Sorry, no woodworking projects recently. It’s summer in Austin and my shop/garage does not have air conditioning. It’s been a brutal summer, with weeks on end with temps 100+. So, no fun to be in the shop, even the night is still too hot — 90 at 11 PM.

Even if the heat wasn’t so bad, the shop was. Bad, that is. We recently cleared out our storage unit and a lot of stuff ended up in the garage. We’ve now stored what we wanted to keep, given away the stuff we don’t need anymore, and Evelyn gave everything a clean sweep. Just in time, as we’re ramping up for Halloween. This year’s theme: Monster Mayhem. A scale model of Tokyo, with Godzilla and friends.

I’m hoping that things cool down a bit. I have a heavy duty tool stand to put together and a new mini-mill to play with. Unfortunately, it’s been sitting there, baking.

You’ve figured out how to manually trigger your camera’s shutter, maybe using an old mouse. Now you want to start doing something more interesting, like time lapse. To do this you need either (a) a camera that has the feature built in — a lot of point and shoots do or (b) and external interferometer. For reasons I don’t quite understand, with the billion features they put into modern DSLRs, they still don’t include at least a basic interferometer feature. After all, you’re just telling the camera to take a photo every X seconds/minutes.

We had to build our own. Some use microcontrollers to do  this, but I wanted something which used discrete components. This was my next step in learning and didn’t want to rush into the Arduino/Atmega328 world just yet.

While hunting around I found this person’s project. It’s well documented and it works: DIY Interferometer

I took his design and made two minor changes. First, I eliminated the high/low setting. I think it’s a good idea, but I knew that my next project would be Arduino based, so no need to complicate the discrete project. (If you look at his schematic, I used the 10k/220uf “Low”.) Second, I removed the manual focus/shutter buttons. Again, my goal was bare-bones.

I won’t go into a ton of detail here, because his write-up is excellent. A 556 is used (you can use two 555s) for it’s two timers. The first side/timer does the “beats” — this is how often it triggers and is based on setting a potentiometer. Varies from about 25 seconds to a couple of minutes. The second side/timer is used to hold the shutter down for about a second. He found that if you just use the one 555 that it’s timer pulse is just too quick — sometimes the camera misses it. So he uses the other timer to “hold” that pulse for a second.

The whole project got stuffed into a little Hammond project box, with the 9V battery as a supply. (One of the nice things about the 555/556 is it has a huge VCC range.)

You plug the camera in via the 3.5mm (1/8″) to 2.5mm cable adapter. Again, I’m using a Canon DSLR, which uses the simple connector. There’s a power switch, a status LED (goes on when shutter triggers–good for debugging), and a pot which adjust the time. I was seeing about 25 secs on the low end.

Here’s a closer look at the open end. I didn’t have the patience / desire to cut holes in the insert, so I left a gaping hole. Good enough.

I set up the camera outside (on a tripod) and connected up the unit. Set it for about 60 second increments (manually checked with a stopwatch). Then let it run for about an hour. Success! Photos taken and ready for processing into a movie.

After I built this unit it confirmed a couple of things: I’d want to make a microcontroller version. The 555/556 is a “guess the time” setup — you move the dial, time it, try again. It’s not easy to get a repeatable setting. (It’s fine between ticks — it’s the initial setting that’s a drag.) With a microcontroller I can have an LCD display, etc. The fancy stuff that makes it more user friendly.

Regardless of its limitations, it’s a handy gadget to have. It teaches you about timing photos and brings you one step closer to the more complicated devices. And since it’s dead simple and small you don’t have to worry about it much. Good for spur of the moment lapse photos. Is there such a thing?

After messing a bit with light painting I thought it would be useful to build a RGB-like illuminator. Something I could use to highlight a person or object — like a fill light — while the painting is being done.

At first I was going to do this with just potentiometers — something like a 5K — but I didn’t get the range that I wanted. So, it looked like it was time to do it with a microcontroller. I don’t like throwing in a chip just because, but in this case the cost/benefit made sense.

Here’s my first take on the control panel. Each sliding pot gets connected to an Analog Read pin on the chip (using Atmega328 and the Arduino environment on an Evil Mad Science target board–highly recommended):

In the above photo you can see the 9 LEDs — they are jumbo 10mm ones. Two red, two yellow, two white, one green, one blue, one pink. I doubled up on yellow, red, and white because they are pretty dim, especially compared the the mega bright blue and green.

To the right of the LEDs is the target board (no chip installed yet). Below is the board with sliding pots (6). I put little indicator LEDs above the pots so I could tell what color I was shifting (this unit will be used in the dark, so labels won’t do much good).

The pots are setup in a voltage divider setup. You connect one end of the pot to VCC and the other to GND (everything is running 5v). The sliding contact gets connected to one of the analog input pins. The Arduino/Atmega328 has 6 of those pins, so I was in luck — I was controlling 6 colors.

I hooked it up and things seemed to be okay. Except when Evelyn came over and touched them — they were warm! In my attempt to get rid of some surplus parts I had gone with a batch of 200 ohm slide pots. And, forgetting Ohms Law and voltage dividers, I was creating a nice little heat generator. It was only a matter of time before they blew.

A valuable lesson was learned: never forget Ohms Law. It’s not a theory, it’s a law. My silly circuit was wasting goodness knows how many watts as heat. (I didn’t have a supply problem because it was connected to a USBTinyISP, powered by the computers’s USB port. If I ran on batteries they would get eaten up in waste heat.)

So, I ordered the proper (and current production) sliding pots from Mouser. These are 10K ohm and have a nice feel.

In the above photo you can see the new pots (with some nice LEDs on the control board — waiting for yellow and red to be back in stock, so the 3mm are temporary).

Eight wires go from the slide pot control board to the target board. There are 6 analog lines and 2 for power.

There are seven wires going from the target to the LED illuminator board. Six digital, for the six colors, and ground. I cheated here a bit and have the reds, yellows, and whites in series with each other (red-red, yellow-yellow, white-white). They use a different drop resistor value. It was a big of trial and error to get all the LEDs at a pretty even brightness. I had to also drop the resistance on the pink LED — they always seems to run dim. Big power hogs.

The output LEDs are connected to PWM pins on the Arduino-like target board. This allows the Atmega328 to smoothly change colors. It also makes for very simple code. In the main loop() have the code read a pin, then analogWrite a value to the output pin. Very easy. Here is a snip:

I have that set of code repeated 6 times, one for each color / input pin / output pin. Output LEDs are on pins 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11. Each has a drop resistor, based on voltage drop of LED, source supply (5V), and desired top-end brightness (about 30ma).

This is what it looks like powered up:

Now I just have to figure out a way to get this packaged up in a nice case. And figure out a way to mount the LEDs near/on the camera’s hot shoe (not for power, just as a mounting point).

If you have a camera which will hold the shutter open as long as you press it, and some LEDs, you can light paint.

Painting with light is simple: Go in a dark room, put camera on tripod. Open shutter. “Draw” in space with your LED. Close shutter. (Most SLRs have a “bulb” mode — all this means is that the shutter stays open as long as you press the button.) It’s a great project for messing around, requires no gizmos, and would be fun with kids.

Here are some examples:

The top photo was done with a 10mm “jumbo” green LED, but a regular one would work. The bottom (bat) photo was done with an RGB color cycling LED. You can buy these individually and hook them up to a battery with a resistor. The middle (heart) photo was done using a toy RGB LED “wand”. It color cycles. Since it’s diffused into a wand you get nice wide paths of color.

While playing around with this we tried hi-lighting our faces — trying to make a portrait, but the LED(s) used to do the drawing would overwhelm us.  We needed an external LED, very dimly lit, to brighten up the persons face. In this photo I shined a pink LED at Evelyn while she did the light painting. I held the LED about where the camera flash would be. Camera about 4-6′ away.

This experiment gave me an idea: I could build a low lux illuminator. Something I could color mix to get the right color and brightness.

