Academic Adventures

Portfolio Online

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 06:00:00 +0000

I invite you to visit my new portfolio website. I'll be moving all of my completed projects to that site and eventually reworking this site to be a little more personal.

Go Fly A Kite

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 09:39:00 +0000

Phoenix is not the best place for kite flying. If we happen to get a breeze at all, it's often too light or too gusty to support kites. I've been trying to catch the perfect wind to fly my little dual line delta kite, but I keep missing the best hours of the day. I decided to build a little alert system that can help me recognize when the best conditions are present.

A few days ago I managed take note of the wind speed that I needed to launch. Somewhere around 14mph is the minimum for my kite, anything over 24mph is probably too harsh. I looked up those wind speeds on the closest private weather station to my apartment using wunderground.com. Turns out that Weather Underground also provides xml feeds for each of those stations.

Using C# I built a little application that downloads the latest weather xml and parses out the wind speed plus a few other details. I included options to set the wind's optimum and minimum velocities as well as the refresh rate. The current wind speed is compared to the velocity settings and scaled to a percentage value. 0% means you have no chance of getting off of the ground, 100% means the current wind matches or exceeds your optimum. Now I needed a way to show off the data.

A notification pop-up or ding on my computer would have been sufficient, but I wanted something more symbolic. I hooked up a small servo to a BS2 and added code to my program to output that percentage value over serial every time it refreshes. The basic stamp watches for an update and moves the servo according to the value. Mounted on the end of the servo is a wire with a little paper kite its end. As the the wind approaches the optimum speed the kite rises into the air. Pretty symbolic huh.

Now go fly a kite!

P.S. I'll let you know when and where the application and example microcontroller firmware is available for download just as soon as I work out some bugs.

In Sync With Dropbox

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:32:00 +0000

I've been using a service called Dropbox for the last couple months to help keep the files on my netbook in sync with those on my desktop. I tend to do most of my work while I'm at home but it's always nice to be able to travel around with that data. Thumbdrives used to be the answer, but they're a little hard to keep track of and keyring versions get too bulky. Not to mention you have to think ahead about the files you might be needing. Dropbox uses a cross platform application to continuously synchronize files within a folder on each computer. Any file you place in that folder will be synchronized with any other system you use the service on. Plus there's a web interface for access on systems that don't have the app installed. It also keeps backups of versions and deleted files for up to 30days using the free account. Oh yeah, and you get 2GB of storage for free.

Bigger Pictures + Other Goodies

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:43:00 +0000

I'll be posting a full gallery of photos from the trip soon and expect to see some interesting extras. I've been working hard over the past week to deal with the huge collection of GPS data I logged over the three weeks I was in the UK. My AMOD AGL3080 GPS logger was running (nearly) every day of the trip and collected over 550MB of nema text logs. At the moment I can't find a program capable of managing all of that GPS data successfully. I'd like to extract some elevation profiles, walking mileage, speeds, etc.

While I continue searching for a tool to do that, I've been working on my own piece of software. Using Jeffery Friedl's Geoencoding plugin for Lightroom, I tagged all of my images with the GPS coordinates of the location where they were captured. Over 1900 images now have location information embedded in their metadata. The next step was pretty obvious, drop all of those photos into Google Earth and view them on the globe. There are a few paid software packages out there that can handle the generation of a Google Earth kml or kmz file, but none of them supported the kind of customization that I was looking for. I laid out the plans for my own program and started working. I'm nearly finished with the first version and so far it's working great. There are a few bugs that need to be squashed, and maybe some improvements to the overall functionality of the program, but all-in-all I'm pretty proud of my work. Expect to see my Google Earth kmz posted here in the next few days.

The British Isles Day 3-?

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:21:00 +0000

It's way to hard to post something every day because we're trying to fit so much in. I'm in Scotland now for the third day, in a city called Perth. Ireland was beautiful but it's tiny roads and truck traffic made it difficult to get around to all of the place we wanted to see. As a result of some back roads travel we stumbled upon Birr castle, home to the Leviathan of Parsonstown, a 72 inch reflecting telescope. The Great Telescope was the largest in the world from 1875 to 1917. Also an unexpected find was William Butler Yeats' 1919 tower home, Thoor Ballylee. On our way out to Aran Island the Irish Coast Guard decided to practice a helicopter rescue from our moving passenger ferry, it was quite a sight. It's time to try haggis and black pudding, have a look at some pictures and wish me luck.

