Hacking and Nonsense
The lamp is coming along nicely. The shades are cut from translucent white acrylic, and the stems are cut out of wood. Each shade is a 1.5″ cube.
I wired them up with LEDs to test things out, and Bre lent me a camera to film them with.
Now to get it to talk to the internet…
I’ve been working on learning Processing, a language which is a bastardization of Java used for drawing pretty pictures (among other things). Most of its functions are based around drawing/graphics.
Processing project #1 was to generate templates to be cut on the laser cutter. Specifically paper boxes, because I needed something to package my Tinysaurs in. They end up looking like this:
You enter the depth, width, and height of the box, and Processing draws the pattern
Processing has a PDF library which I use to generate the template in PDF format, which Corel Draw is able to read. I’m looking into using Python instead of Processing, because it apparently has a nice DXF library. Although the fact that Adam scoffs at Processing makes me want to keep using it just to annoy him.
The Processing program is available in the NYC Resistor SVN repository. Which is public, hooray! The code is only vaguely commented, but it should be pretty clear what it’s doing. Maybe.
Of course you dont’ need a laser to cut these out, and xacto knife would work just fine. But… I have a laser so I use it.
If you don’t want to mess with Processing and just want to print box patterns, you can do that too. I’ve generated a bunch of sizes:
You may need to right-click and save the pdf to your hard drive to get it to load.
Hooray, a new project!
At work it often gets very loud in my office, so everyone wears headphones. Unfortunately this makes it difficult to get someone’s attention, because they’re all rocking out to David Bowie or whatever. Also, it gets very dark in my office because we don’t have desk lamps.
The solution, clearly, is networked USB lamps that you can make blink if you want to get someone’s attention. Someone else suggested a cheaper solution would be Nerf balls to throw at each other, but that’s way less fun to build.
Here’s my prototype for part of the first lamp. I’m making 5 lamps total, and they’ll all be different. Each lamp will have white LEDs for general lighting, and then different colored LEDs for various alert functions. The first couple will probably just use normal, colored LEDs. I’ll try some RGB LEDs later, they’re just so stupidly expensive compared to normal LEDs.
I wrote a program in Processing to generate the parts, so I can easily make models of different sizes or with different thickness materials. I’ll post it in a bit when things are a little farther along.
I’m using an Arduino to prototype the electronics, but will probably switch to something cheaper like an ATTiny when I go to build the lamps.
Just because it’s handy, I’ve written the prototype drivers for the lamp in Processing, but that’s only because I already had it open. Eventually I’ll want something that can hang out in the systray / menu bar, and I don’t think Processing allows for that. Tho one advantage of Processing its an easy way to make executables for both Mac and Windows. Or it pretends to be, I’ve had inconsistent luck getting Processing applications to run on my windows machine. Thanks, Java!
In case you were wondering “Can you laser etch rocks?”
You totally can.
Robo-rock was etched in raster mode at 20% speed and 100% power on a 35 watt laser.
Unlike the last robo-pet I had (grass) this one should be substantially harder to kill.
Related ideas we’ve come up with include etching a bunch with electrical symbols and casting them like runes for circuits. Of course this led to a discussion on casting bones, and then etching them.
Today I made EVEN MORE STUFF on the laser cutter. AND, this time I actually listed something for sale on Etsy. This is the first time in many, many months I have actually listed things for sale (excluding mindlessly hitting renew when things expire). It’s awesome to actually make things I like again.
I made the city ring in blue acrylic:
I also made it in white acrylic but there was a small problem. The white was slightly warped. This caused the laser to be out of focus when it hit it, making things generally melty.
Within an hour of listing the blue ring on Etsy, I’d sold 2. So I guess they’re a hit? I also made one out of day-glo pink plastic. It’s a little blinding.
I tried to make a tiny city on a ring. It came out OK but I’m still figuring out what scale works with what materials. Also, balsa is useless; never use it for anything.
I have been using a program called QCAD to draw out the designs, and its been kinda frustrating. The documentation for it is terrible. Bre found a guy who does tutorials which has helped a little, but its overall a slow process. In some ways its similar to Rhino, which I learned in college, but the UI is totally different and its annoying. I’m debating whether to reinstall XP on my laptop (it has Ubuntu right now) just so I can use Illustrator instead. Because apparently I have forgotten how much I hate Illustrator.
I also made another ring, but the basswood was too weak for the design, and the notches were a tiny bit too small.
First and foremost, the laser is now up and running at the hackerspace. One of Bre’s friends sent him a dinosaur pattern, and I decided that said dinosaur pattern would be more fun if it was ridiculously small.
Three tries (took a while to get the scale right) and some tweezers later… TINYSAUR
Here’s tinysaur next to Bre’s dinosaur:
If you’d like to make your own Tinysaur but lack a 35 watt CO2 laser, you can get the pre-lased kit on Etsy or if you’d rather skip the tedium and just have a tiny T-Rex, you can get a completed Tinysaur as well.
My friend Eric Skiff shot this video of me using Bre’s knitting machine. Hopefully I’ll have time to do more videos in the future, I just got a Toyota punchcard machine I need to devote some time to.