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An Update

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Hello fellow enthusiasts, This is an apology and an explanation. Over the past several years I’ve benefited a TON from the open-source community and had lots of fun coming up with my own designs. I’ve worked hard to document and share those designs online. This pandemic has opened up a couple cool opportunities for me … Read more

Simple Tally Light for OBS StudioTest

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A FULLY Plug-and-Play Tally Light

My church (like many others) recently began streaming sunday services.  The staff had quite a job on their hands adjusting from a live audience with a small online presence to an online-only presence.  Subtle communication between the ‘techies’ and ‘actors’ was difficult, but a simple tally light made it simple to send a queue to the staff on camera automatically.  A tally light is simply a light that turns on when the camera is recording.

This tally light is a simple Raspberry Pi-based system which connects with OBS Studio over the network and illuminates a lamp when the camera is live.  The system does not need any external input – it will find OBS studio and save its address for future sessions.  If OBS studio moves to another PC, it will still find it.  The camera illumination is configured in OBS studio, so no need to change anything on the tally light.  Finally, if OBS Studio gets disconnected for whatever reason, the tally light will turn off and the Pi will immediately begin searching for OBS Studio again.

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High-Voltage FLASH Programming on ATTINY85

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The Bubblegum Chip, Now With Steroids!

The Atmel ATTINY85 is a great chip (cheap, easy to use, supported in the Arduino IDE).  Unfortunately it only has 5 IO pins, which limits its usability.  There are guides on using a High-Voltage Programmer (HVP) to change the Reset pin into an IO pin.  However, that prevents you from programming the Flash (Program Memory) until you re-enable the Reset pin.

Thankfully the Flash can be programmed with an HVP, but the commands and protocol are different.  My USBtinyISP simply cannot be modified to be an HVP.  Using an Arduino as ISP (In-Service Programmer) on an ATTINY85 is fairly simple but doesn’t work if the Reset pin is disabled.

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Simple Sonic Anemometer #DIY

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Measuring Air Flow – Made Easy

A sonic anemometer is a device that measures air velocity using sound. A speaker on one end of the device emits a ‘ping’, and a sensor waits for the ping to arrive. If the air is not moving, then the delay between ‘pinging’ and ‘receiving’ is always the same (kinda).

If the air is moving from the sensor toward the emitter, then the delay gets longer since the ping is traveling upstream. Conversely, if the air is moving from the emitter toward the sensor, then the delay gets shorter since the ping is traveling downstream.

I built this anemometer to measure airflow rates of various small fans.

Ingredients

All you need is an Arduino, an HC-SR04 ultrasonic distance sensor, a piece of 3/4″ PVC conduit, and a 3D printer. The 3D print file and firmware is available on Github.

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500W Spindle Controller – Fixed!

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You Get What You Pay For

While building my CNC mill, I bought a 500W spindle with a motor controller off eBay for less than $80 CAD.  The spindle and power supply needed some TLC right out of the box, but seemed to work fine.

Then the incident happened… I was adjusting the ‘MAX’ potentiometer when suddenly the motor speed dropped to 5,000 RPM and wouldn’t increase!  I may have accidentally shorted the potentiometer with my screwdriver, but that shouldn’t have caused a problem.  This potentiometer is basically shorted to 0 ohms at one end anyways.

No adjustments to any of the potentiometers would change the motor speed more than a few hundred RPM.  I considered buying a replacement controller, but for $50 CAD I decided to have a crack at repairing this unit.  I ended up writing an almost-complete schematic of the controller and determining what one of the three IC’s are.

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Automating GIMP

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Let me be clear about something. GIMP is probably my favourite piece of open-source software. Truth told, I could have a license for Photoshop or PaintShopPro, and I would still use GIMP. That’s because it is so focused on functionality over style – which means that, despite its limited development (it’s open-source after all), it is a program that has the horsepower to compete with the big players. All you have to do is learn its quirky UI!

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Writing An ASCOM Local Server Driver

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If you build an astronomy device and want to control it with some awesome PC software, then you need to write an ASCOM (AStronomy Common Object Model) driver.  There are great resources available for writing a single ASCOM driver for your DIY astronomy equipment.  Check out the video on the ASCOM website for a guide … Read more

Guided Telescope Mount & Accessories (Tracker V3) #DIY

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Astrophotography is a bit of a money pit.  I recently delved into it with my 80-200 f/2.8L and a home-built tracking mount.  It was so much fun that I decided to buy a telescope!  So my entire budget went into an 80mm APO.

The problem was that a telescope alone is useless for star pics – some quality infrastructure is needed.  This post is about my attempt to affordably build the following components:

  • High-precision Tracking Mount with an ASCOM-compliant driver
  • Guide camera and scope to help the tracking
  • Portable Power supply
  • Telescope Focusing motor with an ASCOM-compliant driver

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CNC Pancake Printer #DIY

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Printing Pancakes With A Camera Dolly?

My kids are enthused by 3D printing, casually remarking about things they could ‘just print’.  Recently they asked to build a pancake printer – what a cool idea!

I thought about how to build a simple batter extruder and gantry.  It didn’t take long to realize that IREnE, my new DIY camera dolly, is the perfect platform to use as a ‘theta-style‘ gantry!  So I set about adding pancake printing functionality to the camera dolly.

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