Daily Archives: 12/10/2011

The Lunar Eclipse…

Okay, I did wake up for the lunar eclipse this morning. At 5:30 my alarm went off. I pulled on some clothes, wandered out to the front yard, and sure enough, the moon was already being devoured by the Earth’s shadow. I went back inside, and got my old pair of tripod-mounted aircraft spotting binoculars, and set them up across the street. Carmen joined me, and we got a nice view as the shadow covered the moon. I had Carmen’s Canon G11 but I don’t use it often enough, and was frankly too sleepy to figure it out, but I did manage to snap a few shots of it using my iPhone through the binoculars. Here is one of the best.

By the time 6:30 rolled around, the skies were brightening and the moon was sinking into the offshore clouds. We headed to Starbucks, and got a coffee, but that was it.

The eclipse was very dark though: darker than I remember seeing. And deep red. And my bifocals aren’t the greatest thing for staring at distant objects. But the binoculars worked out great.

The “Hello World” of Servo Programming on the Arduino

This morning I woke up around 5:30AM to catch the lunar eclipse. It was pretty nice: totality began around 6:05AM and the moon became incredibly dark and red. But 30 minute later, it had progressed low enough that it entered the offshore clouds that signaled the arrival of the morning fog. So, I came back, and went to bed.

When I woke up, I knew that I wanted to try something easy with my Arduino. A few weeks ago, I was in a Radio Shack (gasp!) and saw that they carried the Parallax servos (rebranded Futaba servos, if memory serves) so I picked one up, thinking “I should hook this to an Arduino, because I’ve never done that.”

Well, so I did.

So… what can I do with this?

I could use it to pan a webcam back and forth, perhaps under control of a web page.

I could hook up an ultrasonic sensor, and scan for obstacles.

I could rotate an object, and create an animated gif allowing you to see all sides

And ultimately, I could do some kind of animatronic thing.

I know, it’s not very impressive. But it’s a start. And as I’ve heard before, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.