allen's projects page

I am now using an Asus notepad for music performance/practice rather than heavy binders full of sheet music. I wanted the ability to scroll up & down hands-free, but such a device is not available commercially, so I constructed one using a two-pedal device (originally used for medical imaging equipment) with the re-wired guts of a USB keypad installed inside. The keypad defaults to numbers, rather than the up & down arrows I desired, so I had to add a "Num Lock" button in the back to initialize the unit to use the arrows instead.

Coffee grinder adjustment
	The coarsest setting on our Delonghi coffee grinder was too fine, so (taking a cue from Zheng's blog) I hacked the inner mechanism so that we could achieve the perfect grind. Yes, I voided the warranty, but what's more important - a warranty I'll probably never need, or a good cup of coffee?

Nixie tube tester
	Nixie tubes are very cool retro-looking neon-type tubes used in some 1950's and 1960's electronics to display numbers. I salvaged two of these tubes from a multimeter I lost in a major flood at our house in September 2011. I decided to build this box to test the tubes, and to familiarize myself with how they work. The unit runs off a 9 volt battery using a power supply (from a kit I purchased online from LEDsales in Australia) to step the voltage up to 170 volts.

New workshop
	We had to gut and rebuid our entire basement, including my workshop, following a flood in 2011. Although it took a lot of time, money and effort, my new bench is a joy to work at.

Message indicator extension

My phone has a flashing light to indicate that I have a message, but I couldn't see it from the doorway of my study, so I cut up a length of fiber optic cable into pieces, made it into a bundle, and inserted it into a copper fixture that I painted (well, actually Sharpied) black & affixed to the phone. Voila! Now I can see the flashing light from the doorway, without having to go to the phone to check it :)

Pedal kill-switch
	I needed a way to temporarily kill a microphone hooked up to my sound system (so that it could be muted, or turned off & on without a big pop from the P.A. system), so i retro-fitted a momentary power foot switch (inset photo) from Harbor Freight, gutted it, and inserted the electronics depicted in schematic form at right. It works beautifully :)

The adapter for my camera card was originally encased in a hideous hinged plastic thing; i decided to extract the innards and encase them in wood instead. Marie suggested the copper side trim to make it look more steam-punk, a fashion we've been intrigued with after seeing the movie Metropolis.

Cat's whisker detector

This is my reproduction of an early 20th-century cat's whisker detector. These devices, used before the advent of tubes to detect radio signals, were an essential component of early crystal radios. The chunk of mineral on the left is galena, which i obtained last summer at the local gem & mineral show. The metal parts are faucet fixture pieces from the local Home Depot. Follow-up: It may have looked cool, but my cat's whisker didn't work. Take-home lesson: can't use substandard parts to build a technological device!