This just perpetuates stereotypes

Posted on October 13, 2013 by engineerzero

1012031648

Although I do like the title, technophile instantané. Not enough to wear crooked prosthetic teeth, but it can’t be denied that everything said in French sounds sleeker. Enchanté!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

USB Plasma Ball

Posted on October 5, 2013 by engineerzero

Got me a USB plasma ball from Amazon.

ball1

It’s about the size of an orange. It plugs into your computer USB port for power.

ball2

It’s actually fairly bright in room lighting, but looks better in darkness.

ball3

If you can focus the camera, that is.

As you probably already know, when you touch it an arc jumps from the center to your finger.

ball4

Cool!

Here’s a video in action:

You can buy one for $7.95 from Amazon here:

LE USB Powered Plasma Ball

By the way, it will also run on a five volt ‘wall wart’ but you’ll need to buy one separately (assuming you don’t have a drawerful already).

I wonder if this could be powered by a 9 volt battery through a 7805 (ie, 5 volt) voltage regulator. Maybe I’ll try that, but I thought I would play with the plasma ball for a bit before I do anything that might break it.

UPDATE OCT 12: The plasma ball seems to be losing its strength. It still makes a visible arc between the center and my fingers, but otherwise it’s not that impressive to look at. Buyer beware, I guess.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Hey, someone has confidence in me!

Posted on October 2, 2013 by engineerzero

ezcom

Two years ago, this was selling for $24. I passed it up because I’ve always thought of this as a screen handle, not as a business name. Apparently, though, someone thinks that I’ve generated quite a bit of ‘cachet’ with the brand!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Mini-Review on The One World Schoolhouse

Posted on September 30, 2013 by engineerzero

The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined

It may seem odd that I read this book but haven’t actually viewed a single video from Khan Academy. But I’m an old guy, and that’s how I roll. Anyway, as I understand it, Khan Academy a series of videos on topics of math and science, narrated over a visual of using Microsoft Paint as a substitute for a blackboard. As such, I fail to understand what the fuss is about.

Take a standard text book and rewrite it into short units of one or two pages each. Allow independent study. And if you don’t want to waste paper, post it as an ebook. Is this ‘revolutionary’ in the year 2013?

With regard to education, there’s so much more potential for computers to be used in an environmentally immersive, interactive, and hands-on experience.

As an example, I humbly submit a teaching video on the Arduino, using Sketchup graphics:

Also I made a video series on how to model molecules in Sketchup, everything from water to the DNA helix. Here for example is the one on benzene:

You can check out the entire series of modeling molecule videos here.

Now, this isn’t about the quality of my work (which I’ll admit is not professional). It’s about the potential of the technology. And there are people out there who are doing far more impressive stuff. Those people should receive attention and grant money, and I hope they do.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Thomas Edison Quotes (with commentary)

Posted on September 26, 2013 by engineerzero

From Brainy Quotes:

The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.

(Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is not fanaticism, it’s quantum mechanics.)

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

(May not apply when digging for treasure in a mine field.)

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution.

(Said the lion to the lamb.)

If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.

(Astounding ourselves isn’t always a good thing!)

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

(I’m halfway there!)

I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.

(My career has been sidetracked.)

There is no substitute for hard work.

(Then there is no substitute for hard fun?)

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.

(Instant gratification is its own reward.)

I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.

(Well, at least he never invented an electric chair big enough to fry more than one elephant at a time.)

Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.

(And I still say, WEAR EYE PROTECTION.)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

How not to blow up your LEDs

Posted on September 22, 2013 by engineerzero

led kablooie

The above is what happened to an LED that was connected to a 9 volt battery without a current-limiting resistor in series. It exploded like a firecracker and the moral of the story is, WEAR EYE PROTECTION.

The lesson of the story is that you should have a current-limiting resistor in series with your LED. But resistance is a trade-off: too little and you blow out the LED, too much and you consume unnecessary power in the resistor and dim the LED.

