Blog
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Delonix Regia
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Otherwise known as a Royal Poinciana tree. -
Improved Arduino Thermometer
Sunday, November 6, 2011
I went to Jaycar a few days ago and picked up some more components to play with. This meant I could upgrade my Arduino Thermometer so it's easier to read, plus added a Min/Max mode.
It now uses 2 shift registers to drive the 8 LEDs of each of the 7-segment displays, and has a button to switch between live, minimum, and maximum temperature observations. Here's a video of it in action.
Anyway, I think I'm about done with the thermometer concept now, so I won't bore you with it any longer. :) -
Arduino Thermometer
Monday, October 31, 2011
For the last few months I've been considering getting an arduino board to play with, and last week I took the plunge and bought a SparkFun Inventor's Kit.
Over the weekend I had a bit of a play with some of the example circuits, making some small changes to them here and there when I saw further possibilities. But most of the examples are basically just that - examples of how the components work. Most of those that I built really amounted to no purpose.
So tonight I put together what I'd learned so far and built something with a purpose: a digital thermometer.
Ok, so it's not the easiest thermometer to read! Here's a close-up of the LEDs.
The top row of LEDs (which are actually yellow) show the 10's, so 2 out of 3 lit means the temperature is in the 20's.The bottom row is made up of 1 yellow (on the left, currently off) and 4 reds (3 on and 1 off). I'll explain the yellow in a second and skip to the reds, which show the degrees in increments of 2. That is, 2, 4, 6, and 8 respectively, from left to right. The photo shows up to the third is lit, so they represent 6 degrees.The yellow LED on the left is the last unrepresented digit: whether the temperature is odd or even. It's off in the photos, meaning the temperature is even.So the temperature is 20+6+0, or 26C.It all starts with a TMP36 temperature sensor, which is just visible on the very right of the breadboard in the first photo - it looks identical to a transistor. The voltage drop across this sensor changes with temperature, so I measure that with one of the analog pins on the arduino and do the appropriate conversion into a temperature.Then I convert this temperature into the bits that represent the different sets of lights: the tens, the even degrees, and the odd bit.This is then passed to a 74HC595 shift register, which controls all 8 LEDs via only 3 digital out pins on the arduino.Given the shift register's outputs and the number of spare digital out pins on the arduino, I could have probably controlled 12 LEDs in total to make it much easier to read - that is, 3 LEDs for the 10's, then one each for the digits 1-9, in which case the temperature from the photos would have been 2x10 + 6. But that seemed like less of a challenge than having to work out how to convert the temperature to the final 8-LED solution. :)Now back to the bigger challenge: what to build next? :)On that note, the arduino is quite amazing. Given I have a limited number of components and a rather small breadboard to work with, I have to disassemble everything I build in order to build the next thing. But given most of the work is in planning the design and writing the code (called a sketch), it's fairly easy to rebuild a circuit a second time around. So even though I'll probable disassemble this tomorrow night, all it'd take is a few minutes rewiring, then upload the sketch and it'd be back in action. -
iPhone macro photos
Monday, October 17, 2011
I was messing around with the camera on my new iPhone this afternoon and found it's fairly decent at taking super close-up/macro photos.
Here's some of the results. These aren't touched up or cropped in any way.
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Rain delay
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Ken Mackay Oval at Nundah, home of Toombul District Cricket Club during a heavy downpour this afternoon. They only just put that picket fence in during the last two weeks and I've been so tempted to get a photo of it. I had planned on taking a photo when the sun is low in the sky and the shadows are long, not during a torrential downpour! -
4 years
Sunday, October 9, 2011
During a weekend spent watching the V8s at Bathurst, I was reminded that it was this time 4 years ago that I ruptured my achilles.
This was a big year in that respect, because I finally got back into running, which I had only just got into before the injury.It started off by walking to work for a few months, which not only meant I managed to finally slim down a bit again, but gave me some confidence in the leg again. Every time in the past that I'd asked a bit more of it, it would give me grief - whether it be the achilles, the calf, or the knee.Then I moved house and walking to work was no longer an option, so I fired up the treadmill with the intention of walking a couple of times a week. Instead, I found myself winding up the speed and doing more jogging than walking. After the leg failed to make any complaints, I decided to keep it up. To make sure I kept up with it, I set myself a goal: the 2011 Bridge to Brisbane fun run.So last month, not only did I enter the 5km B2B, but I finished slightly faster than I expected, finishing in 37 mins 22 sec. I'm not going to say it was easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn't near as hard as I was expecting it to be. I was a little sore over the next few days - particularly the calf - but all up the leg handled it really well.I haven't decided whether I'll enter another fun run in the near future, but it was such a good feeling to be back where I was prior to the injury. It feels like it's really behind me now. -
The air up there
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
I thought this was an interesting angle of the wheel at South Bank. It almost makes it look like they're not coming back down. Plus it's so very nearly monochromatic. -
South Bank Time-Lapse
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Here's the result of today's trip to South Bank.
It was so windy it was wobbling the camera on the tripod! Not a good day to be up in the wheel - it's nauseating enough just watching the gondolas rocking back and forth, let alone being in one.
These were shot at 1 second intervals, played back at 25fps. I accidentally left the camera in aperture-priority mode for a couple of the sequences, which caused the flickering in some of them as the camera adjusted to the clouds passing over. Disappointed with myself for that.
The music is the "Piano Ballad" loop from Garage Band. -
Photos at South Bank
Saturday, October 1, 2011
I went to South Bank today to take some photos, mostly to make a new time-lapse.
Along the way I found this artwork/seat:
The funny part is that I'd only just seen that seat this morning on a blog I follow: http://brisdailyphoto.blogspot.com/2011/10/october-theme-day-mystery-object.html So random that I happened to go there today!
I'll be posting the time-lapse shortly once I've processed it, and then might post a few more of the photos over the coming days. -
I hate the word "Should"
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Whenever I use it, I feel dirty.
Me: That report should be fixed now.
Person: Should? You mean there's a chance it's not?
Whenever I don't, it comes back to bite me.
Me: That report is fixed now.
Person: It just broke again. You said it was fixed. I demand satisfaction! *slaps me in the face with a glove*
