Skip to main content

Mystery Unboxing

By
We recently received our second order of Surprise Boxes and Display Assortments from Electronic Goldmine, and again we made a group activity out of unboxing and sorting the parts. Afterward I combined all the sorted containers from previous unboxings, both Freeside's and my own, and started categorizing things.



The take this time was similar to last time. We got a lot of VFDs from the display assortments, which we can't use right now due to lack of a good cheap easy-to-reproduce 30-40V AC power supply, but those will be much fun later. We went with the "Super" (medium size) surprise boxes this time, to get more densely packed smaller components and less larger sparse items like the security hardware and R/C cars for last time. The choice parts this time included some high voltage relays, two-prong AC outlets, a bunch more 96x64 LCDs, a few dozen dual RJ45 jacks, some 10-segment LED bar graphs, and a lot of nice trim and dual-log pots. The bulk of the order was once again capacitors.

We are going to take a break before the next order, probably 2-3 months, so that they can cycle through their stock and hopefully provide a bit more variety next time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Capacitive-Touch Janko Keyboard: What I Did at the 2017 Georgia Tech Moog Hackathon

By
Last weekend (February 10-12, 2017) I made a Janko-layout capacitive-touch keyboard for the Moog Werkstatt at the Georgia Tech Moog Hackathon. The day after (Monday the 13th), I made this short video of the keyboard being played: "Capacitive Touch Janko Keyboard for Moog Werkstatt" (Text from the video doobly doo) This is a Janko-layout touch keyboard I made at the 2017 Moog Hackathon at Georgia Tech, February 10-12. I'm playing a few classic bass and melody lines from popular and classic tunes. I only have one octave (13 notes) connected so far. The capacitive touch sensors use MPR121 capacitive-touch chips, on breakout boards from Adafruit (Moog Hackathon sponsor Sparkfun makes a similar board for the same chip). The example code from Adafruit was modified to read four boards (using the Adafruit library and making four sensor objects and initializing each to one of the four I2C addresses is remarkably easy for anyone with moderate familiarity with C++), and
Post a Comment
Read more

Onboard Firmware of the Human Brain

By
Freesiders are continually tinkering with robotics and other such machinery .  Many of these embedded processors and firmware are becoming open source and every-more diversified in the wake of the modern Maker movement . One notable boost to the hackerspace arsenal is the Arduino (an like platforms).  This offers designers an incredible power to devise not just individual devices but even the emergence of complex, integrated systems . This evolutionary pace of modern technological systems may be significantly faster the biologic system development, but there may be a few well learned tricks yet to be mastered.  It seems that studying how nature has managed to solve many development challenges will aid in designing robotics, where efficiently counts just as much. One  challenge, that is particularly interesting, is data processing.  Artificial intelligence is labored with processing data and producing a meaningful and useful output.  When considering the increase in sensory
Post a Comment
Read more

Freesiders Hackers Collaborate in Medical / Surgical Research

By
Published in the May issue of the Journal of Foot and Ankle Surgery : " A Novel Combination of Printed 3-Dimensional Anatomic Templates and Computer-assisted Surgical Simulation for Virtual Preoperative Planning in Charcot Foot Reconstruction ." This collaboration of specialties represents an undertaking by members of Freeside Atlanta , Southern Arizona Limb Salvage Alliance , and The Podiatry Institute .  Charcot foot reconstruction remains on of the most challenging procedures in foot and ankle surgery.  These procedures are often lengthy procedures which can be riddled with complications. With the help of Freeside Atlanta Members, institutional researchers used open source Osirix Image viewer and 3D Software such as Newtek's Lightwave or Blender to create simulated surgical reductions as well as 3D printed templates.  Freeside Atlanta members assisted in providing 3D printing solutions and know-how to the project. Experimental test prints were done on a M
Post a Comment
Read more