Real posts and even possibly a site redesign or replacement are coming soon (for real!), but for now I’m just posting a quick and LONG overdue link to my biggest, proudest creation: The Telecalculograph Mk. II.  Again, a full write-up on that project is coming soon, as well as details on my other recent projects.  Take a peek at my Flickr account in the mean time, if you’re interested!

Before I get to that sweet little ‘bot pictured above, I need to clear something up.  I (and the folks at Wild Planet, apparently) continue to receive questions from people regarding the availability of those replacement headsets I wrote about in this previous post.  Unfortunately, they are most certainly not available anymore.  In fact, they sold out pretty soon after that post hit the ‘net, and they’re doubly unavailable now because they’ve discontinued that toy entirely.  If you still really want one, check out the comments by the kindly Mr. Bobby Edwards here and here.  He’s got some similar devices for sale, as well as some related pieces of awesomeness.

Now that that’s all taken care of, kindly proceed past the “more” link below to hear about something truly exciting!

The original HMD-having Spy Video Car and its successor the Spy Video ATV-360 are no more.  So what, you undoubtedly wonder, will follow in their tread-marks? That, my friends, would be the Spy Video TRAKR.

Simple cosmetic re-design?  Guess again!

As you can read in Wild Planet’s press release, this thing is no mere video-enabled RC car: it is a full-on robot.  To quote said document, “…it digitally transmits color video, audio and data and allows users to create, download and share custom programs.”  Yeah, so, Spy Video Car+LEGO Mindstorms with a twist of MB’s Big Trak (a toy I wanted more than anything throughout most of my childhood, by the way).  Heck yes.  Unlike the Big Trak, however, it sounds like the TRAKR is going to be able to run “real” programs–as in, it can react to inputs and run subroutines and the like, not just blindly follow a sequence of directions.  Again from the press release:

“If they’ve installed a motion alarm app, they can park the vehicle in front of a doorway and convert the camera into a sensor that will trigger a siren when someone enters the room. If they’ve created and downloaded a custom app, the vehicle can snap a picture of the person who crosses the threshold, call out ‘You’re busted little brother, I’ve got a picture of you sneaking into my room,’ then squeal its tires and automatically navigate its way back to the driver.”

Drooling yet?  Now this little guy won’t be available until October, so I highly recommend getting on the waiting list here so you don’t forget.

Now, the really cool part:

I get to review one for you guys in May! While most companies seem to be rather un-fond of folks tearing apart, modifying, and re-purposing their products, the amazing people at Wild Planet appear to realize that encouraging such behavior can benefit everyone.  This means that they’ve taken a bit of a shine to this blog which, in turn, means that in late May-early June they’ll be shipping a pre-release TRAKR to me so I can write about it with a decidedly maker-oriented bias   Being a pre-release and all, I’m not sure just how “invasive” I’ll be permitted to be and how much nitty-gritty tech stuff I’ll be allowed to publish, but I assure you I’ll do my best to share as much hackery info as possible–so stay tuned!

So, to sum up:

1) Wild Planet’s supply of HMDs is long gone.

2) I’ll be reviewing the Spy Video TRAKR in a few months, but you should get on the waiting list now.

Thank you!

PS: Please don’t take my giddy,  pro-Wild Planet language the wrong way.  Even when free robots are involved, I assure you I would not sink to sycophancy.  My liking of Wild Planet’s toys is pure and unbiased, as will be my review.  If the toy sucks, I’ll tell you.  I’ll be shocked and dismayed, but I’ll tell you

This is NOT actually my hard drive*

Well, dear friends, it seems as though I have fallen victim to an incurably failed hard-drive…

Without warning, the other day, my newest and supposedly nicest HDD apparently decided that reading data off platters was a silly thing to do, and that wagging it’s heads blindly about the spinning disks was much more fun. As this had previously seemed to be my most trustworthy storage device, it was the one (of four, if you were curious) upon which I stored the all-important My Documents folder. So yeah, pretty much everything is gone. Gigabytes/years of research, most every digital photo I’ve ever taken, letters from old friends, long-forgotten school assignments**… Like a house-fire indeed… I have procured an identical drive with which I plan on performing a risky platter transplant, but with the scraping noises the thing was generating I doubt my attempts will be met with any sort of success.

