grand overview of my final project and a few greatest hits. Teaser! Quick preview of my final project, but first some “greatest hits”. I put most of this work in the content repo, the pictures link to the respective project pages. FabISPkey FabISP remixed. I remixed the FabISP […]
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HTM(a)A Sneak Peak
It’s drawing to a close, check out my MAS.863 How to Make (almost) Anything class wrap up/ final project.
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Spec An Radio
So, I’ve managed to coax my spectrum analyzer to play FM radio! It’s actually fairly straight forward, attach an antenna, with some physics, I found that a 100M monopole is around three meters long. I soldered a piece of 22ish gauge wire to a SMA connector. In the Aux Ctrl menu turn ON demodulation, and […]
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Anduino
The Anduino is a pretty streightforward clone of a Sparkfun Arduino Pro Mini and Ed Baafi’s Fabkit/Fabduino. Just as Ed did, since there is no 8/16Mhz oscillator in the fab inventory, I used the internal oscillator. This is an 8M oscillator that fits on this board. I felt compelled to put together an Arduino clone […]
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T+V
This week, with help from Alex Olwal and Julia Ma, I finally managed to scratch a project itch that has been lingering since the spring. The installation uses crowd sourcing to actively build a tangible visualization of attendee demographics. A world map covered by transparent LEGO baseplates stands at a conference, and bowls of transparent […]
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EAGLE Tools Revisited
I revisited the tools I previously put together to process EagleCAD files for manufacture. I extended my export tools to generate all the gerbers required for most major board houses (like Advanced Circuits) and PNGs required for Fab modules (used by the Media Lab’s Modella). As icing on the cake, I also wrote a python […]
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FabISPkey
This semester, I’ve been fortunate enough to take Neil Gershenfeld’s How to Make (Almost) Anything. For one of the first assignments, we’ve been tasked with fabbing (routing on the modella and stuffing) Neil’s FabISP which is based on David Mellis’s FabISP which is based on Limor’s USBTinyISP which is based on Dick Streefland’s USBTiny. I […]
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EAGLE Makefiles
After getting a a little frustrated with generating boards for manufacture (particularly Advanced Circuits barebones), I banged out a quick Makefile to speed the compilation. This of course will work best on Unixy systems, I use it on my Macbook Pro with Macports. The makefile depends on (of course) GNU Make, gerbv, and EAGLE. I […]
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Instek GDS-820C Teardown
Teardown of the Instek GDS-820C oscilloscope on a lazy Friday afternoon. It’s a fairly interesting design, two layer boards, no parts are leadless. The finest pitch components are the Altera FPGA and the Freescale CPU. Definitely “older” technology than a modern Tek or Agilent scope. Looks like a prototype I might build. It’s a good […]
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Cypress FX2 on OSX
Getting Ben’s (derivative of David’s) SSRP to work under OSX with modern GNU radio libraries, and have a few notes. To build firmware for FX2 chips – which are 8051 cores, you need SDCC. I got it from MacPorts. sudo port install sdcc To program FX2 parts on Linux, use fxload, a part of the […]
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HP 5257A Transfer Oscillator
First teardown under my new documentation rig, a HP 5257A Transfer Oscillator. The 5257A is really a remarkable piece of equipment, a magnificent example of Hewlett Packard’s mastery of both mechanical and electrical engineering. Despite performance to 18GHz, the insides of the transfer oscillator are just as familiar to watchmakers as electrical engineers. The closeups […]
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Documentation
I put together a rig to document what runs across my desk, so hopefully more posts in the future! The setup is composed of a Magic Arm attached to an AutoPole with a Super Clamp. The camera I’m using is a Canon A710 IS modified with CHDK. I built a simple USB remote release based […]
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Stacked Resistors
On the back side of an infrared illuminator. I guess they populated this by hand…
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MIT CBA Fab Modules on OSX
So, I’ve managed to build the MIT CBA Fab Modules on OSX. After many requests, I’ve put up a brief description of how I did it. In Niel’s code, the makefab script builds the makefile which in turn builds the code used to generate tool paths for the Modella, vinyl sign cutter etc. First, using […]
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Graff
Mike and I decided we wanted to brew up a hard cider for the winter. In contrast to most commercial American ciders, we wanted to put together a hard, tart cider. The closest commercial examples we found were British ciders. We found French and Belgian ciders to be nice, but we didn’t really like their […]
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Chiller
Late night can cooler. Cold water, stirrer.