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Recording live data is something that you could use very often but most of the time we live to learn without it. What is the temperature in your attic over the day or what about the pool? Is the heat sink temperature acting as you thought it would even after operating for many hours? This ATmega8 Data Acquisition System is a powerful system that can do all of that. Firmware and computer software is available so that you can make your own. "We can use a PC for connecting the homemade data acquisition hardware and produce the GUI for user friendly graphical presentation easily. One of the project that uses Visual Basic is the Data Acquisition & Logging System using AT89C51 made by Abbas Raza. In this project we use a PC for GUI display and the homemade data converter board using the AVR microcontroller. The circuit is built with the ATmega8. The chip has the onchip 10-bit resolution A/D Converter. Temperature sensor are connected to the 6 channels ADC input. You can connect up to 8 sensors with the ATmega8 TQFP package. The analog inputs are captured by sending a command from PC. The readings will display graphically or text data. The data can also be recorded as the database."
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When times are tough it is nice when there’s a cool event that can be taken in for free. The Levi’s 3rd Annual Powersliding Competition will be held Wednesday April 15th from 3-5pm at the Santa Monica Pier. If you are close to the area you should check it out, it’s sure to be a good time. There will be lots of crazy sliding and music by Matt and Kim. "The event includes a sizable street course that will test the competitors’ freestyle skills with 40-foot, four-story rails and boxes, and a cool ocean breeze with a good experience for your audience/event goers. Other highlights include a performance from Brooklyn rockers Matt & Kim, complimentary treats from Mountain Dew and Kogi Korean BBQ taco trucks, and free custom screen-printed apparel, all surrounding the massive Powersliding course. A way for spectators to cut loose and take a break from tax day, KROQ’s Psycho Mike, Catfish, and our celebrity judges will keep the crowd entertained and help encourage carnage on the rails." Thanks for the tip Andy. |
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Does your wife not care about your electronic and computer hobby? While she isn’t looking borrow her sewing machine and connect it to your CNC machine to impress her with patterns that she only wishes she could pull off! I wonder if jinghamjr ever gave the sewing machine back?
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We all need some inspiration from time to time. Andrew is a 13 year old from Canada who is doing some electronic experimenting. He built this stepper motor controller and single axis CNC machine from recycled parts from old computer equipment. Looks like he loves hot glue as much as I do. "I am 13 I have always wanted to build a cnc machine but because inexpensive parts are hard to find in Canada I have had trouble trying to build a decent cnc controller. The purpose if this Instructable is to show that anyone can build a cnc controller using an old scanner. The scanner I used was an old OpticPro scanner. I had previously extracted the stepper motor and experimented with it but not considered it for a cnc controller. All of the controllers on the Internet had a large number of expensive transistors or were ridiculously complex. I finally stumbled across this controller and realized I could build it. By reusing the parts from the old scanner and making the case from recycled cardboard, I am cutting back on my impact on the planet."
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About 5 years ago I bought all the equipment to make some home-brew beer, I purchased a few different flavors of beer kits and went to work. Only one batch was drinkable, but it wasn’t that good and eventually found its way into the sink. After further reading it seemed that temperature control of the brew stages is key to achieving a good result. BrewTroller is an open source project that allows the common home-brewer to move up a notch in the sophistication of their brew process. It is based on the Sanguino microcontroller platform which was inspired by the Arduino controller. "There are a number of savvy homebrewers who have build custom control systems for their brewery. It’s been done and that’s where we got the ideas from. What we wanted to accomplish is to create something that could meet the needs of many brewers looking for more automation, control and precision in their brewing, do it without breaking the bank and make it available to those without the electronics or coding skills needed to design a system from scratch. We ended up with a menu driven standalone device that operates much like an iPod with a rotary control that is used to scroll through menus or adjust levels. This current development release includes the Brew Monitor which monitors the temperature of up to six temperature inputs (HLT, Mash, Kettle, CFC H2O IN, CFC H2O Out and CFC Beer Out) and controls the heat output for the HLT, Mash Tun and Brew Kettle. Each of the heat outputs can be set to On/Off mode with a user configurable hysteresis (adjustable in 1/10 degree increments) or PID mode with user configurable cycle time (1-255 seconds) and PID gain. The main goal of the project is the AutoBrew mode. AutoBrew will walk through a series of stages (some optional) such as filling, preheat, dough-in, protein rest, acid rest, saccharifaction rest, mash out, sparge, boil and chill. Each stage would have one or more valve configurations associated with it. For example the various mash stages would have one configuration used for mash heat cycles (ie Valve outputs 1, 3 and 7 on) and one used for mash ‘standby’ cycles (perhaps recirculating the mash but bypassing a HERM coil)."
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Lots of us in the tech industry are working towards crazy deadlines which means working long hours and working while you eat. Only problem is that lots of the quick food is very messy. How often have you had to step away from a keyboard because your lunch was supper messy? What about the time you were enjoying some wings only to miss a cell phone call because your fingers were full of wing sauce? The solution to this problem is a cool Finger-fool Utensil called Trongs. The folks at Trongs sent us some Trongs to try out and they are great. It takes less than a minute to get used to the usage of the utensil, best of all you just open your fingers to take them off. Wing night will never be the same again.
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The crazy guys over at Mana Energy Potion needed a way to blow off the excess energy that is built up from selling the liquid energy. No they didn’t buy a treadmill, they made a DIY Airsoft Shooting Gallery! The list of needed items is not that bad and allowed it to be constructed for around $35. "What you need: 1 x 24" by 60" board Drywall screws
Thanks Jon |
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All he needs now is a few more scanners to make his single axis CNC machine into a 3 axis unit. Just for safety I might suggest using a metal case for housing the electronics just incase something overheats. An old AT power supply housing looks like it could work well and already has lots of vent holes and a fan that could be left in place.
