The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Author: Ed

  • Action Camera vs. License Plates: Sony HDR-AS30V at 1280×720

    With the Sony HDR-AS30V on my helmet set to 1280×720 at 120 frame/sec, the plates on passing cars remain barely readable (clicky for more dots):

    HDR-AS30V - license plates - 1280x720-120
    HDR-AS30V – license plates – 1280×720-120

    Throttling the camera back to 60 f/s produces slightly better results:

    HDR-AS30V - license plates - 1280x720-60
    HDR-AS30V – license plates – 1280×720-60

    The differences seem due more to changing lighting conditions than frame rate: the camera definitely produces better results in bright, direct sunlight.

    These are about as good as it gets and, if you look carefully at the images, you can see plenty of compression artifacts that wipe out small details.

    Equal-size dot-for-dot crops from the original 1280×720 images, matted together, and very lightly compressed because there’s not much detail to compress…

  • CNC Workshop 2015: Arduino Survival Guide, Workshop Edition

    MOSFET RDS Tester - Arduino
    MOSFET RDS Tester – Arduino

    Armed with bags of electronic parts and boxes of meters, I’ll be helping folks at the CNC Workshop understand the electrical limitations of the Arduino microcontrollers they’re building into projects.

    The presentation in PDF form:

    Arduino Survival Guide – Workshop Edition – CNC Workshop 2015

    We’ll wing it with the source code, because nothing’s more than a few lines long…

  • CNC Workshop 2015: Practical Solid Modeling with OpenSCAD

    HP Plotter Pen Polygon
    HP Plotter Pen Polygon

    This afternoon at the CNC Workshop, I’ll be bootstrapping folks into creating 3D-printable solid models with Openscad.

    The presentation in PDF form:

    Practical Solid Modeling for 3D Printing with OpenSCAD – CNC Workshop 2015

    The OpenSCAD source code for the exercises, in case you don’t want to type along:

    Practical Solid Modeling for 3D Printing with OpenSCAD – Models.zip.odt

    When you download that file, you’ll get something ending in .zip.odt. Rename it to remove the .odt extension, because it’s really a ZIP file; WordPress doesn’t allow users to uploads ZIP files.

  • CNC Workshop 2015: Personal 3D Printing Status Report

    Toroid Mount - Build layout
    Toroid Mount – Build layout

    If all has gone according to plan, I’m in Detroit today and will give a talk at the CNC Workshop on (my view of) the status of personal 3D printing, what to expect in the future, and what you can do with it today.

    The presentation in PDF form: 3D Printing Status 2105-06 – CNC Workshop Detroit

  • Road Conditions: 695 Dutchess Turnpike (Rt 44)

    Unfortunately, US Rt 44 is the only way to get from Adams Fairacre to the Stop & Shop, so we ride this section once a week. I’m towing the trailer with two bags of groceries:

    Rt 44 - 695 at Quest Diagnostics - pedestrian
    Rt 44 – 695 at Quest Diagnostics – pedestrian

    A palimpsest of patches shows that they really don’t have staying power:

    Rt 44 - 695 at Quest Diagnostics - deterioration
    Rt 44 – 695 at Quest Diagnostics – deterioration

    Gravel and a manhole cover keep cyclists off the shoulder:

    Rt 44 - 695 at Quest Diagnostics - patching
    Rt 44 – 695 at Quest Diagnostics – patching

    We take the lane well before we encounter this section, because veering into traffic doesn’t work well:

    Rt 44 - 695 at Quest Diagnostics - traffic
    Rt 44 – 695 at Quest Diagnostics – traffic

    The longitudinal crack marks the edge of the original paving. This is a common hazard on Dutchess County roads, as many were widened by simply paving the original shoulders into the travel lane, without actually rebuilding the substructure.

    The map:

    Rt 44 - 695 at Quest Diagnostics - map
    Rt 44 – 695 at Quest Diagnostics – map

  • Monthly Image: Sparrow Fledging Season

    We noticed far more sparrows than usual in the garden, some flying clumsily, then saw both adults feeding a nestling peering from the nesting box:

    Sparrow fledgling watching the world
    Sparrow fledgling watching the world

    Our presence interrupted the regular feeding pattern, stalling the male sparrow atop the utility pole with a tempting snack in his beak:

    Male sparrow with insect
    Male sparrow with insect

    Even when it’s time to leave, just thinking about growing up and joining the world makes you tired:

    Sparrow fledgling looking tired
    Sparrow fledgling looking tired

    May they all eat many garden insects!

    Taken with the Sony DSC-H5 and tele extender lens, zoomed all the way in, with a touch of manual focus and exposure override.

  • HP7475A Plotter: Never Throw Anything Out

    Our Larval Engineer stopped by, on her way to a half-year co-op job out around Route 128, and devoted a few days to merge-sorting / triaging her possessions. Having shown her the HP 74754A plotter project, she later dropped a bag o’ stuff on my desk without comment:

    HP7475A - My old pens racks doodles
    HP7475A – My old pens racks doodles

    The perforated pen holder stuck to the plotter case (hey, it would still fit!) in front of the carousel with a bit of foam tape on an angled bracket you can’t quite see. It held 15 pens at the ready: I really used that plotter.

    The doodle on the yellow sheet sketches a bulky adapter between the spindle nose thread on the Sherline CNC mill and a plotter cartridge. The flange-less pen body might just fit into the spindle bore, but I remember concluding that machining pen bodies or adapters wasn’t worth the effort. Now it’s a simple matter of some OpenSCAD source code and a few hours of hands-off production, so perhaps I should re-think that.

    No dates on anything, but I got the Sherline in 2004. The pen holder probably dates back to the late 80s, shortly after I got the plotter. Most likely, I gave her the bag o’ stuff and told her to make something interesting; it could still happen…