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The wait is over. I know you've laid awake at night looking out your bedroom window at that first star of the night hoping and waiting for me to sell bumper stickers. Well, kids, your wait is over.
Neodux now has a bumper sticker so you can prove how purely awesome you are. For $3.00 you can show that punk behind you at the red light or drive thru who's boss. You are. Because you know Tommy Gober.
Supply is kinda limited, so buy one. Or two. That guy in the parking garage that parked kinda funny could use a bumper sticker too. (who says bumper stickers have to go on bumpers?)
Click here to order
(...or use the link "stickers" at the top of the page) |
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tags: stickers neodux
( Comments : 1
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The Arduino microcontroller platform is probably one of the coolest things to happen to microcontroller hobbying in a long, long time. I'd seen them featured on Hack-A-Day performing various silly jobs for their programmer, I just had never taken the time to look into why people were using them or what made them unique. Last week (at the urging of Bre Pettis) I bought the Arduino Duemilanove. Wow.
First of all, the Arduino is an open, "free" (as in beer) platform running atop the plentiful (and cheap) Atmel AVR microcontroller line. The open nature of the platform allows each revision of the platform and IDE to improve. The current 2009 model is very easy to use. The documentation is pretty good and (imo, best of all) it uses the C programming language. This rounds off the learning curve quite a bit since I have more than a couple years working with C-style programming languages. Now I don't have to fool with BASIC or assembly. I really disliked the patty-cake approach that the BASIC Stamp provided (i hate BASIC), it's easy to get bogged down in assembly, and most C-compilers for microcontrollers are well over $200. The BASIC Stamp pales in comparison to the Arduino in just about every category. The Arduino is cheaper, faster, offers libraries and has a much wider audience than the Parallax BASIC Stamp. The PIC and standard AVRs have a relatively steep learning curve and is easy to get buried in the syntax.
The Arduino abstracts quite a bit for you, freeing you up to be creative and rapidly develop whatever interests you.
What's interested me lately is parsing the WWVB atomic clock signal from Ft. Collins, Colorado. Thanks to a C-Max CMMR-6P receiver chip that I got from DigiKey, I have a data stream going right into my Arduino. A little bit-twiddling and voila I now have the exact time and date. I dug up a couple of old HD44780 LCDs and now have the time displayed. Next up will be the addition of a Real Time Clock chip to hold the current time, maybe the addition of temperature and barometric pressure sensors and I'll have a neat little info station. More on that project some other time.
I also bought an Ethernet Shield so maybe I can share my future project(s) on the interwebs. There's so much that is possible, I can't recommend the little microcontroller highly enough. Check 'em out, they're only $30! |
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tags: arduino microcontroller Atmel electronics
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I recently added the KXAT1 antenna tuner kit to my Elecraft KX1. The antenna tuner allows me to automatically tune up any non-resonant antenna quickly. Construction took one evening. As usual, winding the toroids was perhaps the most tedious part, but "zen-like" while I was doing them (as I heard it put by someone). I did have trouble with the transformer. It can be tricky and I'll warn other kit builders to check out this thread if they have trouble. I also found some pictures from a japanese ham helpful, but I've since lost them. :(
After building and installing the tuner, I purchased 40ft of some "silky" 26AWG wire from TheWireMan as suggested by Elecraft. I cut the wire to give me two lengths. One length is 24ft and the other 16ft. The 24ft length is my radiating element and the 16ft acts as my ground. The tuner quickly finds a nice 1.1-1.0 match and gives me full KX1 power out (~4W). It makes for a very lightweight, field-portable antenna. I can also use my crappie poles to elevate one end if trees are unavailable.
I use a BNC-to-binding post that I purchased at EPO in Houston. While at EPO, I also picked up a small 12V 1.3Ah gel cell battery. The UB-1213 is about 3.8" x 1.7" x 2" and provides adequate power for portable QRP work. If I was going to operate for very long, I may go with a little larger capacity gel cell, but for now this makes a very lightweight and super portable setup that allows me to get one the air quickly. |
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tags: ham_radio qrp kx1 kit
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About two weeks ago I completed construction of my Elecraft KX1 ham radio kit (serial #2182). It wasn't the easiest build I've done, but definitely the most fun. The purchase was funded almost totally by referral bonuses from Dreamhost. When anyone signs up for an account with my referral link I get a kick-back. I had let the bonuses build up over time and eventually had enough to cover the radio, but I digress.