And so, a Word of Caution: BACK UP YOUR DATA! Better yet, do as a wise friend suggested and set up a RAID array. I had had drives fail before, but it was always in a gradual and/or recoverable way. I am well-familiar with the magic of data recovery software, and thusly thought this current type of, well, death impossible. I appreciate the learning of such a lesson, but couldn’t it have happened to the drive with all the pirated zombie movies or something? Heck, the boot/OS drive would have been infinitely preferable… Anyhow, go to NewEgg (sponsorship, please!***) or something right now, buy an external drive or two, and BACK UP YOUR DATA!!!

It is precisely because I did not back up my data, that I must now ask you all a favor. If, over the years, I have shared with you any documents, higher-resolution images, etcetera which is not currently available on Flickr, etcetera, would you kindly email copies back to me? This includes the high-res version of this, as the admittedly-sketchy hosting service I used seems to have sketched right out of existence… Many, many thanks to you all, and may you each have a fantastic holiday season!

PS: Don’t trust Western Digital SATA drives! Evil, I tell you!

*Photo (and, presumably, drive and well-manicured hand) belong to one Mr. Kingsley, who it seems was also dissatisfied    with his Western Digital experience.

**Nothing due or in any way current, mind you, but most valuable for sentimental reasons

***Hey, it worked for Datamancer!

So it’s 2007: shouldn’t there be more cyborgs? Well, for a mere $25.00 (or less), you can be one big step closer to being one yourself. How so, you ask? Click the following link to to find out!
A few months ago, the rather clever folks at Wild Planet released a nifty (though rather clumsily named) little “toy” called the “Spy Video Car”. I cannot stress enough how well engineered this gadget is. For around $100 (much less on eBay), you get:

• A nicely-styled motorised car base with decent-for-a-toy steering and an almost silent powertrain
• A two-channel R/C set, also of decent-for-a-toy quality
• A color capable video transmitter/receiver with a few hundred feet of range
• A miniature B&W CCD video camera (similar to one of these)
• A very bright 8mm IR LED and, best of all, a…
• A video headset containing a Kopin 300M B&W LCD screen, optics, backlight, and a PAL/NTSC driver board

This guide will be all about re-purposing the later, though I will do similarly for the camera and video rx/tx set eventually. I should also mention that you can buy the headset separately here , but please don’t be greedy as I don’t think they’ll last long. What’s interesting is that the “replacement” headsets I bought are newer and much improved versions of the original one included with the car (one would assume that the newer cars come with the newer headsets, but I cannot verify this). The original one had a poorly diffused, red backlight which made made for a rather bad display all around. In the new version, they have upgraded the diffuser and changed the LED to white–making it look similar to an older camcorder’s viewfinder. They were also kind enough to redesign the circuit board into something much more hack-friendly. The most obvious of these changes is the potentiometer in the upper right-hand corner of the board (see below)

Turning this little critter adjusts the gain–an adjustment my headset needed pretty desperately. Oh, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, aren’t I?

First off, let’s talk about how to hook this bad boy up. Because Wild Planet decided to use normal video standards, we can make this usable without even opening the casing–heck, with the right adapters, you could probably do it without any soldering! Either way, you will need three things: a way to connect to your video source, a power supply, and a way to connect it all to the headset . To connect the headset to a DVD player, VCR, game system, iPod, PC, etc., you’ll probably want to use an RCA cable. If you don’t have one laying around, you can get one at most good dollar stores. As for power, the headset has a 3.3v regulator built in so you can run it on a wide range of things. It originally ran on 9v, but anything between 3.3v and 12v ought to work just fine. Wiring three “AA” batteries in series will give you around 4.5v, which is a good balance of physical size, battery life, and voltage. To connect this all to the headset, you’ll want to find a female 3.5mm 3-contact phono jack–better known as the thing you plug stereo headphones into. I’d snag a connector out of an old walkman or something if you don’t have a free one laying around. The pinout for the headset’s plug is as follows:

The base of the plug is the ground. This will need to be connected to two things; the negative terminal of your power supply and the shield of your RCA plug (when you strip the cable, this will be the woven sleeve around the inner wire). The middle ring is the video, which connects to the center wire/pin on the RCA cable/plug. Finally, the tip connects to the positive terminal of your power supply. Double-check your wiring, plug the RCA cable into your composite video source, and connect your power. If all goes well, you should see an image! Now if you’re video device is PAL format (from Europe, UK, etc.), you’re done! If, however, you’re device is NTSC (American), you’ll notice that the image in the headset is a bit messed up. Most modern devices will have a software setting somewhere that will let you change the video format, but there is a pretty simple hardware solution if not. Let’s have a look at that solution, shall we?

First, we need to crack open the display housing. It’s glued shut, so prying is our only option (unless you have a sonic screwdriver, that is). Insert your presumably non-sonic screwdriver into the side with the cable coming out of it and pull away foreward (away from your face, if you were wearing it (which you really shouldn’t be at this point)).

Ignore the way I’m doing it in the photo above and do it on the side with the cable. I managed OK, but there is a risk of hurting the LCD’s delicate ribbon cable if you jam sharp instruments into the side I did. The cover should pop off, leaving you with this:

The bit we need to get at is hiding under that capacitor in the lower right, so gently bend it out of the way. There you will see a surface-mount resistor and two blank pads. The datasheet for the chip (Kopin A300) tells us that the pin those are connected to is the PAL/NTSC setting. To switch it into NTSC mode, simply remove that resistor. If you want to be extra thorough, you can desolder that resistor and move it onto the blank pads as shown below:

Doing this will pull the line low, whereas just scraping it off lets the line float. It seems to work fine either way, but it can’t hurt to play it safe. The “resistor” seems to be little more than a jumper, so you can actually just pop it off and bridge the blank pads with a bit of wire or solder if you’re lazy (like me).

Pop the lid back on and there you have it: a wearable screen that can be connected to just about anything that plugs into a normal TV–and for less than twenty-five bucks!

So, what’s next? Well for one, you can make the display mush less dorky looking by removing the guts, rearranging them, and cramming them into something else. Sunglasses, perhaps? You can also probably replace the optics with something sharper and/or thinner. You could also forgo the whole HMD idea and turn it into a tiny projector–maybe with a laser for a light source? Electrically there is a lot of fun to be had as well. The data sheet for the chip shows us that there are are several unused functions such as black and white level and gamma adjustments, the pads for which are easily accessibly on the back of the board. There’s also the VERY intriguing “OSD_in” pin that may prove to be fun. Does anyone know what kind of signal that takes? I can’t seem to find any standards…

Good luck and enjoy!

Warning: this one could be a bit upsetting

Imaginary:

“So,” she asked in her charming cockney accent, “this is what you’ve been working on so mysteriously all this time, is it?” The young gentleman to which she was speaking smiled in the affirmative and handed over the parcel, hastily wrapped in what was clearly the kitchen towels. He watched with pride and anticipation as his athletic, yet elegantly feminine wife drew the oddly-shaped gift from the linens in which it was lightly bound. As the wrappings fell gracefully to the hardwood floor, a look of gleeful disbelief spread across her alabaster countenance. With the eyes of a young girl just given a pony, she wildly looked up at her grinning husband and stammered “It…It’s some sort of…It’s…It’s a Hand of Glory, isn’t it?!?!”

“Well, my version of one anyhow,” he replied coolly, and with a slight smirk. “I know how much you’ve always wanted one, but hanged criminal’s severed hands are so hard to come by these days–even for a master thief like Emily Swift!”

“You and your ‘master thief’” she said, rolling her hazel eyes in exaggerated annoyance. “You know I couldn’t pilfer a quarter of the things I do without you and your wondrous machines! Speaking of which, tell me about this one–starting with that horrid thing in the glass.”