P.S. Haggis and black pudding is quite tasty actually!

The British Isles Day 1-2

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:52:00 +0000

It's actually day 3 of our trip, we spent Friday and most of Saturday flying out here and I didn't get a chance to post anything. Yesterday morning we arrived in Dublin and took a rather long nap at the Bewley Airport Hotel. After some rest we hopped on a bus to the town center and made our way into the Temple Bar area. Driving on the left side of the road appears a whole lot more challenging than I thought it would be, I'm glad the buses run just about everywhere. Today we explore the city and make our way over to Galway in the evening.

Hydroponic Garden -Part 1-

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:14:00 +0000

Last year, around this time, I decided I could use a bit of green in my life. I had contemplated building a small indoor pond, which didn't get far past the drawing board because of its size and complexity. I attempted to grow a few aquatic plants in my aquarium, which also failed due to some hungry fish damage. Growing plants outside and in pots is a bit difficult for a student that moves from apartment to apartment every year. I finally settled on building a hydroponic garden.

Hydroponic systems were the low maintenance, no mess, small space answer to growing plants that I was searching for all along. Best of all, I could build the entire thing in a few afternoons with very little cost. So far I've been very happy with the garden and I figured I should share the design with the rest of the world. I'm breaking this project into several posts, so be sure to check back over the next week or so for the whole story.

Let's start with an overview of the garden and the required parts.

Necessary Tools:

rotary tool with side cutting bit and sander
safety glasses
razor blade
pencil

Parts and Materials List:
(I'm not promoting the purchase of these items from any particular business, links are provided for product information and convenience, do some shopping and find better deals!)

1 - 18 gallon plastic tote (various colors/sizes/shapes)
1 - 250GPH Submersible pump (higher flow rates also work)
1 - 1/2" hose barb to 1/2" male threaded connector
1- Hydroport 8 port drip manifold
5 - Drip heads (experiment with different heads)
2.5ft - 1/2" OD vinyl tubing
8ft - 1/4" silicone tubing (you can find better colors)
5 - 5" diameter net pots
10 L - Hydrotron 8-16mm expanded clay
2 - 5500K, 27 Watt, n:vision CFL Bulbs
2 - 10 1/2" Clamp Lights
1 bag - Rockwool Starter Cubes (if you can find something in a smaller quantity, use that)
1 bottle - Flora Nova Grow
1 bottle - Flora Nova Bloom
1 - Timer System (I built a custom timer)
1 - Package of Seeds (pay attention to the growing conditions)

Wow that's a long list! Lets get started.

The lid of the tote is where all of the work needs to be done, so lets begin with that. When you choose your tote, pick a size that lets you accommodate the size and number of net pots that you want to use. The bigger the pot, the larger the plant you can accommodate. I chose to use five 5" pots on a 18 gallon tote. Whatever you use, be sure to space them far enough apart on the tote lid that enough plastic remains to support them.

Place the pots upside down on the tote lid and trace their outlines. DO NOT cut on this line! Draw another circle about 3/8" inside the outline of the pots, cut out this inner circle with your rotary tool and side cutting bit. Test fit a pot and take a look at how far down it sits in the hole, some pots have a larger diameter rim on the top that should rest on the tote lid, otherwise leave about 3/4" of the pot above the lid. Sand down the edges of the cuts for a clean, tight fitting finish.

Next, choose a spot on the lid for the watering manifold to sit. I placed it behind my center pot. Trace the 1/2" barb connector's threaded end on the lid and cut a hole just smaller than the outline. Test fit the connector and slowly enlarge the hole with a sanding tool until the connector screws in tightly. Attach the manifold to the threaded end of the connector and the 1/2" tubing to the other. Connect the other end of the tubing to the pump.

Cut lengths of 1/4" silicone tubing to run from the manifold to each pot, leave a little extra length for adjustments. Connect the tubes to the manifold and drip heads to the ends. Be sure to open/close the appropriate valves on the manifold to avoid damaging your pump or spraying water all over a wall. A small coin really works best on the manifold valves, a flat head screw drive will damage the soft plastic.

