Hey everyone! I’m still leading the electronics effort in the IEEE Dance Floor project and we are making some excellent progress! The mainboards all work perfectly, we are manufacturing LED boards by hand, and have automated the wood- and plastic-cutting processes. It’s all coming together really well and I hope, if I find time, to write more about it here. Currently studying for midterms so in the interim, here’s a photo of our awesome CNC machine cutting out the wood for a module.
It’s 2:53 AM and I’m super tired, but I just want to write a quick update. Been working on the Wash U IEEE club website and also our dance floor project. I just finished fixing up our printed circuit board design in EAGLE CAD, check it out:
The boards are going out for production this weekend. Get excited!
Now that I’ve finished my retro door project I am taking a break from software and electronics work on NTSC2SSTV to satisfy a craving I’ve been having for building something mechanical: a do-it-yourself dive enclosure for an SLR camera.
I’ve wanted to build an underwater enclosure since I first became a PADI diver at age 14. Six months ago I bought a used Sony Alpha A230 on eBay — my first digital SLR camera — and now I am designing an underwater enclosure for it using PVC pipe, a sheet of clear Acrylic (“plexiglass”), neoprene rubber, and some stainless steel hardware.
Needless to say I’m super excited about it, can’t wait to go diving again, and while you’re here check out the awesome Google SketchUp drawings of my soon-to-be dive enclosure:
I forgot to write on here about my trip to Israel! It was amazing, I went with a group of undergrads at Wash U to visit the Technion in Haifa, Israel. It was great, I got to see a lot of the country, especially since I stayed a few extra days with three other students. Loved seeing the Garden of Gethsemane and the Wailing Wall. We were also there during the Gaza flotilla incident so it was particularly interesting. Check it out at my photo gallery.
Made little converter boards for the chips in my NTSC2SSTV project. I did the etching my usual way – with toner transfer from photo paper printed with my HP 1100 laser printer using a hot laminator. Worked like a charm!
I’m currently thinking about ditching the ATXMEGA microcontroller I was going to use since I found out it doesn’t work with my programmer 
Looking into using PWM to generate sine waves so I can use a regular ATMEGA so I don’t need the XMEGA’s built-in DAC.
I finally completed my long-running door project! A friend of mine who I showed it to thinks that it’s the best project I’ve ever done, “even better than your balloon projects.” The idea was to build a retro 80s-looking electronic keypad entry with a little CRT display I found for 10 bucks at a local Goodwill. I’ll upload a video of it soon so you can really see it working. For now, here is a picture of it in all its glory.
Over the past year I have been working on and off on a project to build an electronic keypad lock for the door of my office, and I have finally reached a milestone. I finished the PCB today! I will be testing it out in the coming days as I wait for the rest of the NTSC2SSTV parts to arrive in the mail.
I began working on a new project today which I have named NTSC2SSTV. The goal is to design a system with a microcontroller and a few ASICs to grab frames from an NTSC video signal and convert them into a slow scan television signal. The project will be utilized on a future high altitude balloon. More info to come.
Track my progress | Bill of materials
I just returned from skiing at Winter Park, Colorado with College Central. It was beautiful and the skiing was great!
I’ve been helping the Washington University IEEE club to build a dance floor. We worked late nights this week and finally the prototype is working!!