Clive sat down in his favorite red leather wingback chair, and gestured to his wife to do the same. Taking his round, dingy brass goggles from his forehead and fidgeting with them in his lap, he began to tell her all about the device which he dramatically called “The Torch of Saint Dismas”. It was identical in purpose to the legendary “Hand of Glory” or “Thief’s Light” in that it cast a light visible only to the one holding it. As Emily knew, such a device was typically made from a human hand–which, availability aside, she always felt was a “bit much.” Clive informed her that through a bit of research and experimentation, he found that, if treated and preserved in the same manner, a common rabbit’s paw could serve just as well. She looked slightly sick when he told her this, but was comforted to hear that Old Man Reiber would have made dinner out of the poor creature regardless of what her husband had planned for the left-overs.

“So the bunny wasn’t hanged for murder, then?” she asked with mock seriousness. “Nope,” he replied with a sideways smile “the next best thing: shot by a babbling hermit in a graveyard with a full moon shining overhead”.

The dashing young man went on to educate her on all the other features of the device. Among other things, he had discovered that the “hand” need not actually be set ablaze to cast its personalized glow as its traditional counterpart had, but could instead simply be exposed to a rather ordinary mix of chemical gases. These gases were pressurized in copper chambers in the device’s wooden handle, while their admittance into the glass chamber were regulated by the small brass knob on the opposite end. Taking his creation back into his scarred hands, Clive demonstrated this action as well as the way it could be held in two different positions.

As a candlestick

As a Doctor’s lamp

Emily playfully grabbed the torch back and aimed it so as to cast it’s harshest beam directly into her beloved husband’s eyes. He smiled confidently as her delicate fingers twisted the valve, causing a just barely audible hiss of invisible reagents to release into the sealed jar. She smiled grandly as she saw that while Clive’s face was bathed in a brilliant bluish light, his pupils remained as they were–for to him, not a hint of illumination was present.

“I told you I was a genius”, he said cockily, still staring at the non-light. “You certainly are bright!” she replied sweetly, as she grabbed his relaxed hand and touched it to the torch’s handle with all the speed of a bolt of lightning.

“Vondruke!” he cursed as he quickly let go of the lamp and massaged his now burning eyes. “Why are you so cruel to me, Emily?” he asked with greatly over-the-top faux-pain. To this she replied by sticking forth her tongue. When their laughter had subsided, Clive stood and handed Emily a familiar black leather physician’s bag containing a black hooded cloak, gloves, and an elegant belt from which the rest of her trusted thieving tools were suspended.

“I had a feeling you’d want to go out tonight” he said with a wink. She grinned and replied “I’ll bring you back something nice.”

Real:

The making of this contraption begins with a rather odd tale; one that may very well sound as though it belonged in the fictional portion of the article! It all started one rainy evening (no joke), when I descended into our cluttered basement on a mission to locate something for my parents. As a young lad I had a small trampoline (of the sort one uses for aerobic exercise), which my autistic nephew’s therapists thought would provide him with some therapeutic activity. We had located the actual trampoline a while ago, but the legs which held it off the ground were yet to be found—and thus the reason for my poorly-lit search. On a whim, I began to excavate the space under my mother’s unused sewing table. Among the 5 ½” floppies and other relics of my childhood which had been crammed in there over the years, lay a short length of heavy steel pipe. One leg down, five to go! Now heartily convinced that I was indeed looking in the right area, I dug with increased fervor.

A few moments and two more legs later, the “mine” was deep enough that I could no longer see into it, but instead blindly scooped out piles of stuff and sorted through them in the open. Square in the middle of the second such pile lay an organic-shaped, off-white object. For a split second, I thought it was a figure from an old Nativity set which was made of a similarly-colored plastic. As I looked closer, however, I saw that it had a much more skeletal look to it. A piece from the small toy human skeleton my brother had given me as a boy, perhaps? Unfortunately, no. A sharp pang of panic and revulsion hit me as it became all too clear that the thing before me was not made of plastic, nor any man-made substance—this was part of an animal. Shaking slightly (I’m so brave), I scooped the grisly thing onto a bit of cardboard for closer inspection (See? Brave!). What ever sort of flesh it had bared in life had long-since dried up and tightened against the bone—giving it an appearance somewhere between that of a human mummy’s hand and a bird’s foot. There was no hair of any sort to be seen, and it looked to have been fairly cleanly severed at the “wrist”. On the end of each finger/toe were rather remnants of rather evil-looking claws—arching downward like the talon of some prehistoric predator. By the Cogs, was it horrid! It was quite clearly the foot (irony fully appreciated, I assure you) of some sort of small beast, but what? And, more importantly, what was it doing in my basement?!?! Having had pet cats for the vast majority of my life, I was familiar enough with feline anatomy to see that it could very well be the somehow-preserved remains of a cat’s paw. That answered the “what”, but it certainly left the “how” wide open. We’ve had many cats and a few wild animals find their way into our abode over the years, it’s true, but I was quite certain none of them had lost a limb! Though this thought had a calming effect for a brief moment, it soon led to the troubling realization that perhaps it was I who had severed the limb; that perhaps the rest of the being was still under the table.

