About Me

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

Twitter/Facebook feed

T-4 mins to SpaceX launch http://t.co/riW46qbx

1 day ago

Wohoo, users of <IE7 on the site has dropped to 3.6%

2 days ago

newline characters are the bane of my life \n

3 days ago

Don't visit Stack Overflow for about 6 days, massive banner at top saying "You're Back!". Needy much?

4 days ago

My stopwatch arrived :) http://t.co/PDyD4tj9

1 week ago

Suddenly I'm being targeted by 'Stop Smoking' ads. What prompted this Google?

3 weeks ago

Somehow this just seems wrong. $isDate?' - '.nicetime($child, true):'';

3 weeks ago

Magnets :) http://t.co/RgMhrRuS

3 weeks ago

Buy a Mt Ruapehu Season Pass & enter to win a SUBARU XV! http://t.co/BBtAvhq6 #LoveWinter

3 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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Read On>>

7 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....

Read On>>

7 months ago | Comment! | Permalink

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....

Read On>>

8 months ago | Comment! | Permalink

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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8 months ago | Comment! | Permalink

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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9 months ago | Comment! | Permalink

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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9 months ago | Comment! | Permalink

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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9 months ago | Comment! | Permalink

In BCT this semester I have been working on an exciting new project involving robotics and bioprinting.

Check out the main site at http://deltabioprinter.zeroth.co.nz/

At this stage it is all software infrastructure and planning, next semester is when the real excitement will begin - building the robot.

11 months ago | Comment! | Permalink



This project was completed for Smart Systems at BCT. We developed a system which hosted a webserver on the boat (using an arduino with ethernet shield), which was relayed through wifi with custom made antennae to a local webserver on a laptop. The two webservers traded information asynchronously to give the user on the laptop realtime control of the boat through a webpage interface.

Read On>>

11 months ago | Comment! | Permalink

Today I was really only working on the final stages of the project to get it completely ready for presentation. I tweaked the software, re-jigged the space, and got everything going at once for the first time :)

2 years ago | Comment! | Permalink