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

But ANYWAY:  this site has been silent for much too long, and for that I apologize!  Later today there will be a new post regarding an old project and something to look forward to in the near future from friend of the show blog, Wild Planet.  After that, I aim to resume semi-regular postings of projects and the like.  I have a pretty sizable back-log of creations, so there will be no shortage of things to share with you fine folks!

I haven’t posted anything in a rather long time, so I thought I’d take a minute to brag about share with you a couple bits of popular media in which I’ve been mentioned recently.  First up, is {this} lovely article penned by the talented Mr. Morgan.  Unfortunately the New York Times, for which the piece was originally written, bumped it at the last minute in favor of a more fashion-centered Steampunk story.  Disappointing, but I consider my inclusion in this article to be an unspeakably great honor regardless, and it is definitely rather high on my list of proudest accomplishments (especially since I got more ink than that fiend {von Slatt} (artist’s rendering) for once!  Ha!).

Last but not least, we have the just-published {cover story} in the IEEE’s flagship publication, Spectrum.  Though {von Slatt} (file photo) gets his usual overabundance of attention, my televisor and I get a much appreciated mention on {page two}, as well as a wonderful little write-up on {page 8} of their accompanying slide show.  I’ve been a member of the local IEEE branch here at MTU for three years now, so it means a lot to be recognized in their magazine!

In other news, I do have some new contraptions to share so keep an eye on this site for updates over the next few weeks.

In June of 2007, coworker and good friend of mine, one Mr. Tom Russell, approached me with an opportunity to act in he and his wife’s newest film. Aside from feigning interest in ex-girlfriend’s babbling stories and the occasional “too sick to go” routine, I haven’t been involved in anything close to acting since I played “Daddy Frog” in a third-grade musical (in which, I might add, I flubbed lines left and right)–nor have I wanted to. Even upon being informed of this, however, Tom still thought it a wise idea to cast me–and as the title character and romantic male lead, no less! I was quite sure the book fumes were finally getting the best of his senses, but he seemed insistent so I agreed to audition. For reasons beyond my understanding, he seemed rather pleased with my performance and awarded me the role.

The months of hot living room studio lights and cranial impact (see the movie) that followed were quite an adventure, to say the least. Enjoyable, for sure, but challenging and, at times, uncomfortable too. Perhaps I simply wasn’t doing it right, but spending the day pretending to have intense feelings (positive and negative) for a young lady I hardly know took a lot out of me! I did my best to just feign facial expressions and such without the actual emotional element, but my heart seems to have a sort of Pavlovian relationship with the rest of me–come on, you try smacking a girl without feeling upset! Now that is not to say that I actually felt any such emotions toward any of my “co-stars”. Even with my penchant for falling in love with fictional characters (oh, Cho Chang, why won’t you respond to my owls?), I can confidently say that no such feelings (or their converses) were even fleetingly present here. I just frequently found myself feeling, well, odd upon the close of each shoot. There was a good deal of other weird (and far too grown-up for my liking) things going on that summer that were not related to the film, so the uncomfortableness may have been unrelated as well.

Anyhow, we finally “wrapped” (I’m so Hollywood!) over the Thanksgiving holiday (late November), and the Russell Duo got to work on final editing and such. I got to see the final product a few days ago, and I must say I am very pleased and impressed! They even managed to make my acting look half-decent, no-doubt though the extensive use of Movie Magic. All-in-all, a hearty “bravo” goes out to all who were involved!

In terms of plot, The Man Who Loved is fairly straight-forward; but also quite complex. It follows George and Sarah, a young married couple, as they deal with the latter’s growing emotional instability. Right, that sounds like a Lifetime Network snooze-fest, but believe me when I say it is anything but. In fact, if I may get folksy for a moment, I would say that there is less sap in The Man Who Loved than in a dried-up piece of driftwood. *cough* no really, I mean that–regardless of how I said it… What I mean is that this is really one of those rare stories that is equally suited for male and female audiences. There are bits that guys will like and bits that gals will like, but more importantly there are many scenes that apply equally to both and in the same way. Right–enough of the school newspaper movie review routine–just watch the trailer and stay tuned for updates on when, how, and where to see the whole thing. Oh, and let us know what you think!

