With the Scouts Klondike Derby this week I’m going to be pressed for time. Therefore I’m picking something I have all the parts for and won’t be too taxing on my time. I won’t count making 2 trays of Sausage and Peppers as part of the 52 things. Even though that may be harder than anything else I made so far.
Front of Makers Quilt Board 2
After a lot of unsoldering and resoldering I have the board properly rebuilt. I went from 30 AWG wire to Wire Wrap wire which is much better. When I wired the matrix to the drivers I alternated blue and white wires to better track where I was. Once that was done it was time to verify all the wiring. Out of 48 LED’s I had three bad ones. In the interest of time I went to Radio Shack and paid $1.49 for a pack of 2 3mm LED’s. I still have to slap together some Picaxe code which is 75% done. I should be finished by Sunday.
Old wiring with 30 AWG Wire
New Wiring using WIre Wrap wire
Added a dog collar for a strap and snapped it all together and voila I’ve got a pretty nifty case. See …
Case with the Jacks and the Strap installed
Now on to Project #3. This is going to be a clean up of my Makers Quilt Board #2. I built the board awhile ago but it was a total mess and needed more LED’s to properly display my son’s birthday. I’ve already added more LED’s and another driver. now I have to clean up the wiring. This project is mostly soldering but it’s gotta get done.
Well the case has been cut to accommodate the data jacks. I’m not that great of a metal worker so this project gave me a chance to practice this skill. Here some pics of the process.
Box Cut scored and ready for the Dremel
I sprayed a coat of flat black on the box once I was done. Oddly enough growing up in The Bronx during the 70’s did not impart any magical spray painting skills. This turned out pretty good though. Of course I forgot I need to make 2 more cuts for the strap. This project is definitely on track to finish this week.
Case Sparyed Black
This week I will be working with a box I use to keep my 5 in1 cable adapters. I built them way back when Make issue 1 came out. The box came with a Jack Skellington watch I got as a Christmas present. In the case I also keep a passive ethernet tap. The tap consists of four RJ-45 jacks that can be used to monitor traffic between two devices. I want to mount the RJ-45 Jacks in the box. I’m also going to add a leather strap to hold the box closed and add a little Goth charm too.
This is the Case Before I the carnage
LED Cube is complete. Took a little time to troubleshoot some issues with my breakaway sockets. They don’t breakaway very clean and I lost a few pins. I didn’t need all the Arduino pins so it was easy to rearrange the socket so I had access to the pins I needed for the cube. Could use a little more power than I’m getting from just the power brick. When I have the USB port plugged in the LED’s run brighter. With the first project done I can get a few things done for project 2 which is going to be a simple mod for a case I use at work.
Started the LED cube yesterday. I know all the real Makers made them 2 years ago but I was busy then. I’m a pretty decent solderer so the assembly was pretty straight forward. This is a good project for novice solderers to practice on.
The design is pretty straight forward. 27 LED’s 3 transistors and a few resistors. I’m going to use the Arduino to control the circuit for now. As a future project I’ll probably put together a one chip Arduino and mount it directly to the board. I could also use an Ardweeny from Solarbotics. For now I don’t need the Arduino for anything else.
