toolmarks indicate 3d printing

toolmarks indicate 3d printing, a photo by Tuzen on Flickr.

"The robots will decorate themselves with our bones. Practical machines may consider lightweight-synthetic alternatives, but nothing says status like a string of skulls." - 2124

Trigger Testing

#12207E - Northern Flicker
Originally uploaded by Tuzen

It was a clear day so I dumped a hand-full of bird seed in front of the camera robot and set the Nikon on a tripod. This was the first test test of the contraption outside with the critters.

The outdoors are brighter than I had expected, so I see that my sensor math will need adjustment. An unforeseen bonus, however, is that all the images have the same registered background. That will make it easy to photoshop various critters together.

The laser was up near the flicker's head, but the junco was captured about 6" lower because he was moving.  I've read that to capture a bird in flight, I should aim the camera about 1-2 feet past the trigger.

Robot Camera

I have my DIY laser trigger for the Nikon D300s up and running.  A Parallax Basic Stamp controls a small laser, a photo-resistor, and an optoisolator (NTE3222) to the camera release.  The laser bounces off a small mirror to the photo-resistor, and the camera takes a photo when the beam is broken.  The design is a collection of ideas I've been reading about, and parts I have.

In software I need to calculate the ambient light value with the laser off, then calculate the value with the laser on; this creates a perceptible blinking.  I'm starting to think it would be faster if I replace the photo-resistor with a photo-transistor.  Every millisecond counts with subjects racing through the frame.

The laser must be aligned with the mirror and the photo-resistor.  For this reason, a really bright laser would be very helpful when trying to line things up in daylight.  I turn it off right before the camera release, so it won't appear in the photograph.

Horizontal Fireworks

Capturing this bullet explosion was like firework photography. When shooting fireworks, I adjust the exposure for something like a 5 second shot on a tripod. This was very similar, but horizontal, and a slightly shorter 3 second exposure.

Obviously shooting any gun in the pitch dark is super dangerous. As safety precautions they (firearms professionals) secured an indoor firing range and further fastened the weapon to the bench. We used a remote camera-trigger to keep me away from the business-end.

We controlled all the lights on the range, but we still had to adjust for the best timing and exposure. When shooting much slower fireworks, I'd press the remote when I heard the boom. In this case, the operator announced a three count and I pressed the remote shutter on two, a beat before the shot was fired.

Lastly, since the shutter was set to three seconds, and I was already open to f/4, I adjusted the ISO (and camera position) until I got a good looking exposure for each particular round. What loud fun we had!

Win7 on floppy

I found a bug while installing Windows 7 in Parallels 5 this morning.  Windows installer stops and says only "There are no images available", and I could not see any way past this screen.  So I went crawling around trying to figure this out.  It seems a few folks have run into this kind of thing before with systems other than Parallels.

The solution in my case was to disable the virtual floppy drive by unchecking "Configure/Hardware/Floppy Disk/Connected".  This is a MacBook and I don't have a floppy drive, and if I did there would certainly no Windows 7 images there.

cheat the RAM test

Image via Wikipedia

A friend asked me to install the Adobe Illustrator CS4 trial on their PC. Sadly, after a rather large download and unpack the darn thing failed. It just refused to install with less than 512MB of memory; quit was the only button. This little PC gives a few MB to the video card and so it's always been a few crayons short of a full box.

I crawled around on the web to find out how to make it work and, sure enough, I came across some folks that got an older Adobe product to stick. The trick goes like this.

1. Find the un-packed setup folder "Adobe CS4"
2. Find the file AdobeIllustrator14mul.proxy.xml
3. Open this file in notepad.
4. Change:"Memory":{"System":{"Default":{"Require":"512","Exclude":"500"}}}
5. To:"Memory":{"System":{"Default":{"Require":"400","Exclude":"410"}}}
6. Re-run Setup.

This worked great and my friend is now happily playing with the Adobe Illustrator CS4 trial.  However, if they get serious about using CS4 I recommend getting a new machine.

Related articles:
Bypass RAM check on Adobe Illustrator CS Installation (jaunis.blogspot.com)

death by flash drive

I bought a new hard-drive a while back and to my surprise it was pre-loaded with photos! Somebody forgot to wipe their disk clean with an erase utility.

Of course you can't be using the main system disk while erasing the main system disk. A few years back this problem was easily solved with a bootable floppy, and when those disappeared we used bootable CD or DVD. To my surprise I now have machines with no CD, no DVD, and of course no floppy. It's a netbook.

I had decided to create a bootable USB key for the purpose of erasing and re-formatting my old main disk. After several dead-ends, the good news is that it finaly worked! But it was enough of a hassle that I thought I better write down what I did before I forget.

First I created a blank Virtual Floppy Drive (VFD) as A: using a tool I downloaded, vfdwin.exe. First I had to "Start the Driver", then I could "Create a Drive0" and assign a drive letter. It is important to leave all this going for the rest of the steps.

Then I used Windows XP, Explorer to format my virtual A:, and checked "Create an MS-DOS Startup Disk". I'll need these files for the next step.

Finaly I downloaded and used the "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool v2.1.8" to format my Sony USB key, checked the "Create a DOS startup disk" and "using DOS system files located at: A:\".

Whew. I'm not sure why Windows doesn't let me do all this more directly. Sure, in XP's heyday floppys were common, but for Windows 7 I hope the USB flash drive is more um, key.

that's almost $700 in dog money

I built some dog wheels for Tommy; here he is pictured using them for the first time (see the video). This was my first tube project, and aside from the ten visits to the hardware store, it was fun. 1/2 inch copper, epoxy, a rivet gun, and two huge 3/4 inch diameter bolts as wheel axels.

The core of the idea is the bottoms-up leash. This leash normally slips around each leg, but while I provide the required stability for the dog. I also set his pace and direction for 30 minutes. It was tiring. While I was walking the dog I would think about how much better things would be if this leash could hold itself up with wheels.

The wheels are from Harbor Freight Tools. This was the most costly item at $50 for a welding cart from which I removed the wheels. The wheels are each running on a 3/4 x 8 inch bolt with a nylon lock nut. And 3/4 copper-T fittings on either side of the wheel join this to the frame. Finally, bushings and washers make everything fit and functional.

The copper tube is regular 1/2 inch hard water pipe, with one piece of soft pipe arched over his shoulders. The dog is about 50 lbs and so I used two supports down to the inside of each wheel and one additional support to the outside of each wheel. It took some testing to fit the height and length to the owner and so I assembled and made test fittings using duct-tape for some temporary measurements. Final assembly used epoxy and rivets to hold the glue. I left sub-assemblies to cure and set overnight.

To secure the frame to the pooch there is an important chest strap. I used foam pipe insulation add comfort padding in a few places. And lastly we used dog booties and elastic to hold his back feet up.

After a few weeks of use, I think it might need a parking break... How would you improve it?

Desperation of Quiet

Before-LED

After-POT

I picked up a Roboquad toy-robot and started looking for hacks that very night. I was bothered by the lack of volume control. Cracking open the case, I found enough space inside to replace the back LED with a switched potentiometer. It was easy to find the speaker wires since the circuit-board is well labeled. It would've been simpler to disconnect the speaker, but I decided I liked some sound.

I removed the LED and drilled out enough material to make room for the Radio-Shack audio pot. On the front I found the black and yellow speaker wires following from the yellow terminal, spliced the pot into the yellow, tested, soldered and applied red heat-shrink tubing. I didn't have any trouble running my new wires around to the back. It works great; now the volume is adjustable - whew.