So I did find a clock, that wasn’t in use and the mechanism was just a tad bit too big, but I made it work. I think it turned out well. Now it is functional art.
Circuit Board Art – Functional Clock
Circuirt Board Art
While Cleaning up I came across some hardware that I’m sure I wouldn’t be using in any project. So I decided to make my own bit of art.
Creative Fatal1ty Gaming Headset Hack
I’ve been using this headset with my Xbox 360 for a while now. But I always found it so cumbersome to use by running an extension from the end of the cable up to where I hold my controller. So about 3 months ago I modified them to be the perfect Xbox headset.
I realize that many of my posts would be much more helpful if they had detailed instructions on how I was able to do what I did. This is one of those times where I wish I had taken more pictures while working on them, instead of just afterwards. I don’t even have a decent before picture.
Essentially, I removed the mic plug and cable and soldered it directly into the volume/mic control
The silver adapter, in the right photo above the mic plug, makes it so I can plug it directly into my Xbox 360 controller.
Now the distance from the headset to my controller is perfect with no more extra cables. So much nicer than what I was doing before.
If I ever get my hand on another one I’ll be sure to do a How-To step-by-step guide. And if anyone would like me to mod theirs I’ll do it for free. Just shoot me an email and we can work out the details.
Cell Phone Li-ion battery tester
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| Li-ion Battery Tester |
While working at Macalegin Electronics I discovered that many times we need to verify the charge on a cell phone battery. We have a multimeter but is a little cumbersome to use especially when testing several batteries at once.
So I had the opportunity of designing and building a Li-Ion Battery tester for quick and easy battery charge indication.
It consists of one green LED, one red LED, and adjustable leads.
When the leads come in contact with the battery the LED’s will light up as follows:
Green only – the battery charge is ~80% to 100%
Green & Red – the battery charge is between 0% and ~80%. If the green LED is noticeably brighter than the red LED, then the battery charge is between ~65% and ~80%. If the red LED is noticeably brighter than the green LED, then the battery charge is less than ~10%.
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| Adjustable Leads |
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| Internal Circuit |
Li-Ion Battery Tester – EveryCircuit
[iframe width=”560″ height=”360″ src=”https://everycircuit.com/embed/6522073815973888″][/iframe]
[iframe width=”560″ height=”360″ src=”https://everycircuit.com/embed/6522073815973888″][/iframe]
To adjust the input voltage: Select the power source in the top right corner, then select the wrench in the bottom bar. then use the wheel in the right corner to change the voltage.
Pinewood Derby – Propeller powered
A week ago my brother invited me to join him for an Anything Goes pinewood derby race. I have great memories of building these cars with my Dad and wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to relive those moments.
First I designed my car in Sketch-Up, and then built the car from a standard derby kit. (see image below)
The hardest part was building the propeller motor stand. I made that part separately and the glued it into place. Before I could glue it I had to drill holes and feed the wires for the motor through the holes.
Then to power the motor I used an old iPhone 4 battery I had laying around. To make the battery easier to use I soldered a new connector on the battery so I could easily plug it into the car and the battery charger. To finish the simple circuit, I added a switch so I wouldn’t have to disconnect the battery to turn it off.
And finally, to finish things off I added some tungsten weights to a cardboard cover painted to match the car.
I say the finished product always looks better than the sketch.
No place like localhost
This just made me laugh. And I thought it was worth sharing.
3 ways to Free up unnecessary used HDD space on Windows 7
NOTE: These methods work best for systems that have a large amount of memory (RAM).
1. Hibernation Reserved Space
Hibernation reserves HD space up to the amount of memory your system has. To disable hibernation and recover that drive space then type the following command with administrator privileges in cmd.exe.
powercfg -h off
2. Decrease Virtual memory
Similarly to hibernation the system page file or virtual memory also reserves HD space up to the amount of memory your system has. This shouldn’t every be disabled, but you can reduce it to a more reasonable size especially if you have over 4GB of memory. Follow the steps bellow.