Fortunately, calculating the proper amount of resistance for an LED is very simple algebra. It looks like this:

led-resistor

Let’s take a real-life example. Here are the specs on a package of LEDs:

led pkg 1

For a 9 volt battery, our first formula becomes:

V(resistor) = V(battery) – V(led)

V(resistor) = 9 – 3.2

V(resistor) = 5.8 volts

And the value for the current-limiting resistor is:

R = V(resistor) / i(led)

R = 5.8 volts / 20 milliamps

R = 290 ohms

Any resistor above a value of 290 ohms should do fine. However, remember that resistor values sometimes have a tolerance of about ten percent, so a resistor that is labeled 300 ohms may actually be only 270 ohms. So really, why not go with something like 500 ohms minimum? You’ll have a nice safety factor and likely won’t notice the difference in brightness.

Oh wait — we also have to be concerned about not exceeding the resistor’s maximum power rating, which is typically 1/8 or 1/4 or 1/2 watt depending on the size.

For that we need this formula:

watts = voltage x current

watts = 5.8 v x 20 ma

watts = 116 milliwatts

Which is less than 1/4 watt (ie, 250 milliwatts). So a medium-sized resistor will do fine.

When all is said and done, you probably don’t want to connect a nine volt battery to an LED because you’ll be burning most of the power through that resistor without getting any light for it. As you can see from the photo, I used a 9 volt here for the sake of drama. Using a 5 volt source without a current-limiting resistor may not even burn out your LED, or will just burn it out without an explosion. But I’m not guaranteeing that either way. Did I mention, WEAR EYE PROTECTION!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Walking the Synchronous Path

Posted on September 15, 2013 by engineerzero

DSCN6293

Yesterday I watched the movie, Oblivion. In the movie, Tom Cruise’s character descends through a hole into the ruins of a library. On a table is an old book titled, “The Lays of Ancient Rome.”

Now, the other day, I had gone to Redmond to visit McDonald’s Book Exchange. Redmond is still there, but instead of the exchange there was a hole in the ground. When I got back home, I discovered that the shop had moved. Today I went to the new location.

So if you’re following this, you see that I encountered a hole, and then I entered a place filled with old books. And so what happened next?

On a table I ‘just happened’ to find a book entitled, “The Lays of Ancient Rome.”

The book cost ten dollars, perhaps the most expensive book (and oldest) in the exchange. But I thought, “I’m going to follow the Synchronous Path and see where it leads.”

My, there sure is a lot of thunder right now.

Frankly, though, for ten dollars I expect more.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Shopping at Vetco

Posted on September 6, 2013 by engineerzero

vetco

I shopped at Vetco today here in Bellevue and came across these pretty good deals. For about a dollar each, you can get six LEDs, a toy motor, and a piezo buzzer. From what I’ve seen, these prices are competitive with eBay.

BTW, this is the first time I’ve seen blue LEDs at the same price as red, green, and yellow. Usually I’ve seen blues costing about a dollar each.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Visual Aids for Reading The New Cool

Posted on September 5, 2013 by engineerzero

The New Cool: A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts

The FIRST Robotics competition is held nationally every year and involves high school robotics teams competing at the highest level. To give you an idea of how challenging it is: the game design changes every year, and the game manual is a huge book in itself.

The New Cool is about a robotics team called the D’Penguineers (aka Team 1717) when it competed in the 2009 FIRST competition. The book doesn’t have any pictures, and since much of the story is about the physical design of the robot, I recommend you read the book with a computer tablet so that you can google and youtube pictures and videos as you go along.

As an aid to that, here is the link for the D’Penguineers Wikipedia Entry which links to other sites that contain photos and videos.

Here’s the D’Penguineering site.

And here’s the Youtube video of the 2009 D’Penguineers in action:

By the way, they’re going to make a movie about this. I am looking forward to it, but I can also see a million ways it can go horribly wrong — starting with when a studio executive scrawls upon the first draft of the script the fatal words, “NEEDS TEEN LOVE INTEREST.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

This post is not about PAX

Posted on September 2, 2013 by engineerzero

Just to let you know how out of touch I am with the gaming world, PAX was held this weekend in Seattle and I didn’t find out until late Saturday.

I thought I should go, to write an article for a budding (and yet to begin) career in Yahoo Contributors Network. But when I went to the convention center today at around 2:30 PM, the besweatered guardians at the door informed me that the event was sold out. Alas, I’m in late middle age and my grappling-hook-hurling-and-rope-climbing days are over.

So all you get is this photo I took outside, of a Dalek walking its pet human.

dalek

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment