Pantomime Voice-Over

Yeah, yeah. I rarely post. I have a job that keeps me busy flitting about the US from Miami to Syracuse to Seattle to San Diego and most major metros in between.

I now have on order a new toy called a ybox2 and so a new post.

LadyAda says it shipped today, so I hope to have it by Saturday. It’s kinda like a Chumby, but mostly not. It’s similar in that it outputs PAL or NTSC composite video to a display using widgets, but not as it doesn’t come with an AC adapter, a display, or a furry cover. Nor are there many widgets as of yet. Hopefully, with time, more will come. But not from me, alas. I took many, many coding courses back in my college daze - assembly, basic, pascal, pl1, fortran, c, and one or two others - but didn’t understand that I needed to focus on becoming fluent in just one, then move on to a new language, one better suited to what I wanted to accomplish. I was young, petulant, foolish, wasteful of time and money, and so cannot code worth a damned in any language. While I’m no longer so young…

I ordered a display, a PSOne screen which runs anywhere from $40 to $100. I considered the Pyle 7″ widescreen which is 2″ larger and more versatile, but settled on the PSOne due to price. Besides, I can hack the PSOne to be portable using ExtremeTech’s tutorial on how to substitute white LEDs for the high voltage backlighting bulb, thus allowing it to run on just 5V. I’ll eventually find an enclosure and drop in a LiPoly battery and charger circuit I got from SparkFun some time ago. I picked up a couple after selling a number of MintyBoosts, deciding to develop a self-contained rechargeable version. However, I gave it second thoughts upon realizing exactly what the warning “Vents with Flame” means after watching this video of a LiPoly pack “venting.” Most decidedly an understatement.

I’ll update after getting it assembled.

UPDATE II: During the original build, I apparently over-torqued the display mounting screws to the point that the plastic cracked. I was up until the wee hours of the morning rebuilding it using a black, brushed aluminum project box I saw on one of M3’s Customized Kits pages. I ordered from Fry’s Electronics. While it looks okay in the photo, I probably should have gone with the silver box as the scars from a clumsy fabricator (that’d be me) are pretty evident. It was a bit more difficult than I anticipated to cut the display slot. If I have time, I’ll stop by RadShack, see if they have black grommet material to cover the rough edges in the display slot and the wiring holes.

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UPDATE: I received a response from Mike long ago, but didn’t get back to the build until yesterday evening. I rechecked everything and it works perfectly. Dunno what I was doing the first time. <shrug> It’s now together and looks great!

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I can’t remember where I first learned about M-Cubed Electronix’s Semiconductor Analyzer, but the moment I visited the website and read what it can do, I ordered immediately. I assembled it late last night, but it failed the test phase. I’m getting ~9v on both sides of the 78L05 voltage regulator instead of ~9v on the near side and ~5v on the far side. A voltage regulator allows the input of a higher voltage, then (in this case) steps it down to a positive five volts. I’m a newbie when it comes to circuit-level electronics and so don’t know much, but I would hope that the guys designing the regulators would have the device cut power completely in the event of failure. Otherwise, it could lead to other damaged components due to over-voltage - or even to fire due to over heating.  I’ve emailed Mike at M-Cubed to ask what I should check. I also want to add a power-indicating LED, but I don’t know if it’ll affect the unit. I wouldn’t think so, but I’m asking just in case.

Lady Ada of Adafruit Industries sold me on yet another kit, the MintyBoost. It’s a USB charging device that fits into an Altoids chewing gum tin.

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UPDATE: I’m an idiot. Once I removed the protoshield, I saw that the board has clearly marked these pins as PWM! D’oh!  I guess I got too comfortable using the shield and never bothered to actually look at the Diecimila itself.

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Hmmm… I was modifying Todbot’s candlelight effect code to use multiple LEDs, but it seems that only certain ports on the Arduino allow such (3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 11); the others merely flash on/off. The whole point of the code is to illuminate the LED in varying brightness such that it looks like a flickering candle.

I’m using this particular prototyping shield (others can be found here, here, here, or here) and ran the tests again on the bare Arduino, but found nothing wrong with the shield. I need to research this to find out why. I’ll update this post when I discover the reason.

I have something of a time fetish…

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