Projects - Building

Light Box - My sister is a developing artist, and she gave me one of her first works; a welding sculpture about 3 feet tall. One of the terms she used to describe it was a spaceship taking off. I worked with a friend to build a light box that would illuminate the sculpture from underneath with red, orange, and yellow light. The effect is that the underside of the sculpture is lit with fiery colors, extending the idea that the sculpture really is taking off.

Staples Easy Button - For a project at work I needed a solid button that would be easy to press. It turned out that the Staples Easy Button was a perfect match for what I needed; heavy, easy to locate without looking for it, a great size, and it was just a single button. I opened it up and removed the speakers and disconnected the majority of the inner workings, rewiring some bits so that I could run a wire out of it and into the serial port of a computer. Then I could use the button as an input device. It worked perfectly.

Composite-S-video - With the projector in my apartment, I have a VGA cable and an S-Video cable running as inputs. However, my Playstation2 cable only has composite video output. It turns out that composite can be hacked into s-video fairly easily. By running the composite video signal to both the brightness and color parts of the s-video you get a usable video feed. It’s not great quality, but it’s better than nothing. I also managed to find a Playstation2 cable that had s-video out, so it’s no longer an issue, but for a while I needed a solution.

Steadicam - My digital camera needed some accessories, and the steadicam seemed like a perfect addition. Built out of simple parts from a hardware store (and a pie plate from ShopKo), this steadicam makes sure that while I’m taking video the camera stays level and steady.

Audio switch - I have a set of speakers that I embedded into my coffee table. This actually made a lot of sense because it moved the speakers to the center of the room and away from the apartment walls and increased the stereo effect, as well as saving room in the cramped apartment. The speakers serve both my computer and my Playstation2. The speakers only have a single 1/8” plug, though, so I built a switch using a tin of mints (the mints were horrible anyway) that accepts the speaker plug and the plugs for the computer and the Playstation2. It’s a cute little thing and does exactly what I needed.

Bob Baddeley Memorial Fountain - At the lab a model of the campus additions was placed on display in each of the buildings so that people could get an idea of how the campus was going to change. One day I made a little addition to the model. It stayed up for at least 4 months and moved from building to building.

Computer Light Show - Back in college I occasionally did DJ gigs. It was a lot of fun and I did some pretty neat things to make it easier. I had a remote control for my WinTV card and I remapped the buttons to control WinAmp, so I could control the music while I was dancing on the floor. Another thing I did was build some lights for inside my computer case. Follow the link for more details.

In high school I played around in my basement bedroom a lot. I discovered some neat things, some things that I still can’t explain, and some very useful things.

One thing I worked on was a sound system. I found a couple speakers and a really old amplifier at Goodwill and rigged them together. The sound quality wasn’t professional, but it was more than enough to do what I wanted. It wasn’t even stereo, but I could get it loud. Then I took apart an alarm clock and rewired the speaker output into the sound system. Occasionally I would have the amplifier volume a little loud and I would wake up EVERYBODY in the house at 6am for school. Later I took my 386 computer apart and wired the internal speaker output to the amp. The computer didn’t have a sound card, so this was my only option.

Another thing I played with was input devices. I took a keyboard apart and tapped into the wires for the arrow keys. Then I took apart two pens and taped them so they were perpendicular to each other. I put a small piece of metal in each that would slide around easily. Then I taped paper clips on each end so that the pieces of metal would make two separate paper clips touch and complete a circuit. The circuit it would complete was the arrow key. I then attached this small contraption to a glove. The end result was a motion sensitive glove that could tell whether my hand was tilted forward, backwards, left, or right, and would send the appropriate arrow key through the keyboard to the computer. It was the cheapest glove ever.