- Right click “Computer” and click “Properties”
- Click on “Advanced system settings” in the left column
- In the “Performance” section, click on “Settings”
- Go to the “Advanced “ tab
- In the “Virtual Memory” section click on “Change”
- Uncheck “Automatically manage paging File size for all drives”
- Chose the “Custom size” radial button
- set the “Initial size (MB):” to 512
- set the “Maximum size (MB):” to 1024
- Restart your computer for changes to take effect
3. Remove Service Pack 1 backups
After installing Service Pack 1 about 4GB are used to maintain backup files. If you are certain that you will never need to revert back before SP1 then you can free up this space by typing the following command with administrator privileges in cmd.exe.
DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /SpSuperseded
Ruben fixes everything!
Let’s see… I had an old dell which came to me used and with a few problems. It was at its deathbed several times. Ruben fixed the cd/dvd drive several times. And showed me how to use different programs on my laptop. He also helped me retrieve all of my files off that laptop when it finally died. He fixed my roommate’s lamp and VCR. Oh and he also was a most useful consultant when I was picking out a new computer. Ruben works hard and always makes time to help those of us with less knowledge of electrical and technological things. He’s really good at figuring out how to fix things he hasn’t actually worked with before. Ruben is also really good at explaining what he’s doing in layman’s terms. Thank you for everything, Ruben! You’re awesome!!
~ Cassànndrè Sager
My First Car
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| 1980 Mercedes Benz 300D |
It was one of those cars that you buy from your parents because you don’t have any money. Since it was such an old car it is a collectors item. If only it was in mint condition I could have sold it, or traded it, for half the price of a new car. So aside from that I was fixing this car every week for the first two months I owned it. I really didn’t know much about auto repair other than what I learned in my small engines class in high school. But to me mechanics have a sense of order to them and I can generally figure things out. It just takes me longer than someone who has the know-how. Most of the repairs were relatively small such as vacuum lines leaking and starter problems among other things. Eventually, it was able to go for a month or two before problems would come up again. The biggest job was when the starter chewed up enough of the flywheel that it wouldn’t turn over the engine. As a quick-fix, I would just take a screwdriver crawl under the car and move the flywheel a few inches to get past the chewed up part.
But I wasn’t about to do that for very long. To properly fix the car I was either going to have to drop the transmission or raise the engine to replace the flywheel. Lucky for me, my dad had 300TD Mercedes just sitting around with a good engine for parts. Since I was going through all the trouble to raise the engine and since the other car was a turbo model with an almost identical engine, I might as well swap engines. I was excited to have a turbo diesel because that really makes a difference in acceleration. It took me about two weeks to complete the job with some help from my dad in hoisting the old engine out and dropping the new engine in. Everything seemed to work fine, for the most part. It was having some trouble shifting. Since I knew nothing about transmissions and I wasn’t about to try and rebuild a transmission on my own, I decided to spend a bit of money and have a professional take a look at it. The company called Gunbarrel Import Motors in Niwot, Co is an excellent mechanics and dealers. They are a bit expensive, but you get what you pay for. I finally had a car that was running well. And while It still had a few things that needed fixing, it served me well as my first car.
Dell Laptop Puzzle
Before I became a network administrator assistant at my high school I had a reputation among my peers that I could fix anything. So when the IT crew ran into a problem they would usually ask for my help.
In this case, they had to completely disassemble this Dell laptop to reset the bios. For whatever reason, the IT crew couldn’t figure out or didn’t care to put the laptop back together. So one of them approached me and told me that I could have the laptop if I could put it back together. In just over 30min I had it back together and booting.
The best part is that I have never taken a laptop apart before and had to figure it out on my own. Just like a jigsaw puzzle except I didn’t have a picture to look at. The hardest part was figuring out where all the screws went. So of course, there were a few left over.
Note: This great guide wasn’t available until 2010. Trust me I tried google first, It is amazing how far the internet has come in the last 10 years.