This page details my projects in which the majority of the work is focused around voltages of 120V or less.... If you did not read the disclaimer on the Home Page, read it before continuing! I would like to start out by informing you that my High Speed Photography has its own page Secret Bookcase Entrance: this project, torn down after the Homecoming Dance at my High School, was to build a Wayne Manor style secret entrance to the exclusive Senior Lounge. Instead of a real bookcase, sue to construction and time concerns, we used a flush wall door and covered the area in bookcase wall paper. To open the Door, a bust of William Shakespeare is flipped up and a hidden switch in the bust activates the motor attached to the door. the door opens, the switched is turned off, and the person may enter. We planned to make our own bust, as I do have the materials and skills, but someone found a place that sells them so they bought one as a convenience. I use a motor with some basic gears going to a rubber wheel, entire motor assembly was purchased at a surplus store for $7 - it was driven by a 12VDC Wall Wart that was controlled by the bust of Shakespeare. i could have put a switch on the inside to reverse the polarity to the motor, so that the door would automatically close, but since this was installed the day of the dance we did not have time, and I had other areas to work on.     Computer HD44780 LCD - This was just a simple LCD hooked to a parallel port, just listed here to keep track of previous projects. There is enough information on the internet on this project, and there is nothing new in it. I did, however, write some custom eBay code for it. It can be found on the software page when I get around to making that page and find the code, which may take a while... Wireless Universal Controller: This project uses a 3 channel model airplane controller to wirelessly switch on other projects that the operator should be away from (like rockets). The current version is unreliable as it uses the mechanical motion of the servos to activate a switch. I plan to make a circuit to take the values from the servo receiver and use that to drive a transistor to make the switch. here is a photo of the transmitter:  USB CNC Controller: This project is to control servo motors for a CNC machine via USB. The I/O interface to the computer is an Elexol USB I/O 20 MkIII unit with 24 digital pins that can be inputs or outputs. The pins on the I/O interface are connected to TIP101 transistors which in turn drive the servo motors from a 12V power source. The stepper motors used are the kind with six wires, 2 of the wires are connected to 12V+ and four of which are connected to the transistors which ground the wire they are connected to on cue. Some photos:    Future Projects: Poor Man's Glass Annealer Controller: This design is to make a timer and temperature controller from very simple parts that could be assembled very fast. It starts by the annealer being turned on (switch in series with a Normally Closed [N/C] Solid State Relay connected to heating elements). To set the max temperature, one needs to set an LM317 to a base voltage that is connected to a motorized potentiometer (more on this later) to the "coil" on the solid state relay. A homemade pyrometer is in series with the LM317 and the potentiometer such that when a certain temperature is reached, combined with the LM317 the pyrometer will have enough voltage to switch the relay through the potentiometer. The potentiometer, however, is motorized. When the relay switches, the potentiometer will lower its value by one notch. This will lower the voltage needed to trigger the relay, so the heating element stays off until the temperature drops below a certain point. Then it will reactivate when it gets below the threshold and ack above it after the heater turns back on. Then the process will repeat until the threshold is impossible to not be reached. Even though this design should work, I hope to find a better replacement for the motorized potentiometer, as it might be more difficult than the spirit of the project allows. The main issue with this design is the need to calibrate the setup... |