——————-!!!BONUS CONTENT!!!——————-

Actually, my previous statement about a lack of acting experience wasn’t totally accurate. I had forgotten about the first Russell-Hildebrandt project, Tom’s Webcomic! Sit back and watch all one minute and twenty-eight seconds of its awesomeness below:

*sans-glasses

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

The Telecalculograph finally has a suitable mouse!

Imaginary:

Though the eccentric Professor William C. Ravenscroft remains stingy on details of his “Telecalculograph“, he has recently allowed photography of the device with which its user controls it. These images, as well as speculation upon their contents follows:

One holds the device in a manner similar to the way a wood-worker holds a sanding block. The palm rests upon the “ball” in the foreground, with the fingers extending forward. The middle digit is placed upon the spiked cog, while the pointing-finger and the ring-bearing finger sit on the studded levers on either side. The thumb and small-finger rest comfortably on the side of the cylinder, helping to grip the contraption. The “Bug”, as the Professor calls it, is slid about upon a table top–thusly controlling a mobile indicator upon the Telecalculograph’s display. Push the device away from one’s self, and the arrow “moves” towards the top of the viewing window. When the arrow has been positioned appropriately so that it is pointing at the desired “item” on the glass, the user pushes down upon the various levers to elicit his desired effect. Turning the wheel in the center produces an action similar to turning a page in a book, or cranking a kinetoscope.

How the device works is shrouded in mystery, however some speculation can be made. One can clearly see that there are small tubes running from the wheel and levers to the cylinder in the middle. It appears that they are simple mechanical linkages, however they remain perfectly stationary even when the controls are manipulated. This leads one to believe that they are likely either hydraulic or electrical in nature. Power seems to come from the large drum in the center, as there is a key extending from the side–similar to a small clock–suggesting that it is based upon the principles of clockwork. This cylinder also has two knobs, presumably for fine adjustment. The device connects to the Telecalculograph by means of a cloth hose which extends outward from its front. Presumably, the actions taken with the device are transmitted through this cable. Like the Bug’s internal workings, it is unknown whether this operates on galvanic or hydraulic principles. Far more mysterious, however, is the way in which the contraption measures its movement. Upon stealing a look at the underside of the Bug, this author saw not the wheels one expected, nor in fact any visible moving parts. Instead, there was only what appeared to be a small glass lens located directly under the domed portion of the device. It was observed to emanate a fiery orange glow, though how or why is unknown. The following most ghastly object was, however, seen in the Professor’s laboratory in close proximity to the Bug. It appears to be a human eye-ball suspended in a glass chamber. A troubling tangle of wires extend from the organ’s nerve bundle and out through the vessel’s corked seal.

One can only speculate that this “bio-galvanic” device is used to “see” the Bug’s movement. One can only imagine what a man with such a mastery of the sciences is capable of…

Real (mouse):

The “Bug” is based around this nameless laptop mouse (mine was procured for much less money, mind you). Other than that, it’s pretty much as it looks: a big jumble of bits and bobs from my parts bin. The two large gears that make up the base were harvested from the Sargent Recording pH Stat.

The cylinder in the middle is a chunk of solid brass scrounged from one of my university’s many scrap bins. The knobs and key all rotate, but do nothing beyond that.

The circuit board (and presumably the human eye!) are hidden under this brass-plated-steel corner piece from a steamer trunk. A random cog fills in the gap in back, and allows some of the mouse’s LED light to glow through. It may be noted that I replaced the red LED with an orange one which makes it match the computer better, but does not effect performance.

The PCB is uniformly painted a gun-metal gray to make the visible parts look a bit less “circuity”.

Wires connecting the buttons, scroll-whee, and USB cable to the board go under the cylinder (which has a large notch cut out of it) and around the gear post.

The six wires leading to the buttons and scroll wheel are thin, rubber-insulated copper wire (from an IDE cable) housed within tiny brass tubing. I tried enamel-insulated bellwire originally, but it proved to be extremely problematic. It seemed that no matter what I did, things were connecting to things they shouldn’t…

The scroll-wheel is made from an alarm clock’s escapement wheel and a small brass knob. The rotation sensor and middle-click button (both harvested from the mouse) are concealed within the brass supports. These supports, as well as the left and right “buttons” are actually hinge pieces from a toilet seat mounting kit!

The actual button portions are standard “leaf switches” enclosed in brass sheeting. To give the buttons a more old-fashioned, mechanical feel, I added the little spring cylinders you see above. They are made from brass tubing, springs from a mechanical pencil, and brass screws. These springs do make clicking a bit slower, so the screws are easily removable when some fast-clicking needs to be done.