One of my favorite things about electronics is how nicely the hobby can cross pollinate into other hobbies. Play the guitar? Make your own effects pedals. Cooking? A custom timer. A remote thermometer. Photography? Time lapse circuits, lighting, motion control.

We’ve been getting into more serious photography recently, thanks to the motivation of a friend. It’s prompted us to play around with stuff like time lapse, light painting, and other stuff. It’s fun just messing around and learning new stuff. We’re often stuck looking for project ideas, and photography is a realm with a ton of possibilities.

And it’s easy to start simple, and ramp up. Here are a couple of manual photo triggers I recently put together:

The black orb is a dollar store massage machine. A motor, and off balance weight, and some batteries — all ripped out. In their place, I put a surplus tandem switch and a 1/8″ audio jack. Press down a little, camera goes into metering mode. Press completely, shutter release.

The mouse was hacked in a similar way. I took out some of the guts, keeping the buttons. Pressing the side buttons sets camera to metering. Middle button does shutter. (Note that you only need to do the shutter — it’s not necessary to do both. You might meter beforehand if have the camera in auto, so it has time to figure out the right settings for the shot.)

We have a Canon DSLR, which uses an 1/8″ plug for remote triggering. Nice simple hard-wiring — no IR to deal with. Connecting the triggers is done via a hacked apart cell phone headset cable. I used the cell phone because it is a 2.5 mm (small) connector, and they are a drag to solder. On the other end I soldered and easier to find (and work with) 1/8″ (3.5 mm) connector. Not pretty, but who cares, it was free.

The manual photo trigger is pretty boring, but it was an important proof of concept: I know how to control a camera with a remote switch, so now I can automate the process. Baby steps.

There are plenty of DIY photography sites out there with tutorials on how to do this, so if you’d like more detail, look around.

We have a small (1 small car) garage which houses our shop. In total square feet, our shop is fine. The trouble is that we also build chicken coops — and they take up a 3′ x 6′ footprint — therefore, we have to keep the front 1/4 of the shop clear as a work / lumber storage area. So, we have to be clever about tool placement and storage.

There are a couple of dedicated stations for frequently used tools (ex. the bandsaw, drill press). Hand power tools are stored on a small bakers shelving unit. The big Makita Miter Saw sits on its own rolling cart (still need to build out its proper in/out-feed fences), etc. Recently, my collection of proper hand tools has been growing (ever so slightly), which means new storage solutions.

I have a rule of thumb about tools, materials, and parts: KEEP THEM VISIBLE

How many times have I rooted around the shop to find a glue gun I forgot I had. Or had made due with another tool when a better solution was in the shop, but hidden and forgotten about. This not just important with tools, but also materials. It’s critical to keep your materials “out there” so you can always be reminded of what you have. I know this can be difficult, but having all those tools and materials out there in front of me often sparks new ideas.

Now back to the till…

A saw till is a storage unit, usually for large hand saws. It keeps them safe, organized, and available. I’m mostly a power tool guy, but I do own some hand saws which were owed a better storage solution than a nail on a wall. Here you can see how the dovetail saws (these are Veritas) as stored:

It’s a frame made out of 1×4 pine, with some dowels (or, in my case, a ripped piece of pine, rounded over), and another piece of pine with slots to hold the blades. There a bunches of ways of doing this — I built this till for a very specific use, storing these Veritas saws.

After building out the unit I found I had space toward the top that wasn’t being used (where the blades slide under). Instead of wasting that space, I tacked on a chisel holder:

As a bonus, the top is flat, so I can store other stuff behind the chisels (that blue container, which holds some spare bits).

But I could not neglect my two (I know, only two?) planes. So, the bottom area is for storing them. (The till was sized to hold a #5 Jack plane and at least 5 dovetail saws.) here’s how everything looks:

The Jack is an old Stanley we found in Puerto Rico, rusting away (and still needing a rebuild). Above it is a Veritas DX60 block plane, which was pretty much perfect out of the box. Those Canadians do know how to build hand tools.

You can also see that I have space to hang saws on the outside — the left side has a small Japanese utility pull saw–frequently used, the other side has a Japanese Ryoba (two cutting edges).

