Long Time, No See

Posted on December 13, 2005 by justDIY

Sorry I’ve been neglecting my blog!

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and research, as well as playing with a new toy.

Here are the top-5 items in my current project queue, sorted by priority:

1) LED backlit Rooster Project – Christmas Gift
2) High-End LED under cabinet lights – Christmas Gift
3) Rainbow LED chaser – New Toy / Fun Project
4) LEDs as Sensors – Interface Project
5) LED Matrix Display – 8×8 display modules

I’ll write more about the rainbow chaser tonight (I promise!)… The backlit rooster is just a cheezy Christmas gift I hope to do up cheap for someone who likes roosters and chickens in their kitchen decor. The high-end under cabinet lights are based on Nichia Jupiter LEDs – this project is currently in the very early design stages. I hope to get a proof of concept prototype built by xmas. LED as Sensors is sort-of stuck – I became obsessed with trying to build a large sensor array, but decided today, I don’t need a large sensor array… so I’ll regroup and start a fresh with actual application development for the sensors as I have them now, and worry about building them larger down the road. The LED matrix display will probably never get built, I just had some fun drawing up the designs… Once I priced out the cost to build them, my interest diminished (64 super flux LEDs for each module, 10-16 modules for a good sized display!).

New Page: LEDs as Sensors

Posted on November 7, 2005 by justDIY

I’ve created a new page under Tech and Projects, LEDs as Sensors. Since I’m getting to have several posts in my blog regarding that subject, I felt it best to have them all consolidated somewhere.

I’ve also included links to other information and inspiration on the subject.

Here’s the new page:
LEDs as Sensors

Illumination Grade

Posted on October 15, 2005 by justDIY

I’ve written a new article; “Three Watts of Light“. The subject is my first experiences with ‘true’ illumination grade solid state lighting. I’ve played with a lot of leds over the years, but these leds are in a class of their own. The light they generate and the power they require makes it a “whole nother ball-game”.

luxeon clone ufo power led rgb mix

Finally, A New Theme

Posted on October 15, 2005 by justDIY

I finally became bored with the word-press default theme – not that there is anything wrong with it, but hey, change is good right?

This new theme is called “Ocadia” designed by Becca Wei.

I like the shaded boxes in the side-bar and the fact this theme is not overloaded visually or functionally. Some of the themes out there have way too many links, buttons, do-dads and hoopla for simple ‘ol me.

Socketed Piranha

Posted on October 6, 2005 by justDIY

Here’s a request from my buddy Linear:

Wondering aloud, would it be possilbe to socket those LEDs so you could reconfigure the array later? (any thoughts, JustDIY?)

The quote came from a longer thread, where the led being discussed is the high-flux “piranha” package. Well, he must have me pegged as some sort of piranha expert 😛

So I pulled out a few leds, and some different sockets. Here is what I came up with:

piranha led socket

The black strips are Molex C-Grid board to board connectors … the mating board would have pin headers on it, and the two shall mate. But, they also work decently well for holding other things, sorta like a breadboard does.

Depending on how you wire the pins underneath, the headers accept the LED in either orientation (piranha have two pins for each cathode and anode, which are connected inside the package)

piranha led socket

I also tried other cheaper and easier to find sockets, like machined pin and standard spring … they just don’t line up with the piranha’s leads.

FavIcon.ICO

Posted on October 3, 2005 by justDIY

Well, I’ve been noticing a LOT of 404’s regarding favicon.ico in the logs … so I made up an empty bitmap, and stuck it on the server root.

That took care of the errors. Then I got curious about what favicon.ico was for … turns out it’s the little widget that’s displayed on the url bar and when you save a bookmark.

The canvas size? A whopping 16×16 pixels… I’m no artist, so I just put a red J with a drop shadow for now… I’m sure I can think up something better down the road

Enjoy!

Strangeness with pictures

Posted on September 30, 2005 by justDIY

For whatever reason, some pictures decide not to load. I see the errors in my log on the server, as HTTP Code 304. Something seems to be happening in the voodoo my shared host uses to make my domain seem to be on its own box … “virtual servers”. Because I’m lazy I’ve been using relative links to my pictures, rather than absolute links; this doesn’t seem to play well with the hosts voodoo, so, I’ll be using absolute links from now on and hope that resolves things.

If a pic isn’t loading for you, please leave a comment or shoot me an email (gordonthree at gmail dot com).

*edit* thanks to linear for pointing out that 304 isn’t an error, it just means the content hasn’t changed… so I’m not sure what the cause was for those of you who mentioned you couldn’t see a picture – hopefully whatever it was, it stays fixed!

Contact Info

Posted on September 26, 2005 by justDIY

Well… I probably won’t be posting any more project write-ups until next weekend, but I’ve noticed this brand new site is getting a few visitors already!

If y’all have any questions, shoot me an email at gordonthree at gmail dot com … or drop by http://forums.linear1.org

Stuck in this theme!

Posted on September 23, 2005 by justDIY

WELL … I just tried changing to another theme I found on the wordpress site … whats that, you say, it doesn’t look any different. well, thats because I changed it back.

It seems the default theme formats my pictures for me, but the add on theme does not, so they distort the browser and layout all to heck.

Once I figure out how the default theme does the voodoo that it does, maybe another theme is in the future.

Iced Pelt

Posted on September 23, 2005 by justDIY

peltier thermoelectric cooler installed in a waterblock

the peltier module sandwiched between two 1/4″ thick plates of pure copper. The hot-side plate is liquid cooled by a pump and radiator setup

the ice is condensation from the air, collected over the course about about an hour and a half. The pelt was being supplied from the 5v rail of the PSU .. the computer in the background is the guinea pig, but I’m waiting on some more parts to arrive first

justDIY Project Log

Thoughts, ideas, projects, pictures.

Category Archives: General