Category Archives: Projects

Things that are more complex tend to become projects.

Low-temperature cooker/Sous-vide controller

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The complete setup. All the cables and the temp. probe fit in the box

I bought a temperature controller and a temperature probe from DealExtreme to control the temperature of a water filled pot.

After using the controller for some time only with floating wiring I decided that it was time to mounted it into a proper case (As for myself an absolutely unsafe wooden box with mains voltage inside is okay). The pictures don’t need much description. The BOM is at the bottom of this page.

This setup can be used to cook meat, make nice breakfast eggs, soften wax (used when modelmaking things with wax) and (very important) cook perfect Weisswürste!

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Worklog: Conversion of an old tube radio into a Bluetooth boombox

I sourced an old tube radio from an good will store. Since it was defective I got it for free.  Anyways, I have already striped the electronics inside so this does not matter. I am going to build a Bluetooth speaker box with the case. Bluetooth receiver, Class-D Amplifier, bass reflex loudspeaker, lead-battery, USB-charging port and a carry handle.

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USauB – an electronic sculpture charging your mobile devices

The sculpture “USauB” (USowB) invites visitors to interact with it. It’s powered USB teats provide vital electrical energy for our important mobile devices. Just like little piglets drink from their mother the USauB feeds mobile phones, tablets and other devices. Visitors are encouraged to place their devices in the care of the sow to have them charged.

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USauB exhibited at the Schmiede 2014 show in Hallein/Austria

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Pop-art picture processing

A fun way to pep up black and white pictures is to modify the colors of the picture. For instance, take this iconic picture of Che Guevara. is is based on a black and white picture. I replaced white with red to to achieve the look of the well know version of this image.

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Famous version of the original picture taken by Alberto Korda

Replacing white with red is not the only option. Using the brightness a white or a black image for the RGB channels allows in total 64 variants to combine into a colored picture.

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EPROM data decay

EPROM short for Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory is a relict from the early days of computing. It is a from of memory used to store program code for CPU and micro computer. As the name states it is a read-only memory this means that in normal operation the memory content can only be read but not altered. To erase then the memory the chip needs to be exposed to UV light. For this propose the housing of the chip has a built in quartz glass window. I used a so called flash gun which is basically a mains powered fast firing strobe light which is pointed on to the window.

The process of erasing the memory takes some time. I interrupted the erasing process to monitor the progress erasing process by dumping the chips memory into a file. During the first 60 seconds of the chip being exposed to the light no data change occurs. After that the memory fades pretty fast. Even the placement and structure of the memory cells on the chip is somewhat recognizable.

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Initial content

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Reading Flash and EPROM chips and visualizing their contents

This post can be seen as a follow up to my recent post ((My first impression of the Genius G540 universal programmer)) adressing the G540 universal programmer. The reason why I bought this programmer was that I have collected many old memory chips. I was always curious what kind of interesting data they might contain. A EPROM reader was needed and since my urge to build an Arduino shield for that purpose lapsed soon after sourcing some MCP23S17 ((Microchip product page of the MCP23S17)) SPI port expander chips.  So I bought the G540 I mentioned before.  Continue reading Reading Flash and EPROM chips and visualizing their contents

Urban Cricket

altered assembly without pcb
 

Project description

Urban Cricket is a small circuit that imitates the call of a cricket, only being powered by a small solar cell ((Introduction to Urban Cricket (German) (youtube) )) ((Introduction to Urban Cricket (English) (youtube))). The idea comes from Reinhard Gupfinger ((Reinhard Gupfingers website)) a Linz based artist I met during the Ars Electronica Festival 2011 in Linz. This circuit here is a altered version of his original circuit. He distributes this little sound bugs all over the world ((Sound tossing website )) ((Sound tossing Facebook page)). Until early 2013 on was in a tree at the Schwedenplatz in Vienna ((A Urban Cricket in the wild)).

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