The USB cable is a standard one that has been stripped of its original rubber skin. The shielded wires were then fed through a length of hollowed out parachute cord to give it a cloth-covered look (besides making it virtually unbreakable!)

The bottom ain’t pretty, but it works. The optical sensor looks through the rear gear’s hub, while the whole thing glides along on it’s polished base and the two (white) polystyrene squares (poor man’s Teflon). Did I mention how heavy it is? Oh, she be heavy! I don’t have a scale, but I’d say it weighs a good 10-15oz… Its actually quite nice and comfortable to use. It fits my hand perfectly (imagine that!), and I find I rather like the heft. Everything is so light and plasticy these days, that it’s most refreshing to handle something with such substance!

Real (eyeball):

The “eye in a jar” was made by forming the eye and optic nerve out of poster putty (Blu-Tack), then painting it with model paints. I put a clear coat over it, with mixed results. Somehow it absorbed the water and turned milky and wrinkled. While this was not the intended effect, I’m rather happy with it as it makes it look absolutely disgusting The “formaldehyde” is actually Tazo “Calm” tea, which, so far, seems to be holding up well.

Cost: $5US

Time: About 10 hours for the mouse, 1 hours for the eye

Tools: Basic hand tools, Dremel w/ press, soldering iron, X-Acto saw w/ miter box, and JB Weld

Date of Completion: April 18th, 2007

My university’s chapter of the IEEE held a “Hacks/Mods/ Gadgets” contest a while ago, in which I entered the Telecalulograph and Vitorio-Nixie Tube. By sort of winning (there were only two other entries), I was awarded the chance to build the project of my choice–with them picking up the tab! I rather quickly realized that this would be the perfect opportunity to construct something that had been nibbling at the back of my mind for some time: a steam-powered Baird Televisor. While many people have built reproduction mechanical TVs, I am (to the best of my knowledge) the first to power it directly with a steam engine. I am beginning to see that there is good reason for this, but I am determined!

The project is in it’s infancy now (hence the “Part 1″), so there isn’t a whole lot to see yet. The physical framework and most of the basic components are built and functioning on their own, but the is an incredible amount of work to be done before the thing actually does anything interesting. I will be posting updates as I go along, so stay tuned! Photos and descriptions of what I have so far are after the jump:

An old telephone table (which, fun fact, served as my night-stand in my younger years) forms the base of the device. The drawer has a breadboard mounted inside, and brass terminals and a keyed power switch on the front. The point of this project is to keep the use of electronics to a minimum (odd for an IEEE project, eh?), so the few necessary bits are hidden away.

The record acts as a nipkow disk, though the holes have yet to be drilled. The light blinks on each time a hole is positioned wherever a “on” pixel is desired. In this way, it draws the image one dot at a time–though it does it fast enough that you perceive it as a solid image, similar to the way the Victorio-Nixe works (persistence of vision). The image a disk of this size produces is 32×80 pixels, and less than an inch wide. It is also capable of sequencing these images into video, at a frame-rate of 12.5fps. Beginning to understand why this technology didn’t go very far?

The engine is a Jensen #75 purchased for my by the IEEE from Mini-Steam. A bit of copper tubing directs the “used” steam into the flask. Things get rather messy otherwise…

To provide power to the electronic bits, I plan on using a DC motor as a dynamo. The one pictured doesn’t give me enough juice, but I’m working on it. I added a much heavier (and brass!) flywheel, which should increase torque quite a bit. The flywheel was courteously machined for me by my room-mate out of a large brass pulley I found in a scrap bin at school. I also added bearings to the two points where the drive shaft mounts to the base. They’re cute little things I scavenged from this pH meter, that happened to fit the shaft perfectly. I’ve yet to test it with these modifications (too cold out), but I think they’ll help things quite a bit. I’m trying to irreversibly-modify the engine as little as possible, as I’d like to use the engine in other things once this project’s done. I’d also like it to become a sort of heirloom someday too… Besides widening the mounts to accommodate the bearings, I also replaced some of the rivets with nuts and bolts. It killed me to take a drill to this lovely machine, but I believe that Jensen would have done these things if cost weren’t an issue. I also foolishly drilled those four holes you see to mount the dynamo before I came up with a better plan. I’m kicking myself for that, but there was, at least, a hole there to begin with…

