A place to learn about coding, making things, and stuff that strikes my fancy.
I've come to realize making something from scratch winds up building a bunch of prototypes as you both perfect the plans and figure out how to make the parts. And in my case, while the plans may be great--my ability to machine parts is... shall we say questionable? At any rate, I have a second... Continue Reading →
When we used NPN transistors to build our logic gates, it implies they can be used for building bigger things. In this video I've built a full 1 bit adder from our second Introduction video, entirely from discrete transistors. Build 8 of these--and you have an 8-bit adder. The show notes include the complete circuit... Continue Reading →
It took another couple of tries, and the trick for these gears was to get the outer diameter to within 0.002". Further, it required depthing the teeth to 1/32" == 0.625" (the precise measurement of the depth of the teeth) rather than cutting them a hair deeper. And I'm suspicious the Sherline divider may not... Continue Reading →
It probably doesn't help that I have no idea what I'm doing. Though I do have all my fingers and toes. So there's that. So today, after getting the M3 to M2 adapter, the M2 to Sherline adapter, and hooking up the Sherline 4-jawed chuck to the larger 7" lathe, I went to round the... Continue Reading →
So if you've been watching my Quick Videos you know I've been building a lot of circuits on prototype boards. I also took the liberty of 3D printing a couple of useful tools to help measure and bend wire. The first on the left helps measure lengths of wire; each wire is measured in each... Continue Reading →
So, as promised, about a month later, the second video in my series of videos explaining how computers work from the ground up. And I mean truly, the ground up; on a breadboard next to me I have a working 1-bit adder circuit made entirely out of 10KΩ resistors, 2N3904 transistors, a few LEDs and... Continue Reading →
Of course one of the purposes of the "Introduction to Digital Computers" video series is to create a series of videos which describe how computers work from a transistor level--and starting with NPN transistors so in theory you could build this yourself. Because the idea is that I want computers not to be this strange... Continue Reading →
We've been having problems with our Internet connection, and I also maintain an e-commerce web site which I'd like to make sure is working correctly. This quick little hack uses the following parts to periodically check that your web site is running: Arduino-compatible Adafruit Metro 328 Ethernet Shield for Arduino 9 VDC power adapter Arduino-compatible... Continue Reading →
So one downside of the superglue arbor is that you really need to clean up the end of the arbor holding your gear--and you need to apply enough glue to get the gear to stick to the arbor. More than once today I had wheels fall off the arbor--and that led to... well, complications. I... Continue Reading →
So I drew and cut out several blanks from the 1/8th inch aluminum (and I confess I had to do this several times, by the last blank I was very close to the line) using a scroll saw and a jeweler's blade. I then perfected them on the Sherline Lathe to the correct diameter of... Continue Reading →
The Hacking Den 
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