I so liked how the saw till came out, I decided to make a matching unit to hold a couple of common screwdrivers and hammers.

An important design note on the screwdriver section: I tilted it at a pretty significant angle (I’d guess 30 degrees forward). Two reasons for this. First, it saves a LOT of space. Second, it makes getting the drivers out a LOT easier. If you are building screwdriver storage, try tilting it outward. It makes a big difference in space used and ease of use.  (In the middle you’ll see that I can also store mechanical pencils here, along with a Japanese nail set.)

My Incra rulers were feeling a little neglected, and my second-hand rules too, so I repainted my measuring device storage area black (for contrast, and I had it on hand). Twelve and eighteen inch rulers hand from the bottom, and a 6″ Pinnacle centering rule sits in the middle. (I love that ruler–so sturdy and a handy length. You can get them at Woodcraft.)

Here is the Heroic Trio, mounted to studs in the walls. (I need to make some of those fancy french [?] wall bracket setups, but too many things are above that on my to-do list.) I’ve even space for a bottle of glue (top of hammer one) — Evelyn found that at a local Korean market. It’s for storing sauces, but is perfect for glue.

I’m happy how everything came out. Not only do they look nice and professional, but they also (more importantly) keep my hand tools at hand.

I’ve been looking at digital pianos for a while now. Since I wanted something I can learn piano on, a couple of things were important. First, it had to be full-sized (88 keys). Second, it had to have “real” piano action (with full-sized keys). Third, it had to fit into my budget. I ended up with the Casio CPD-100 digital piano. It had good reviews (excellent for learning) and felt a lot more real to me — even comparing it to digital pianos twice its price (I had my eye on a couple of Yamahas). It’s not a synth, so no whiz-bang functions, but it should be a good instrument to learn on.

The piano is pretty big — about 52″ wide and 25 pounds, so I needed a sturdy stand. I didn’t feel like spending $50 on “X” metal stage stands, and the wooden stand from Casio was $120, so I decided to make my own. I went with a shaker bench design, increasing the leg height to 24″. This give me a keyboard height (to top of keys) of 28″.

In the above photo, the top is 52″ long by 12″ wide. Legs are 24″ tall, 12″ wide. The stretcher is 44″ wide and is a 1×4. The lumber was cut to length on my big Makita miter saw, then cutouts done with my Bosch saber saw.

I actually built the stool first, because I wanted to work through the plans and figure out any tricky parts:

The stool top is about 20″ wide. Legs are 18″ tall. I didn’t cut the parts as carefully as I should have (especially the stretcher part), so the stool was not as strong as I wanted it to be. To compensate I added that lower reinforcement. It’s not the best, but it will do.

Here are the two of them together. All sanded up and waiting for a glossy black paint job.

To save money, this project used glued up pine 1x12s. I got them at Lowes for about $15 a board. So, the total cost of lumber was about $30. The downside of using these pre-glued boards is that they aren’t stain friendly — they’d look a bit weird. However, an opaque paint job avoids that issue. (You can get stain-ready boards, but they are more costly.)

If you’d like to make your own, check out the plans at Popular Woodworking. The “Mud Room Bench” is part of their “I Can Do That” series of plans — woodworking projects that don’t require a ton of skill or a lot of expensive equipment. Highly recommended.

Check out the plans (including PDF) here: Mud Room Bench at Popular Woodworking

Not all aliens are docile. This guy put up a heck of a fight. Some of you will be able to tell where he’s from:

He was starting to get out of hand, so we had to put him behind bars. Unfortunately, the bars weren’t quite strong enough to hold him. Pretty soon he’ll be free:

Here is a wider shot. You can see that he’s mounted on the front of the house.

We have aliens in our bushes, signs in our windows, and a road closed. The big Devils Tower mural will be mounted in front of the garage door, behind the “Road Closed” signs.

At night, the four green aliens are spotlighted by some flickering 10mm white LEDs.

We based this off the rumors of alien autopsies occurring at Area 51. For the younger kids, this is a sick alien that the doctor is helping.