Boba Rhett Posted January 2, 2007 Share Posted January 2, 2007 I know, I know, "Holy crap, Rhett started a thread!" Hopefully there will be a lot more of this soon. Before I continue I just wanna say how great it is to be able to once again churn out my special brand of boring yet magically whimsical threads here on a semi-regular basis. I've missed you assorted miscreants a lot! Anyways as some of you may already know, I'm studying to become an Electronics Engineer. As such, I do a lot of tinkering with random parts that I steal from the school labs find laying around. In the last month or two I've pieced together quite a few gadgets. A stun gun (blew a hole in my thumb), radio, self-sustaining wireless driveway monitor, and even an LED Bob the Builder hat (weird yet mysteriously boring story) to name of few. The two things I have pictures of are my Digital Thermometer and Range Finding Ultra-Sonic Transducer projects. I just wanted to show you all some of the things I've been doing so, here ya go. Any questions, comments or statements bringing my manhood into question are welcome as always. Digital Thermometer Alpha Stage: Stage 1: Stage 2: Stage 3: Range Finding Ultra-Sonic Transducer Alpha Stage: Stage 1: Stage 2: Stage 3: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IG-64 Posted January 2, 2007 Share Posted January 2, 2007 Looks complicated. Mind explaining how they work? I can usually keep up pretty well with technical explanations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BongoBob Posted January 2, 2007 Share Posted January 2, 2007 Nifty Rhett That type of stuff is really amazing to me. I actually plan on someday soon building my own portable headphone amp using directions from here: http://tangentsoft.net/audio/cmoy-tutorial/ Also, congrats on finally finding a way for keeping the Chupacabra out of here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyrion Posted January 2, 2007 Share Posted January 2, 2007 Could you make me a wah pedal for the guitar, please? Because every solo needs wah wah for that pseudo-bluesy effect. Just ask Kirk Hammet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IG-64 Posted January 2, 2007 Share Posted January 2, 2007 Could you make me a wah pedal for the guitar, please? Because every solo needs wah wah for that pseudo-bluesy effect. Just ask Kirk Hammet. "And bring that thing that makes it go 'Wah... wah wah wah, wah, wah.'" - Death, on Family Guy. I always wondered how they made that sound with a guitar. So it's a pedal, huh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Posted January 2, 2007 Share Posted January 2, 2007 Pretty neat stuff Rhett Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Commander Obi-Wan Posted January 2, 2007 Share Posted January 2, 2007 Big words. Too complicated for my likings, but that's pretty cool stuff you've conjured there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyrion Posted January 2, 2007 Share Posted January 2, 2007 "And bring that thing that makes it go 'Wah... wah wah wah, wah, wah.'" - Death, on Family Guy. I always wondered how they made that sound with a guitar. So it's a pedal, huh? Yup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Det. Bart Lasiter Posted January 2, 2007 Share Posted January 2, 2007 Dude. Make a laser cannon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BongoBob Posted January 3, 2007 Share Posted January 3, 2007 Rail gun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rogue15 Posted January 3, 2007 Share Posted January 3, 2007 that's some pretty cool ****. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Det. Bart Lasiter Posted January 3, 2007 Share Posted January 3, 2007 Rail gun.This isn't fantasyland what the hell are you babbling about? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boba Rhett Posted January 3, 2007 Author Share Posted January 3, 2007 Looks complicated. Mind explaining how they work? I can usually keep up pretty well with technical explanations. They're not too bad, actually. The digital thermometer utilizes an LM35 temperature sensor that linearly scales its voltage output by 10mv with every change of 1C. (0C = 0mv output) This voltage change is fed into an internal Analog to Digital converter within that big chip on the board there. That chip is a PIC microcontroller. It takes that digitally converted output that the A/D converter spits out and performs some mathematical computations to see what that percentage of the reference voltage it is. It then runs it through several multiplication processes to compute the temperature outputs. These numbers are then converted to ASCII for use on the LCD screen. This info is then just serially fed out to the LCD driver chip. The Range Finder uses a PIC microcontroller as well for its "brains". It sends out an initialization pulse to the transducer, which fires out a very fast reverberation; at the same time a very high speed counter begins to run inside the PIC. The transducer then uses a field to quickly stop itself from resonating and begins to "look" for a bounce back of the signal it output. (the faster it gets this bounce back signal, the closer the object is and the lower the counter will be) Once it "sees" this bounce back, a "high" signal is shot to the PIC chip which stops the counter. I had previously computed how many cycles occurred every two feet so I simply divided the count down to spit out distance in feet. From there I can just convert that into any style of measurement. The data is then fed to the LCD in the same way it was in the thermometer. I've seen that headphone amp before, Bongo. It's pretty nifty! I actually made an extremely low powered rail gun when I was working on the stun gun. I do plan on making a high powered one soon so I can at least shoot glass bottles out from across a room. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IG-64 Posted January 3, 2007 Share Posted January 3, 2007 I actually made an extremely low powered rail gun when I was working on the stun gun. I do plan on making a high powered one soon so I can at least shoot glass bottles out from across a room. I would so like to see that. Making those things looks interesting. I guess it's just converting relatively simple physical measurements into a digital form, right? Looks hard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boba Rhett Posted January 3, 2007 Author Share Posted January 3, 2007 The name of the game is converting/manipulating one thing to another when it comes to electronics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabretooth Posted January 3, 2007 Share Posted January 3, 2007 Cool. Can you trying making a Coil gun sometime? Speaking of cool home-made gadgets, I once found this cool torchlight on the net - so ****ing powerful, it can light paper on fire... Linkage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lightsaberboy Posted January 3, 2007 Share Posted January 3, 2007 Looks sweet. How long did that take to complete? Last quarter we had to do a miniproject involving our 9s12 microcontroller and my partner and I made a minature hydraulic car. We placed IR sensors on the front and back grills and when one of them detected any motion, it'd activate the hydraulics for that side, raising it up and down. We also rigged an LED to display either an "F' or a "B" when this happened to show whether it was the front or back sensor that was activated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boba Rhett Posted January 3, 2007 Author Share Posted January 3, 2007 The 9s12? Is that a Freescale Microcontroller? I had the Range Finder working within about 90 minutes of gathering the parts together and the thermometer after probably three hours. I'm not sure how much time I spent cleaning them up and putting them into nice boxes. Quite a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lightsaberboy Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 yeah, i believe it's from Freescale. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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