Assemble the garden by placing the pump in the tote, letting the cord run over the back. Tie a loose knot in the pump cord where it touches the floor behind the garden, this will prevent water from running along the cord to an outlet in case of a leak. Fill the pots with well rinsed expanded clay and place them in the lid. Snap on the lid and admire.

Before you can start using the garden, you'll need a dependable timer to control the pump and lights. Plants need a period of dark as well as light so you can't leave your lights on 24/7. If you choose you can control the lights with a simple light timer found at Ikea or Wal-Mart. The pump is a different beast, depending on the type of plants you are growing the pump will need to be on for a short length of time every half hour or so. I haven't found a simple solution to this on store shelves and pump controllers for high end hydroponics are expensive for their simplicity. I'll be going over my custom timer design in the upcoming posts. Also stay tuned for light mounting options and accessories.

Serious Waste of Paper

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:49:00 +0000

This is by far the longest receipt I have ever seen, measuring in at 37 and 1/2 inches. Last Friday, Sierra and I stopped by Fry's Supermarket to grab a few snacks and left with this monster. The top 7 inches actually pertain to our purchases and the rest is a lengthy list of peanut butter product recalls. 30.5 inches of receipt paper devoted to notifying a single person of recalls. There are longer receipts in existence, however this is probably one of the most wasteful. I sincerely hope that Fry's is not printing one of these for every customer and only targeting "value card" users that have purchased a recalled product in the past. Even then, it would be more responsible to post a list of recalls near the exit and have the cashier remind targeted customers to take a look at the list before they leave.

Stock Photography

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:47:00 +0000

I've decided to invest a little time into selling a few of the thousands of images I've made over the past few years. The easiest way to start out is stock photography and it doesn't require a lot of setup on my part. I have found it difficult to find images that are commercially interesting among the photographs I've already taken, so i might have to make an effort to start taking "stock" style images in the future. I've signed up with Fotolia.com and I'll be expanding to a few other services if everything goes well. I'm excited to see what happens.

Craft GCS3 Virtual Cameras - DIY?

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:17:00 +0000

CGSociety reported on the release of Craft Camera Tools for GCS3 today. As I was reading through the article I was surprised that I hadn't heard of this virtual camera hardware before, it's basically a small LCD attached to a fluid pan-tilt head with sensors. When a camera man moves the physical device, the virtual camera moves to match it's orientation. Gamecaster has developed the hardware (GCS3) and Craft has just released the software to tie it in with Maya and Max.

Using some potentiometers and a few buttons, I might be able to make a similar device. I need to play around with the camera controls to get an idea of how I want to arrange the sensors to best map the motion of a real world camera to the virtual one.

Toying With IRLP

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:46:00 +0000

IRLP - Internet Radio Linking Project

I started toying with IRLP this morning and found it to be quite interesting. IRLP is a VoIP (Voice over IP) system that connects hundreds, possibly thousands, of radio repeaters to the internet. To use the system you need a amateur radio license, a radio, and a local IRLP node to connect to. The radios in the IRLP network are called "nodes." You can connect directly to a node or use a "reflector" to connect a bunch of nodes together. You can get details on how to use the system and where the nodes are located at www.irlp.net.

This afternoon I connected to Sydney and listened to a few people talking about local webcams, then I jumped over to Japan and then China.

Meet Tesla

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 01:14:00 +0000

Meet Tesla, our very own lol cat. She's going to be the star subject in my experiment to determine whether or not cats crave cheeseburgers and what could cause this unnatural obsession.

Faster Boots

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:25:00 +0000

Motherboard manufacturer ASRock just released a feature called "Instant Boot" which presumably reduces Windows XP and Vista boot times down to about 3-4 seconds. After reading through their description of the feature I realized what they had really done was tweak the way the shutdown procedure works so that shutting down your computer places it in a S3 or S4 state. They do this by rebooting your PC and letting Windows reach a stable state after you request a shutdown. The BIOS monitors the OS in memory and sends a call to enter S3 or S4 when Windows stabilizes. Because the S3 state requires power to hold the contents in RAM an S4 "ram-to-disk" image is also taken when S3 is called. The mode that ASRock calls "Fast Mode" uses the S3 state to provide the 3-4 second boot time, "Regular Mode" essentially hibernates the machine so its boot time will be a bit longer.

