Flightless Angels

I just pledged to buy one of these. It’s a 500 lumen flashlight, which is very bright. This should be just the thing for peering into those dark corners when I’m looking for my other flashlight.

Doom Ported to the Web

I’m building a sound effects box based on the legendary (to those in the know (geeks)) Texas Instruments SN76477 Sound Effects Generator. This chip was responsible for most video arcade game sound in the 80s and it’s versatility always impressed me. So I got the chip and am building a sound effects generator around it.

Here is the front panel and the start of the internal wiring

These people are waiting to see Lady Gaga.

If you need an air conditioner installed in your second floor window you should definitely call me because I’m very good at doing that.

I’m starting work on a CNC milling machine. This is a machine that can, under computer control, automatically make cuts into wood, plastic and metal to create custom shapes. I’m building mine to mill printed circuit boards but you can do all kinds of neat stuff. My design is based on this. Here is the base.

Useful sites:
CNCZone
DumpsterCNC
Hackaday CNC Hacks

Some time ago I wanted to trace some wiring in the walls of my house. My cheapo metal detector kit wasn’t up to it so I thought an all band radio might work. Basically it’s a radio without the tuner. It uses an an antenna and detector to pick up any radio transmission on any band and play it out through a speaker. I based my design on this.

This is the detector circuit, based around an IN5711 small signal rectifier and a 2N3904 as buffer amp.

This is the detector hooked up to the audio amplifier (LM386 with a circuit straight off the data sheet). The box is a plastic conduit enclosure from the hardware store.

Here’s the box with the volume control/power switch on the front and the antenna poking out the back.

Here’s a view showing the 9v battery holder. The punch out sections are almost perfect for holding one of these batteries in place. It just needed a little milling with the trusty Dremel.

The wires I’m trying to trace are dead so I need to build a simple signal injector and hopefully I can trace the tone to the point where the wire is broken.

Want.