Old Electronics
Etching PCB's
When I first got into electronics, prototype circuits were not as cheap as they are now and I was on a tight budget. I etched the majority of my earlier circuits myself using the laser printer toner transfer method and an acid bath.
One challenge with etching your own circuits is routing. Although I did make a few double layered PCB’s, it’s a ton of work getting alignment between the layers correct and every via requires drilling a hole and soldering a wire between the two sides. Most boards were single layer. Luckily most of the PIC micro-controllers I was using featured remappable pins which helped significantly.
Persistence Of Vision LED Project
Persistence of vision is an optical illusion that occurs when the human eye continues to see an image after it has disappeared from view. This creates an incredible effect when you combine rapidly changing lights with movement. Here are some pictures I captured of the smaller version by using a long exposure on my camera.
The 3W RGB LED Controller has the same effect, but larger and dispersed using a recycled white lemonade container.
Stroboscope
Persistence of vision also works when the light source is stationary and the object moves. For this I created a stroboscope. You can see two different air-soft BB’s going two different speeds, or water droplets falling through time.
Intervalometer and AstroPhotography
The time-lapse settings on my camera limited my shutter time and other options, so I built an intervalometer to trigger the camera while it was in manual mode. The interval could be adjusted and set using 8 LED’s each representing a bit, really testing the users ability to read binary.
8X12 LED Matrix
For this project I created an 8X12 RGB LED matrix using a PIC18, SPI shift registers for I/O expansion, and multiplexing. The firmware was written entirely in assembly to quickly execute the time sensitive multiplexing operations. I also wrote simple object physics with color, position, and direction. Complex patterns and displays could be created simply by setting up objects and letting it run.
SuperCoop 3000
My parents have chickens and wanted to automate the door that keeps predators out at night so I designed and programmed a controller.