At this point, I thought it wise to give my own mental and sensory capacities a break and show my disturbing find to my father, who was working on his own project in the next room. After I had thoroughly convinced him that it was not the practical joke he understandably though it to be, he shuddered, shrugged, and suggested I show it to my mom. Ah yes, Mother! Surely she, trained in the veterinary and x-ray sciences, would know what it was! Unfortunately, she too was stumped (and, I suspect, made slightly queasy). We discussed the feline possibility briefly, but she agreed that this was unlikely—then again, in what universe is it likely to find the foot of any species of animal in one’s house? Then, perhaps inspired by the cat theory, my dear mum was hit with a rather brilliant thought: a rabbit’s foot! I did recall owning one in keychain form as a child, but I had always been sure that it was no more organic than a teddy bear. Besides, where was the fur? The key-ring hardware? Surely any decomposing agents capable of wholly destroying metal and hair would not leave flesh and bone completely untouched! Still, it did provide a reasonably sane explanation for several of its mysteries; not the least of which being how something could become naturally mummified in an environment which would seem to be about as conducive to such things as a rain forest. Regardless, a quick Googling of “rabbit skeleton” resulted in an image that positively identified the thing as the hind foot of nothing more exotic than a common bunny. I will admit to being a bit disappointed at this news though, as I did have the word “chupacabras” sitting hopefully on the back edge of my mind… Anyhow, the majority of the questions had now been answered and those that remained were relegated to the mental bin of mundane mysteries that could likely be easily explained by someone more familiar with the ways of the world, or simply a better memory than myself. The big question now, was what to do with this wonderfully creepy artifact?

“The Horrible Claw”, as it came to be known, seemed a perfect novelty to be displayed on the bedroom wall which I am slowly turning into a nice Victorian curio “cabinet”. I started to build a glass-dome-and-wooden-base affair (helped greatly by the folks here, here, and here), which eventually evolved to contain a couple LEDs to cast an eerie glow upon the pale extremity. As I watched the flickering light play oddly against the thing’s preserved flesh, I was reminded of the legend of the Hand of Glory. It soon became clear that The Claw was not to be imprisoned on some stationary pedestal, but built into a flashlight-like device suited for a Steampunk master thief! A few hours of tinkering later, the Torch of Saint Dismas (the patron saint of thieves) began to take shape. The wooden handle was once a pepper mill, the glass cylinder was from a candle holder/lamp, and the “cuff” supporting the paw was none other than the top to a glass ball-type Christmas ornament. The metal bits are all from various lighting fixtures which, ironically enough, were actually kind of stolen! Well, I took them out of the soon-to-be-razed abandoned house next door, so (aside from the trespassing) I’d say it was only legally theft—morally it’s nothing more than dumpster-diving, right? Mmm; casually playing about with severed body parts, trespassing, burglary… I’ll be making all sorts of friends with this post… Oh, and for the purpose of covering my hindquarters, I hereby officially state that the above tale of thievery and being where I shouldn’t was completely made up: total fiction. Honest!

It’s not that crooked in real life. Very strange photo there…

Anyway, on to the technicals. Concealed within the wooden base are six LEDs: two white, two blue, and two infrared. The white and blue pairs are wired together in parallel so that they are always on at the same time, with the blue ones aimed at the front and back of the paw and the white aimed straight up (to act like a conventional flashlight). The IR pair is aimed somewhere in the middle, with only a small amount hitting the paw. This pair of LEDs (harvested from TV remotes) really aren’t bright enough to serve any practical purpose, but I couldn’t very well call something a Hand of Glory unless it emitted some sort of invisible light, now could I? I should say, for those unfamiliar, that in this case “infrared” refers to a “color” of light which, while totally invisible to the human eye, is perfectly visible when viewed through a digital/video camera or night-vision goggles.

