Category Archives: Everything Else

Larson Scanner Review

Justin over at WyoInnovations writes:

“My 14 year old daughter put together the Larson Scanner Kit offered by the Evil Mad Science Laboratories (EMSL). We have put together quite a few soldering kits around here and this one is, simply put, the best “learn-to-solder” kit I’ve ever come across.”

Thanks, Justin!

Kits are in stock over at the Evil Mad Science store, just in time for Halloween!

Bottles of Hope Chandelier

Bottles Of Hope By Peter Sid from peter sid on Vimeo.

Peter Sid wrote in to tell us about his “Bottles of Hope” chandelier that he has entered into a design contest at Apartment Therapy.

Evocative of the famous Droog Milk Bottle Lamp, Peter’s design features an array of 108 chemotherapy bottles, individually lit by LEDs. (Chemo bottles have been decorated and repurposed since 1999 by the Bottles of Hope project, hence the name.)

We’ve embedded Peter’s slideshow video above. If you can’t see it here, you can click here to view it at Vimeo.
And, if you look closely, you might spot the Peggy 2LE that he used to drive his LEDs.

Voting for the contest is this week, and I’m sure that Peter would appreciate your vote.

Linkdump: August 2010

Manufacturing art: Photomask

Masking plate1


After seeing our photomask coasters, a friend gave us this giant photomask as an art piece. While we’re not certain what this was for, our best guess is that it is a mask for the lead frame for some device in an SO-20 package. The overall size is about 18″ x 24″ and about 1/8″ thick.


Masking plate3


Shown with an SO-24 device on the edge of the plate for comparison. (Didn’t happen to have a correctly sized 20 pin device handy.)

Masking plate5


The transparent lines show where the metal will be after processing and the black portions are where the metal will be removed. When you line up the 24 pin device on the plate it is a bit misleading, as it obscures the fact that those two outer transparent lines aren’t actually for device leads. It does confirm that it is sized correctly for a 1:1 mask for a device with a 0.050″ pin spacing, and the central square looks like the right width for a device in an SO-20 package as well.


Tangentially related: CCD wafer

Linkdump: July 2010

Peggy Clock Contest: We’ve got winners!

Here are the winners from the Peggy 2: Clock Concept Contest! We had a lot of fantastic entries, and had a verydifficult time deciding on not just first prize but on the runner ups. Thanks to everyone who participated, and congratulations to our fourteen winners!

First, our Ten Runner-ups:

Peggy2 clock concept demo
1. Neat radial concept clock by rsx2112, complete with a demo appwritten in Processing. This is based on using the LEDs off-board, controlled by the Peggy 2.

Binary Sudoku Clock

2. Binary sudoku by jsarik

3. “Binary” morse code clock by Will Grainger. Above is the youtube demo of this concept.

We had no idea that numbers looked so cool in Morse code.

Peggy 033000   Peggy 022230

4. Flickering candle clock and hourglass clock concepts by Tom of Nekomi Tech. The twelve candles burn down their way through twelve hours, and the matched hourglasses give hours and minutes, perhaps by number of rows and/or number of dots.

5. The awesome Lab Clock from Emo Mosley.

Peggy clock Polar   Peggy clock Sand

6. Radial sand clock by Lego Robotics Instructor hastypete, with different-colored LEDs in rings. Can be used as a polar clock (left) or as an unusual sand clock (right).

 

Wedding clock

7. Wedding clock by Squall Line Productions and Jared Style Design. Much more about this clock in this photoset.

The Sands of Fuzzy Time

8. “The Sands of Fuzzy Time” by C_Dave, featuring dripping sand and “fuzzy” text like you’d find on a word clock

08:25

9. We adore this simple “Crazy Eyes” Clock by pepehdez. “Small Eye = Hours, Big Eye = Minutes”

PeggyMaze

10. Among the different entries by Rouverius, we liked this one the best: a retro-game maze, where your health and gold give the time.

Our three Second Prize winners are as follows:

Mascara de luz 1

1. “Mascara de luz” (Mask of light) by Antonio Capo– a 3D sculpture made by cutting acrylic rods to different lengths, and lighting them selectively with the LEDs to simulate the passage of the sun during the day– a sort of advanced sculptural sundial. From what we can tell, this isn’t just a concept: he’s actually built it too (although perhaps not initially as a clock). Much more information about this fantastic project is available and linked from here.

Earth Peggy Clock

2. World clock concept by AlliedEnvy. A classic design and clever use of the fixed LED colors. A neat thing that you can do on a clock like this is to change how far the sunlight extends by season.

AlliedEnvy also sumbitted a neat sky clock concept that reminds us of Ken Murphy’s History of the sky.

City Lights

3. City lights clock concept by Vexelius.

This clock displays a city landscape that changes according to the time of the day. Time of day is shown by the lengths of the four buildings, and it also shows moon phase and weather.

And finally our First Prize winner:

peggyvictoria

This “station clock” by Jellmeister take advantage of the limited video capabilities of the Peggy in a surprising and elegant way.

It uses Peggy’s 25×25 matrix to follow the minute hand seamlessly around an old-fashioned station clock (Victoria in the example shown). Gradually moving by slowly changing the “anti-aliasing” allows this to move without any noticeable instantaneous change, to make the clock elegantly eye-catching rather than constantly attention-grabbing. Showing enough of the centre of the clock face allows the hour hand to be read as well, allowing instant easy telling of the time.

Again, our congratulations to all of the prize winners, and to everyone else for making us wish that we had set aside more prizes for the contest.

And prize winners: we’ll be in touch shortly. :)

Peggy Clock Contest: The end is near!

Some of the contest entries

The deadline for our Peggy 2 Clock Concept Contest is midnight, tomorrow (Tuesday) evening. Some of the existing entries are shown above, and they haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s possible.

We’ve got fourteen prizes, including awesome soldering kits and exclusive Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories sew-on patches. All you need to do to get one? Show us a clever way to display the time on a Peggy 2 LED matrix display. Let’s see those clocks!

linkdump: June 2010

Linkdump: April 2010

Linkdump: March 2010