Electronics ← Tangent Audio ← Page 4

I Want to Live in Japan

Jan

2011

Because they have awesome retail electronics parts shops. Be sure to watch more at Tokyo Hackerspace.

My passion for in-car tunes goes back well over ten years, with the a half-finished (but functional) automotive MP3 player that could emulate a BMW CD changer. It seems so quaint now, but it’s key to remember that those were the days before the iPod even existed! After receiving an iPod as a gift in ...

USB Pendant Hacking 1

Apr

2010

I’ve been knee-deep in USB and LCD hacking, playing around some concepts for a control pendant for my CNC mill. It was a good excuse to exercise my rusty skills on the EZ-USB microcontroller, which I haven’t used in years, but was the basis for many projects from the past. The first experiments were to ...

Birth of the Smoke-O-Tron Enclosure

Apr

2010

Before… After… My friend Dan built the electronics for a temperature controller for his electric smoker. I figured since I have the CNC mill, it was a moral imperative for me to do some nice enclosure work for him to make the project look slick. Dan admitted his initial attempts at the case work with ...

Opto Interrupter 101

Mar

2010

It occurred to me that not everyone may have any idea what an opto interrupter is and does. Opto interrupters are small sensors, used to detect the presence or an absence of an object. The sensors are typically U shaped, and contain an infrared LED and a phototransistor responsive in the infrared band. Phototransistors are ...

Groove Homes

Mar

2010

After more work than I anticipated making the Y homing sensor mounting block and making a bracket and sensor setup for the Z axis, tearing down half of the machine, rewiring, adjusting/loc-titing/rebolting, circuit hacking, and other general tomfoolery, the machine has functional homing capability! I ended up using the second block I had made when ...

Home Is Where You Hang Your Hat

Mar

2010

Unfortunately, back in October, I discovered that my level of conversion kit for my mill did not include the hardware for home sensors for each axis. Everything was there, but for a few small brackets and mounting blocks, and the actual optical sensors themselves. I asked whether the company would simply send me the CAD ...

Pendant Links

Mar

2010

So I don’t lose these links, here are some fancy advanced pendants that someone has implemented for EMC2, along with the underlying software necessary. I have already experimented a bit with hidcomp, trying out a USB gamepad to drive my mill around. HIDComp GenericHID Fancy Lathe Pendant

Shop Reorganization, Part I of XXIV

Mar

2010

This weekend, I started the major effort of cleaning and reorganizing my basement on the “clean” (i.e. non-wood shop) side. I decided to move my electronics lab bench around, and move the mill into the room which used to serve as my storage/electronics area. After two days of work, I’ve got the mill set back ...

USB Host Mode on Motorola Droid

Feb

2010

It’s good to note that someone’s been making some progress getting USB host mode to work on the Droid… I have a few ideas for things to do with this, though it seems like they’re all going to involve rooted phones to be useful.