The KX1 is a "trail-friendly", portable CW ham transceiver. There's plenty of other sites that will give you more detailed information about this gem of a radio. I finally got to use mine yesterday for more than a couple of minutes and I must say I totally love it. The receiver is great, the noise floor is low, the filters are tight, and the features are really packed into this tiny radio.
My antenna was a random wire made from speaker wire with one end elevated to 20' using a BnM Black Widow 20' Crappie Pole purchased at Bass Pro Shop in Shreveport, LA. The antenna sloped down to my BLTPlus antenna tuner which tuned the random wire without any problem. I had the tuner hooked into the KX1 with a short piece of BNC cable.
In short order I was copying stations on 7.030Mhz (40m QRP) and trying to copy the faster stations lower down on the band. I had to tighten up the filters because of the sheer number of signals I was able to pull in. I wasn't able to raise any station due to my diminished transmit power. (I was running off of internal AA batteries because my gel cell hadn't been charged in quite some time.) I was also impatient due to the strong wind, fading daylight and biting insects. I'm going to try again later this week and see if I can't finally capture that elusive QRP contact with this fun little radio.
update: I now have the KXAT1 auto tuner installed. |
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tags: qrp ham_radio kx1 kit
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In the March 2009 issue of Wired Magazine, Clive Thompson writes an article titled "The Netbook Effect". I suggest you read it, it's only a few pages long.
He begins by telling how Netbooks have come about - a market-response to the perceived threat of the OLPC project - beginning with the Eee PC. Most recently, I've been craving a netbook of my own. Personally, I'm looking at the Acer Aspire One, mainly based on the low price and decent layout. (Side note: I found out that they're being discontinued by Best Buy, perhaps to make room for the next model - I'm holding out hope.) In the article Clive writes that the netbook market has had an epiphany of sorts. Users don't need that much, all they want is to get online.
He likens the full-sized laptops to what-if SUVs. Overpowered machines playing off our "what-if" desires that are almost never fully realized. Car buyers will buy SUVs for the reasons of: "What if I need to go off-road?", "What if I get stuck in the mud?" While full-sized laptop buyers may ask "What if I need to use Photoshop?", "What if I want to play the next cutting-edge game?" You can ask "what-if" until you're shelling out $10,000 for a laptop. Instead, ask the realistic questions, what do you really need? Web? Check. Email? Check. IM? Check. All of these are offered with a netbook. In fact, even photo editing apps are now found online.
I think the neat thing about this emerging market of netbooks is the realization of cloud computing. In May 2007, I thought that this paradigm shift would begin as a result of sub-laptops. I was hoping at the time it would come from millions of OLPC users around the world, but you can't fix an organization that has lost its focus.
I for one welcome our new sub-mini, cloud-computing overlords. Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.
update: Now with a link to the article. |
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tags: netbook acer
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 Neodux member KD5ING recently linked me to a video about Wood Gas Stoves on my Facebook page. At first I passed it off as trivial since I made my alcohol stove last year. Instead, the more I read about the wood-gas stove, the more I was intrigued.
I found some plans online for a MIDGE woodgas stove and assembled the parts. In my case, I bought a large (cheap) can of pineapple juice, a pull-tab can of pears and some screws. I was able to forgo the tuna can "lid" due to my handy-dandy side-cutting can opener. This allowed me to retain the lid and be able to reattach it to the can. I used my nibbler to cut out a hole on the lid large enough to put the smaller burn can into, then followed the directions from the link above.
I fired it up this evening on the porch, then placed it alongside my old alcohol stove. The relatively small inside burn can on this stove prevents the gasification from lasting very long, a few minutes at best, but it's a start. Perhaps a larger can and more holes would work better. Maybe using landscaping wood chips doesn't help matters either. I'll continue to experiment...
In case you missed it, here's the picture of both stoves. |
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tags: stoves camping efficient
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