Anyhow, the small knob on the back is a six-position rotary switch (from a “3-way” lamp). Turning it one click turns on the blue and white lights, two turns them off, three turns on all six LEDs, four turns them off, five turns on only the IRs, and six turns it all off again. Also spliced into the circuit is the “flicker chip” from an electronic tea light, which makes all the LEDs, well, flicker.

The whole thing runs off three “AAA” cells which sit within the battery compartment from a dollar-store flashlight stuffed inside the pepper mill handle.

The glass “chamber” is all held together with my good friend, JB Kwik—with red candle wax dripped on for looks.

Hehe, and my apologies for incidentally stepping onto the territory of the good Sir Alex_cf with the wax and general creepiness

Cost: $3.00US

Time: About 5 hours

Tools: Basic hand tools, Dremel, electric drill soldering iron, DMM, X-Acto saw w/ miter box, model paint, and JB Weld

Date of Completion: April 18th, 2007

This photo is sort of troubling. Who is this “Craig” that this small child is writing to? Where is he supposed to be taking her?

Possible kidnapping aside, the industrious Flickr member “Allwell.geo” has succeeded where I have failed: finding a source for the pen I used in the Victorio-Nixie Tube. It’s not quite as cheep as I’d like, but hey–better than nothin’, eh? Anyway, click on the above picture to be whisked away to said cyber-store.

Want something cheaper? Well, let me direct your attention to my most favorite catalog in the whole wide world: American Science and Surplus. Among their vast plethora of geekish goodies, they have this. It won’t be much good for an exact replica, but what fun would that be anyway?

This is, incidentally, exactly how I dress when I tinker…

Click here to read the whole book!

I found this little soft-covered gem in my aunt’s library.  I immediately fell head-over-heels, and asked permission to borrow it.  Consent was granted, and i quickly scampered home and got to scanning.  I think everything is in the correct order, but please let me know if it’s not!

If you want to print it, read it off-line, etc, you can download a ZIP file containing all the higher-res scans here. Be forewarned, however, that it is rather large (25MB).

The copyright (and the publisher) is long gone, so you needn’t worry about any such things. I do, however, highly suggest purchasing a copy of this book if-and-when you come across it! There’s a certain unreproducible quality about an antique tome such as this…

Climbing over dangerous terrain! Ok, it’s a USB card…

The original toy can be seen here:

(It’s a slightly different model, but same mfg. and line)

I liked this toy because it is tiny, yet is full-function R/C vehicle and has real treads. Most 1/64 scale tanks have fake, stationary treads with regular old wheels hidden inside. What I didn’t like, however, was the fact that it was a war machine. Tanks are super cool from a technological standpoint, but I didn’t feel quite right about having a model instrument of death and destruction rolling around on my desk… It was cheap, however, so I decided to get it anyway.

One day, armed with nothing more than an X-Acto knife and a hot-glue gun, I turned it into a model bomb-diffusal robot. As if this wasn’t hippy-ish enough, I added recycling to the mix. The arm and gripper are made from the side skirts, turret, and the cannon–in fact, glue is the only thing present on the “robot” that didn’t come from the original tank! And no, unfortunately the arm does not actually move. Someday…

Cost: $6.00

Time: 45min

Tools: X-Acto knife set and hot glue gun

Approx. Date of Completion: 2/12/06

“Electro-chemical and electro-mechanical apparatus for the display of illuminated messages”

Imaginary:

This device was invented, designed, and built by the eccentric and reclusive Dr. Charles D. Ronalli in the late eight-teen hundreds. Click on the following links to see Dr. Ronalli’s original patent drawings and descriptions!

Victorio-Nixie Patent Diagrams

Victorio-Nixie Patent Description

Victorio-Nixie Patent Description (alternate download location)

Real (documents):

Well, first off, both of the above documents are (of course) completely fake. This was accomplished using this actual patent as a template, then changing and inserting things using a little digital magic.