This is really just a gimmick to increase sales.

When I power down my PC I "Hibernate" it, at the "Turn Off Computer" dialog hold down shift and click yellow button. Hibernate sends the computer into S4 and uses the same amount of power as it would were it shutdown. Hibernate resumes Windows in about 25 seconds and isn't susceptible to power failures.

"Standby" or S3 uses a little power to keep the RAM from loosing its contents, if you pull the plug you should expect a full reboot. It may give you 3-4 second boots but it wastes energy. Use "Standby" if you leave the house for a few hours and can't spare 20 seconds when you return.

"Shutdown/Reboot" is really just a process for clearing out junk memory contents and messing with hardware. Windows occasionally needs a fresh start that only a full RAM wipe can provide, I have to reboot about once a week.

A few weeks ago the topic of boot times crossed my mind and I had an interesting idea that seems similar to ASRock's feature. If S3 leaves the RAM data intact why can't the BIOS handle the storage of that data onto a dedicated solid state disk on the motherboard. 8Gb memory sticks are already dirt cheap, the same silicon could be used for this purpose. If the computer never looses power it resumes from S3 as usual. If the RAM is cleared for some reason then the BIOS reloads the RAM from its solid state image and Windows still resumes from S3. This could drop S4 resume times as well. Hopefully we'll see something like this show up in response to ASRock's market ploy.

Google Flu Trends

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:56:00 +0000

I'm not exactly sure what to think of Google's new flu tracking site. If I understand the program correctly, they are using aggregated search information from users to gauge the spread of influenza. If you feel a fever coming on and you do a search for remedies on Google, a blip at your location is added to the list of possible infected. Google discovered that Google Trends was already tracking the flu outbreak when it compared trend data with CDC survey reports, their new tool complies the data into a national map and trend line. This could be incredibly helpful to hospitals and schools who need fair warning before the virus moves to their location, of course, it could also lead to statewide quarantines.

Google Flu Trends

Etching PCBs

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:16:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I went through the process of etching PCBs using the toner transfer method. It was fairly easy to acquire the materials, all I needed was some ferric chloride, a copper clad board, glossy photo paper, and acetone. The circuit I chose to etch was a serial interface to a Morse code key and sounder, fairly simple but still useful. The layout was done in Eagle CAD and transferred to a PDF for printing. My university's color laser printer has heavy ink that transferred from the photo paper to the copper board really well. I didn't use a heater or bubble stone during the etching process so it took about 15 minutes to eat away the excess copper. The result was a nearly perfect single sided PCB. If you're interested in making your own PCBs the toner transfer method is a cheap and easy way to start.

Hosting Update

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 03:19:00 +0000

Many thanks to my friend at XcatchX.com for hosting this site for the past year and congratulations on your new job. Everything has successfully been moved to my new host, 110mb, without problems. If you see this post than your DNS is taking you to the right place.

Revealing a Flight Sim Project

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:28:00 +0000

I haven't posted in a while due to the start of the new semester and a cool little project I've been working on. For a few years now I've been eying flight simulator hardware from companies like GoFlight and SimKits to enhance my experience with Microsoft's Flight Sim. The problem with commercial simulator hardware is outrageously high prices driven by low demand. I always thought that building my own hardware from scratch couldn't be that difficult and it turns out I was right.

I'm nearly finished with my effort to replicate every indicator light in the cockpit of a Mooney M20M Bravo. So far I've counted 83 individual LEDs and I have the whole thing mapped out to two MAX7219 LED drivers. The drivers are controlled by a Parallax SX28 running a USB-serial interface to the PC. Information is fed the the SX28 from the simulator through a bit of (horridly written) C# code using Microsoft's SimConnect API.

I need to order a few parts before I can really show off the project so stay tuned for updates. I'll also be building an MJoy16 USB joystick controller to handle the inputs.

Balloon Launch in <9 Hours!

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 04:41:00 +0000

UAT Nearspace is launching it's first high altitude balloon, tomorrow at 1300 Zulu. The APRS callsign for the balloon's tracker will be "KD0EHH-1." You can view a live map of the flight at aprs.fi or take a look at the embedded map below. If all goes well we should reach an altitude of 90,000 feet MSL and land about 50 miles from our launch site. We are expecting to land around 1600 Zulu, keep an eye out for falling objects:)

Follow my semester break over APRS!