This is what supplies the afore-mentioned pulsing light. It began life as a reproduction “Edison Bulb”, which my dad kindly burned out. I successfully hollowed it out and replaced the innards with the bits you see now. Everything was going great until I decided that some little, insignificant detail needed to be tweeked. Though I fixed that thing, I managed to crack the heck out of the glass. Typical Jake… Right now it’s glued together, but I will actually replace it when the project is closer to completion. Anyway, on with the show. Five orange LEDs (four 3mm, one 5mm) are wired in parallel to mimic the neon bulb that a “real” mechanical TV would have used. The brass tubes support the thing and carry the voltage to the LEDs, though the spiral of bell-wire is purely ornamental. The “ceramic insulator” is really the cap from a ChapStick which, along with a bit of plastic in base, holds the tubes firmly in place. The brass sheet, which I polished and covered with a layer of packing tape to improve reflectivity, focuses this light forward onto the…

Diffuser screen. To make the image look half-way decent, you need to diffuse the light evenly over some sort of surface. Otherwise, the pixels near the center will be way brighter than the others. To accomplish this, I took a clear (UV, actually) 55mm filter from an old SLR camera and sandwiched a sheet of waxed paper between the glass and the frame. Surprisingly, it does the job quite nicely! It attaches to the cabinet with the brass wire, which is jest flexible enough to allow it to be adjusted to the proper position.

This is how it all goes together. The magnifying lens was removed from my trusty “Helping Hands” long ago, because it did nothing but get in the way. On this device, however, it makes the picture bigger and easier to see (as you would imagine). It’s mounted on an Erector Set armature to allow adjustment, as well as increasing the general mad-science look of the device

The red Erector Set bits will support the mechanical linkages that connect the disk to the engine. A series of pulleys will reduce the high-RPM output of the engine to around 780RPM. The disk needs to spin at exactly 750RPM, so an as-of-yet-unbuilt device will dynamically regulate it down to this speed. There are several ways to do this that I’m considering, but actual construction is a ways off.

So, where is the picture/video information coming from? Well, the fun thing is, the image quality is low enough that the data can be contained in a signal typically usable only for audio. This means that just about anything that can transmit/receive or record/playback music can be used to control this device. In fact, most people that build similar TVs are fans of HAM/CB radio — over which the “video” signal can be transmitted. For this project, however, the signal will likely be played back via dirt-cheap and hack-a-licious JuiceBox mp3 player. PC software converts JPEG pictures and/or AVI video into stereo sound files. The left channel of this contains the actual video data, which is connected (through amplification) to the LEDs. You know how some stereos have a little light that blinks in time with the music? Well, this is the same idea. What would sound like a loud “pop” if you were to listen to this audio file, causes the LED array to blink on for a split second. As I explained earlier, these pulses of light form the dots that produce the picture. The thing is, the disk’s holes have to be in the right place at the right time for the image to be produced properly. This means that the audio signal has to start at the exact time that the first hole is over the location of the top left-most pixel. This will be accomplished though the use of a simple latch circuit on the “play” button, which will delay the command until a sensor sees that the disk is at the proper position. This is also why the aforementioned rotational speed of the disk (750RPM) is so important. The right channel contains a 12.5Hz pulse which can be used to do this. If an LED were to be connected to this, it would blink at the same rate as one that was rigged to blink with each revolution of the disk (12.5 pulses per second x 60 seconds =750 pulses per minute). If the two pulses don’t match up, the disk’s speed needs to be adjusted. This will be done automatically, but the LED thing should help to illustrate it… Read more about these specifics and even build your own here!

Still awake? Hehe, well, anyway… There’s still much work to be done, and none of it is going to be terribly easy. I’m firm in my belief that it will work, however, and am planning on having it done by September. So, thanks for reading this and stay tuned!

PS: I realize this may sound terribly snobby, but I’d like to request that you not share any ideas or suggestions with me unless I ask. Wow, that did sound awful! Anyway, the reason I say this is that I want this project to be as “mine” as possible. There are so many of you brilliant folks out there that could probably build this ten times better and a hundred times faster than me, but I’m afraid that would spoil it for me. This is all like a huge puzzle, which is no fun if someone tells you the answers! It’s about the journey, not the destination– you know? I do welcome your comments and questions, however!

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?