Hi! I am Isaac Henry, but go by the name of Zak. I am a 21 year old student, studying at Auckland University of Technology, working towards a Bachelor of Creative Technologies. I also work at a biotechnology research company as web application developer
My concentration has completely derailed
20 hours agoWTF The international space station uses a mixture of imperial and metric hardware because of the differing countries of origin of parts.
3 days agoWhy must the software with the best engines have the worst UI. #WHY
5 days agoGotta love computer language manuals: "Also note that it is your responsibility to die if necessary"
1 week agoDid you know? If you were to take every page of the internet, print them out and stack them; The environmentalists would go nuts
1 week agoThat feeling when a css rule works and you have no idea why. #feelsgoodman
2 weeks agoAnyone know? PHP - access variable from error_handler http://t.co/JOh6feWN
2 weeks agoThat moment when you realise you have missed 3 revisions of a framework
2 weeks agoiPhone screwed. Doing factory reset for first time :|
2 weeks ago
I have finally finished the Arduino up to a stage that I can release a beta.
You can download it here
More info including installation, hardware setup and usage are included in the documentation.
Here is a short video showing the capabilities of the application:
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I found buried in an article on the arduino forums a technique of stopping an arduino from resetting when a serial connection is established - simply put a >100nF capacitor between GND and RESET. The arduino will no longer reset :)
3 months ago | Comment! | Permalink
I have now committed the current progress to Github - https://github.com/xiphiaz/Arduino-Debugger
Since the last post I have expanded the project from just interfacing individual sensors, to tracking the activity of all the pins on the arduino. This will allow users to have their own project code running on an arduino, and connect another Arduino running my software to the first one. The benefit of this is that the user will be able to check on their own code, to see that the digital pins are going high when expected, and that the analogue pins are receiving the expected values....
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Now that I have abandoned my curved PCB idea I am moving on to another idea that I have had.
One of the biggest frustrations with programming arduino is the lack of feedback from the more complex analogue sensors. Programmers find themselves staring at streams of numbers coming from the serial console trying to make sense of the data at the rate it is coming in (and at the rate that they can process it).
There is clearly a need for a program that graphs the pin data from an arduino so that the hardware developer can easily make informed decisions on how to handle the information that the input device they are trying to interface....
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I have had little luck with getting the copper to deposit properly. Here is a video showing the technique I tried which has the cathode as a huge piece of copper with the work anode inside it. The idea was that the copper would be pulled off the copper, and deposit onto the work piece.
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By following the Popular Mechanics article I was able to successfully deposit copper onto a film canister. There is still significant issues with the technique that will need resolving before the technique is viable for depositing copper for PCBs.
The process is shown below:
Melting candle to get paraffin for coating plastic
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For the first attempt at depositing copper I went with the classic copper deposit on coin experiment.
Depositing copper on coin
I did this so that I could work out good settings for the voltage/current. This test was successful, and I did a test to if the conductivity of the deposited copper was low enough for making a PCB.
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For smart systems we have to develop a hardware project. We have been looking into how to produce printed circuit boards with really simple DIY techniques.
The process is relatively simple, and instructions on how to do it can be found anywhere on the web.
From the outset of the project I have been interested in the limitations of printed circuit boards, especially when considering the massive quantity of PCBs in the world.
One of the things in common with all printed circuit boards is that they are flat. Invariably PCBs are printed directly on a flat surface. Occasionally there are daughter boards that sit at a right angle to the parent board, but there are no PCBs that are printed on a curved surface....
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At last I have a useful application to release for my OP-1 midi library. This is a sequencer which works by sending notes around a hexagonal grid, with the notes being triggered when going through activated hexagons.
All the controls are colour coded as per the OP-1's rotary encoders. Blue controls the selected hexagon, and pressing the blue encoder toggles the hex trigger status. Green controls the main turret, which defines where the note will go next. White controls the secondary turret which, if active, will control where the note will go next. When two turrets are active the incoming notes alternate which turret's direction to take....
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My first public application! OP-1 MIDI Mate is a simple graphical display of the OP-1 MIDI IO.
Download it here
Please note this is an Alpha release, meaning that is is probably non-functional on a few computers. It should work on OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and later. I haven't yet tested for Lion though. I tested it on a mac pro running 10.5 server, and it crashed instantly as expected. If you are 10.5 or below, sorry.
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