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:54:00 +0000

In an effort to test out the APRS tracking equipment my classmates and I will be using on our nearspace ballon project, I will be mounting all of the gear in my car over the semester break. Starting tomorrow you'll be able to track my whereabouts using the global APRS network as I travel from Tempe, AZ to Durango, CO. The callsign for the tracker will be "KD0EHH-1." My trip is expected to last until August 27th, I'll try to keep the tracker operational as long as possible over the next week. Thanks to aprs.fi you can check my location via the live map below.

Wipe & Reload

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 19:04:00 +0000

My desktop has been running pretty well for two years without reloading windows and I finally have the chance to clean it up with a reformat. I contemplated installing Vista as the main OS but I'm not quite ready to give up on XP. Vista has an attractive interface and is a touch more secure than XP, but it's just not worth the driver hassles. The last installation of Vista had a crazy hibernation problem that caused graphics problems upon wakeing up. I know that I'll eventualy have to move up to a new MS OS, hopefully Windows 7 will be a bit better.

A Strange Signal

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:26:00 +0000

Early in the morning (1:00am) on August 11th, 2008 as my friends and I were attempting to leave Las Vegas after attending BlackHat and Defcon, I picked a strange signal on 5.900MHz. It was a very weak AM transmission of a women's voice repeating the names of colors, "Purple, Purple, Black, Red, Green, Black, Blue..." This was recived near Boulder City, NV around 1:00am. I havn't been able to find any infromation relateing to this station's purpose or identification on the internet. The repeating color names seems similar to the triditional "numbers station" type transmission. If anyone has infromation reguarding this signal please leave a comment, I would love to know more about the nature of this singal.

Update: It seems that Numbers Station V02 is located at 5.898MHz. It transmits numbers in Spanish from Cuba, which ends up sounding a lot like color names at a very low signal quality. V02 is most likely my mystery signal.

Viva Blackhat/Defcon 16

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:36:00 +0000

I'm off to Las Vegas for Blackhat 2008 and Defcon 16. I can't wait to see what Kingpin and Lost have in store for us this year.

RTFM Harddrives

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:16:00 +0000

I built my desktop PC in August of 2006, nearly two years ago. I purchased two Seagate 7200.10 320GB Barracuda's for my main drive. I had done some research and found that these would give me a good deal of speed (when in RAID) for a decant amount of money (way less than a WD Raptor).

Since the drives were SATA I didn't think twice about the jumpers on the back because they are traditionally used for ATA master/slave settings. I figured they were for factory settings that needn't be changed. It turns out I was wrong! Those jumpers have been cutting my drive performance in half. Seagate uses them to ensure that SATA/150 is the default drive configuration for backwards compatibility. My system has supported SATA/300 since its build date. So i popped the little buggers out and did some testing. Turns out that they made a big difference in performance. Test results below...

With Jumper

Without Jumper

SX Protoboard Assembly

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 04:08:00 +0000

I'm finishing up a PCB project that's nearly a year old and I thought I'd share a tasty time-lapse video of the assembly process.

Here's My Card...

noreply@blogger.com (The Crimpster) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:58:00 +0000

Since I'll be roaming around Blackhat and Defcon once again this year it isn't a bad idea to carry around some sort of correspondence card. I've avoided creating a business card because of the challenging nature of their design. In order to stand out from other cards a business card has to offer something unique. It has to dazzle its recipient, either in its unique size, material, or design.

Lately I've seen a few skinny or mini cards being handed out, small 1"x3" cards. I've only been able to find two printers that produce them at the moment, Zazzle.com and MOO.com. Both companies offer 100 cards for about $20.00. Zazzle is a tiny bit cheaper than the later and offers a few different paper types, both front and back can be printed with graphics, however you are limited to a single design for the entire set of 100. While MOO only allows a single side to be a graphic, you are allowed up to 100 different graphics per set of 100.

I have a few designs in mind that would fit perfectly on these mini cards, I suppose I'll test the waters by printing my own before I drop $20.

Update @ 1:33pm: Matthew Inmen did exactly this. However, he's a much better artist than myself.