brainwagon

I’m having lots of fun with my Raspberry Pi, and I’ve decided to launch one of my crazy spare-time projects: inspired by this article detailing the construction of RUDEBOT, a kind of mobile tablet robot, I decided to build a robot of my own. But, anything worth doing is worth changing and adapting, so I […]

The other day, I was at Harbor Freight, and picked up an inexpensive set of digital calipers. While goofing around, I decided to try to reproduce an object using OpenSCAD. I had just received a pair of motors from Pololu. They look like this: I sat in the editor, and set to work measuring. I […]

It seems like I might have access to a 3D printer, so I thought it might be fun to see what I could design. I thought using OpenSCAD, a scripting based 3D modelling software that can generate models in STL, a fairly simple but flexible format that can be printed by lots of printers. I […]

I wanted to know. I read up on the Mayan calendar. It was easy to code up in Python: [sourcecode lang=”python”] #!/usr/bin/env python # This code is completely untested, it doesn’t do anything relative # to timezones or the like. It does appear to broadly function. # # 1 k’in == 1 day # 1 […]

Last year, I spent a little bit of time to create a set of blinking Christmas lights that I could mount in a hat. It was powered by an ATtiny13 and mounted in an Altoids tin. While setting up my Christmas tree last weekend, I found them, and they still work. In case you missed […]

Without further ado… if you want code to implement this: You can download this this zip file. Do with it what you will.

I was struck by the lunatic programming muse again today. While reading my twitter feed, I encountered a description of SmoothLife, a generalization of Conway’s classic Game of Life. Instead of being implemented on a grid of discrete binary values, SmoothLife is implemented over a continuous, real valued field. What’s kind of neat is that […]

Earlier today, I tweeted: Okay, all major parts assembled.Now I just need the innards from Hobby King… twitter.com/brainwagon/sta… — Mark VandeWettering (@brainwagon) September 17, 2012 But I figured you guys might like some additional details. As I mentioned before, I decided to build a clone of the Axon, a nice light FPV platform designed by […]

Mark H. over at Eastbay RC and I finally got together to test out my first attempt at scratch building a radio controlled aircraft: an F-22 inspired “foamie”, which an aircraft constructed entirely from EPP foam, hot glue, a couple of short carbon fiber rods to stiffen, and hot glue. Did I mention the hot […]

I received my second email inquiry yesterday (yes, two whole emails) asking me why I hadn’t been posting to brainwagon lately. It’s gratifying that both of my readers would each send me a note asking if things were all right, so I thought rather than addressing you each separately, I could double my efficiency by […]

Okay, I haven’t made a lot of headway, but I did at least print out the pattern for my F-22 and cut the pieces for it. It’s literally the very first time I’ve done this, so the pieces aren’t perfect, but they aren’t bad. Witness: I basically made the patterns by printing out the pieces, […]

Sometime last week, I got my Etherkit OpenBeacon kit in the mail. Like many of my projects, it was probably destined to sit on the shelf for some time, but in a fit of personal productivity (for a loose definition of productivity) this week I cleared a few hours of my time and got it […]

At the Maker Faire, I splurged for a little bit of computing hardware called the Beaglebone. It’s an $89 ARM based computer that runs at 700Mhz, and includes a MicroSD card slot and Ethernet, as well as a USB connector. I wasn’t sure what I was going to use it for, but I frankly can’t […]

A few days ago, I mentioned that one of my servers had died. I spent some time thinking about how I would replace it. I like having a 24/7 hooked up to the Internet to serve as a file drop and a place where I can use SSH to connect to other devices on my […]

Today, through a bit of serendipity involving twitter and the web, I managed to have lunch with Nanode designer Ken Boak, who happened to be on an unrelated visit to the Bay Area this week. We exchanged brief messages for the first time a couple of weeks ago, as I was intrigued with his idea […]