Bubble Clock Watch

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Around March of 2014, out of the blue, SparkFun started selling these beauties.

bubble_watch_display

Those are 4-digit 7-segment LED displays in a DIP6 package. Tinkerers and enthusiasts everywhere let out a collective shriek of delight, throwing fistfuls of money at SparkFun, depleting their initial stock in less than half an hour. One early commenter summed up the feeling perfectly: “No idea what I’ll use it for, but don’t care: shut up and take my money!”

After a couple of weeks, I was finally able to buy some for myself.

My first official project incorporating this component is what I’ve been calling the Bubble Clock Watch. It draws inspiration from SparkFun’s BigTime Watch kit, but it is meant to be smaller, and is based around the surface-mount TSSOP MSP430 instead of the through-hole DIP Atmega328.

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SMD Component Tray from an old CD jewel case

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before

A few years ago, I decided to try my hand at using SMD components for building circuits. I bought a cheap heat gun and some tweezers and set to work harvesting whatever parts I could melt off old PC circuit boards. Pretty soon, I realized that I needed a place to store all the little bits I had been liberating, as storing them scattered like grit across my workbench wouldn’t do. Continue reading →

Digital Calipers On-Off Switch

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Digital calipers are wonderful.  Once I bought my first set, it was hard to resist the urge to go measure all the things.

They are useful until the battery dies.  The engineer in me gasps in horror when it realizes that the calipers never completely turn off; in fact, it is only the display that turns off, leaving the LR44 battery draining happily, pushing electrons through the rest of the circuit, 24/7.  To be fair, the more expensive models lack this always-on “feature”, but let’s be honest.  When was the last time you bought a $100 pair of calipers when you could instead get virtually the same for $15, even when you knew the battery life was numbered in months instead of years?

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Fixing a Nikon D40 stuck shutter

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A few months ago, my brother gave me his old Nikon D40 digital SLR camera.  Through the wear and tear of taking 70,000 pictures over six years, the shutter mechanics had worn down just enough that the shutter would jam after less than ten shots.  After unsuccessfully trying to fix it, my brother had replaced the body with a newer model.  I was now the lucky recipient of the old camera body, along with the kit lens that originally shipped with it.

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Wire Tyrannosaurus Rex

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During my adventures 15-20 years ago in taking apart old computers, I happened to discover that the BIOS chips were removable.  They all had stickers covering the top, and I discovered by feel that on most of the chips there was a slight indentation underneath the sticker.  On removing the sticker, I found to my delight a clear glass (actually fused quartz) window through which I could see the silicon chip.

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Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs: Never Again!

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This is a picture of the result of using compact fluorescent light bulbs in my house for 13 years.  Every single one of these bulbs is either dead or defective.  And this isn’t all there is- through the years, some missed the collection box and went out with the trash.

There are some fluorescent bulbs sprinkled around the house that have outlasted their brethren- notably the one in a recessed fixture above the shower, which has been faithfully illuminating its domain a few minutes each day for over 7 years now.

LEDs had better have a longer life expectancy, especially at the premium prices they’re charging.