dsI was at our office yesterday to get some plexiglass and thought I might as well make a simple industrial style lamp. We had some vent tubing laying around and no real use for it.

I started out with a simple wooden stand and put in the the tubing. It’s really easy as the tube parts are made to just slide in. In the top bit there are a piece  of wood with the light bulb holder and wires.

Not much to tell about it really. The idea is to put in a colour filter and have it as a mood light. It will be used as a mood light and will not make a lot of light, however I tried it with a 100W spotlight as well and it makes quite a good worklamp.

I have this idea I have had since I was just a little boy. It all began when I was in a old hardware shop and found these lamps looking like flowers. My Idea was to put it in a small flower pot and connect it up as a night light. The idea stayed with my through out the years. Today You can buy these things ready made online but one night I found all the parts (pot, lamp base, cord, and a bulb) laying around in my home. The bulb is not at all what I had in mind and it’s designed to be hanging up side down. Still I had a go, and it worked out ok. Now I must find a better bulb and some gravel to fill the flowerpot with.

A bit late but for Halloween I wanted to try out something new. I have seen this DIY magic mirror on the net and wanted to try something like that. I started out with a mirror that I picked up at a low price outlet for about $10.  It had a nice frame but a real mirror and that is no good, I wanted a magic one. Little did they now that the frame became magical with the help of a some window glass and a sunscreen for car windows. Unfortunately I don’t have any images of the build.

The mirror have some of the features that the DIY magic mirror have. For example, it can read alcohol fumes. In other words a vanity breathalyser. It is activated by pressing the button below the mirror.

The mirror is basically a semitransparent mirror with a LCD mounted behind and hooked up to a computer.

The controls are connected with a Arduino to the computer. As this was going to be used at a party and we wanted to know when people arrive. The logical step is to put a wireless doorbell connected to the Arduino. Thats about it.

After the laser pointer post with the warning label I thought I’ll make a short post about the stickers.

I started out with some freight labels from the Swedish postal service. These labels are a A4 paper with glue on the back. I print out the images I want as a sticker on these labels. The stickers have a limit, they can only be about 5 cm in one direction. After the sticker is printed I take some package tape and just tape over the image.

Then all you have to do is cut out the sticker and stick it to what you like. Very stylish.

I finally finished both of my laser pointers. These are identical except for the laser diode used. I made one blue 445nm blue pointer and one 405nm ultra violet. I’m happy with the result, with just one downside. The 405nm should output about double the power but I’ll investigate that later.

I started out with a LED flash light using one 18650 Lithium battery from Dealextreme. Not a bad flash light to begin with, for a moment I thought that I would just keep one without converting it. But then again, I can always order another.

The driver is pretty small and needs some soldering to set it to the correct range. This was nervous work the first time, the second time I screwed up but manage to fix it.

The ”pill” is where the LED resides. This was removed as well as the old driver and the top is drilled out to make room for the laser driver. The old driver will be used as seen on the next couple of images.

And here it is. The old driver have had all the itty-bitty parts removed and after finding out witch soldering points that leads to positive and negative battery connection two short cables are connected. Then the driver was inserted in the pill and the driver soldered in.

Its not easy to solder in the old driver to the pill there are a lot of metal to heat up. After all electronics I had some more work in the shop. The parts I got made for was not complete (I never drew it in before sending it to the manufacturer).

The adapter got a mounting screw to hold laser diode… ehh.. adaptor.

Almost done. he laser diode assembly are soldered to the driver and the second topmost part of the flash light is put in place. Then the adapter is slid over the assembly and fastened and the topmost part is put in its place.

Here we go. Two laser pointers done and ready for whatever adventure is coming their way. I’m very happy with the warning label, I’ll write a new post about how to make stickers later.

The final results are in. The blue shows a great 530mW reading and the violet a disappointing 117mW. However I’m very happy about these babes.

This weekend me and my friend Kim where trying to clean up a little at our bar. Well, about 100 cans of beer where cluttering the storage room and we usually crush them by simply place them on the floor and stomp them flat. For a while now we have been thinking about building some kind of crusher device. As Kim wanted to be able to get some chums to work when ever he is displeased with them we went for a manual crusher. I wanted a pneumatic ram to crush them but as we are a bit low on cash and don’t have any pneumatic equipment it would have to do.

The device is quite simple really, there are a box that serves as a crushing chamber and feeder with room for 5 cans. The two levers makes it easy to crush a can. The hole in the side and the block of wood inside are just a way to secure it to the table.

The feeder is fully loaded and ready for action. All you have to do at this point is pushing the levers apart and together until the feeder is empty.

Here is the last can in a load before and after.

The force needed for this result is not that great. I don’t think a eight year old could do it but for any normal strength adult it is easy. One thing I didn’t take a picture of is the exit port. In the ”after” picture above you will have to imagine a hole just a little bit larger than the crushed can. When the ram moves back and lets go of the can it will fall out in the bottom.

As I mentioned this morning I finally got the serial driver for my sound player working.

It all started with me and my friend Kim working on our bar. We come up with the idea that it might be funny with some sound effects. Things like  rimshots, studio laughter and so on. After using ”instant rimshot” we wanted something of our own. After some time I went to work. Now finally it’s done and I’ll try it out at the next gathering. I missed the three year anniversary  of the bar but at least it’s done.

I’ll just show you some pictures now

The buttons I got from e-bay, they where about $10 including shipping from Hong kong. The box is actually two picture frames, one from IKEA and the golden one is from a local barging-store.

I turned the IKEA frame backwards but kept the stand. After drilling four holes and fasten the back to the front I had a pretty good enclosure.

The buttons is mounted on a piece of brass sheet with an etched pattern. And the sheet is mounted instead of the normal glass.

All buttons need to have diodes soldered to the terminals, the way the buttons are connected makes the buttons send a four bit binary number on the four data-pins. The downside is that one the highest button get registered if two buttons are pressed at the same time, the upside is that it’s very simple to make.

All the wiring are old network cables. And it may not be pretty but it works fine. The serial cable is then connected to a small circuit board by a contact. It’s the only way to get the back on there. As the stand is left in the IKEA frame the buttons can stand by it self. I’m very happy about how it turned out.

I’ll sign of with a picture of the buttons completed. The serial cable are three meter long and should be enough for the bar. Later I will update with more details of the software and some pictures when I got it installed in it’s proper environment. 

This morning I got the serial driver working using windows kernel32 calls. Now it works like a charm and I will be releasing a preview of the hardware and software soon. I just thought of something, I’ve not written about this project yet. It’s a bar-tool/sound-player with a bit of a steampunk appeal.

I’ll show you soon enough. And show a simple demo if I can.