Since I lack the illustrative abilities to actually draw the diagrams, I had to find a way to cheat. I started out by performing these steps on the photos I had taken of the device, but the results looked more like a Xeroxed photo than a patent drawing. To fix this, I printed the results out and traced the parts I wanted in pencil. Once they looked the way i wanted, i scanned them back in and used Photoshop to darken the lines.

I used MS Paint to do most of the document modification, because I find it better suited to that sort of basic manipulation than Photoshop. Besides replacing the images, I also wanted to change the inventor’s name, hometown, and signature, as well as the patent number and the date it was filed/issued to somethign totally fictional. This was all done by rearranging the letters and numbers that were already in the document to preserve the original look as much as possible–even the signature! The body text of the abstract was not done this way (I’m not that dedicated), but instead typed up in MS Word–with the edited header pasted in. The style of the text was based off of that used in Nikola Tesla’s patents.

Real (device):

This device is really a (heavily) modified persistence-of-vision toy. This toy was a pen i picked up at the local pharmacy (Walgreen’s) with a spinning head that displayed whatever message you programmed in. It was only $5.00, so i picked up a couple and let my imagination fly. There’s just something about POV toys that I can’t seem to say “no” to!

The most difficult and time consuming task involved in this build was constructing the “Emitter Stalk”. In the original pen, the head was was only .5in above the motor–as opposed to the two-inch tube it now sits atop. Extending this proved to be far more difficult than i thought. There are so many variables to keep in mind when dealing with a spinning object–especially when said object has to maintain 3 separate electrical contacts with a stationary platform! On the back of the device–next to the power jack–there’s a potentiometer that controls the motor’s speed. I like the flickery way it looks when it’s running slowly, the motor’s not powerful enough to to actually get it moving at that lower voltage. With the pot., i can start it fast then ramp it down once it gets going.

The glass bulb that covers this contraption is a hollowed out GE Bent-Tip chandelier bulb. The instructions I found on-line for hollowing out bulbs didn’t apply to bulbs like this, so i came up with my own method. It worked surprisingly well, so I’ll post instructions later.

The bubble tube came from one of these. I got a set of 7 for like $3US at an after-Christmas sale. Naturally they wouldn’t do as-is, so I *carefully* Dremeled off the plastic base and bulb, leaving only the tube. Normally a 120v incandescent bulb provides both the heat and light necessary, but i needed something lower voltage and easier to conceal. As you see in one of the pictures, there is a 33ohm resistor and an LED inside the new brass base. There’s also a second LED in the top brass tube to give a more even light.

It was really just trial and error to find a resistor value that would get hot enough, but not too hot. I don’t have any way to actually measure it, but it’s cooler than a hot glue gun so i’d estimate it at around 150F. I’m SURE there’s a better (and safer) way to do this than running 6v directly through a low-level resistor, but hey; it works. I’ve let it run for days straight and it seems pretty stable, so i guess it’s good. The resistor is a bit, er, “browner” than before though…

The device is controlled through the use of the the lever and the button on the right-hand side of the box. The lever toggles through the characters; the button selects your choice. Holding the button down saves the message and puts it into display mode. Once in this mode, pressing the button scrolls through the 4 possible messages. The device is powered on by turning the key on the front clockwise, as if you were winding an alarm clock. Special thanks to Eurich Clock World of Dearborn, MI for donating the wonderful key!

The magnets are actually real, however their function is purely aesthetic in this machine. They were from a pack of novelty refrigerator/locker magnets that I acquired some time ago and had been dying to use for something. They’re incredibly weak, so they’re not much good for anything real

Here’s the device in action:

For more info on the pen, check out the following links. I couldn’t find it for sale anywhere, other than these wholesalers who only sell ‘em by the crate. They may be of help though, if you’re desperate.

taiwantrade.com.tw

globalsources.com

Cost: $20US

Time: About 10 hours for the device, 3 hours for the documents

Tools: Basic hand tools, Dremel, drill w/ press, soldering iron, and JB Weld

Approx. Date of Completion: January 2007

I highly suggest reading the “About” section to get a good idea of who i am and what this thing is all about.

Enjoy!