Garage sale speakers, counter top and dust
September 13th, 2014. Posted in: Building.
Nice luck = finding a pair of studio monitors for $10 across the street at a garage sale several days before starting to mix an album!
This is a counter top I made out of some maple. It is finished naturally, but I probably should have stained it a bit “colder” to remove the pink-ishness that maple seems to have under cfl.
From the winter, very dusty! I gotta say that a full face mask for wood working is pretty awesome. It makes you feel like an astronaut and you can never forget your safety glasses – Norm would be proud.
Super Fan prototype #1
July 26th, 2014. Posted in: Building.Some pictures of my first prototype window fan. Trying to not use the AC again this summer, but my crappy garage sale window fan ain’t cutting it. I’m using a 12″ diameter 12V 80W automotive radiator fan and a high efficiency 100W switch-mode power supply. The fan is rated to be 1600 CFM, I can’t measure to verify but it definitely moves a lot of air.
I was hoping to make something that moved a lot of air but didn’t use a lot of electricity. These radiator fans were the most efficient I could find, and the total draw is 88W which is less than my off-the-shelf fan and a lot windier (breezier?).
One toggle switch for power, another for fan direction. The off-the-shelf fan I was using previously had to be removed from the window and put in backwards to change direction, so this is a very satisfying $3 direction switch.
I also added a metal frame to hold a 2″ air filter and foam pre-filter. The hope was to filter the air before it gets sucked into the room through a MERV 13 filter since we live on a very busy street. The metal frame was laser cut and bent on a small brake.
Unfortunately the filters really affect how much air the fan moves, almost stopping it entirely. That’s prototyping though, otherwise the fan is working great. The air isn’t being filtered before it comes in though, but I scored a second-hand austin air healthmate for cheaper than I could build something similar.
The fan motor surface temperature got up to 60C after being on for about 30 minutes, not sure if that’s a problem yet though. Woo, prototyping!
Tech Talk: Therevox. June 26th
June 12th, 2014. Posted in: General.This will be fun! I’ve been asked by HackForge, Windsor’s local hackerspace to give a talk about therevox. It will be on June 26th at 6PM at the central branch of the Windsor Public Library. More info on the Meetup page.
I haven’t planned what I’m going to talk about yet, but I’ll be showing some early prototype stuff and hopefully have an ET-4.3 for people to try out.
Reverse Demolitions
March 25th, 2014. Posted in: General.A video I made for my buddy Brian‘s song that he’s entered into the CBC Searchlight competition.
Pono
March 13th, 2014. Posted in: Pono Player.I was resisting the temptation all day to support Neil Young’s kickstarter campaign. Maybe I’ve seen too many Gail Vaz Oxlade shows on Slice, or maybe it’s my inner hipster-guilt from contributing to giant pools of plastic in the ocean.
But a few minutes ago while listening to Led Zeppelin through my dying iPod (geek: 256kbps LAME encoded MP3’s from 1994 Remaster, on iPod 5th Generation running Rockbox) and looking for ways to procrastinate, I pledged $300 for a yellow pono player. For an extra $100 I could have got a limited-edition chrome and black version with Neil’s signature laser-etched on the side, but my income doesn’t put me in the “having an extra $100” demographic – so I got the ugly yellow one. Why the ugly yellow one? Well, because the pono t-shirts are ugly yellow, and even Neil’s pono is ugly yellow.
Firstly, Neil made the USB connector shaped like a USB connector. Unless you are the weirdo that enjoys owning six chargers for six devices, this should just make sense.
I have a feeling Neil’s goal with this isn’t long term success. For now, it looks like he’s making a high-quality music player with expandable-memory and a built in headphone amp that can play any file-format. He’s also releasing insanely high-definition remasters in an open-source format which has no DRM to stop the files from being copied and pirated. #NYFTW
Oh damn, I hope they didn’t also design a slightly thinner version with a built-in camera to release in 6 months at half the price…