So what are you working on right now?

Hey, I'm always working on something. Not always electronics. If I ever get around to it I will update my web page of things my friends and I are building. Right now I only have the tag-a-long camper, suspended due to weather, on the site. Take a look if you like,

I'm not selling anything. Regards, Tom

Two VME modules, 16 channel isolated analog/thermocouple input, and 16 channel isolated analog output/thermocouple simulator.

And a tachometer/overspeed trip module for gas turbines

And a small digital delay generator

And an analog scanner for measuring thermistors on a satellite solar array

And, with luck, a heads-up-display driver for the AC138 and maybe the F16.

And something for the U2 Dragon Lady, I'm not sure what.

Maybe some fiberoptics stuff.

John

--Unskilled, me, but with two Stamp courses behind me, working on making big-ass "servos" by learning to get location feedback from large-ish motors. Various applications in mind, including my tap-dancing Riverdance parody robot project "Paddy O'Furniture".

--
        "Steamboat Ed" Haas         :  Whatever happened    
        Hacking the Trailing Edge!  :  to Eiffel Plasterer?
                   http://www.nmpproducts.com/intro.htm
                   ---Decks a-wash in a sea of words---

"phaeton" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

Most of what I'm creating these days is software/multimedia. I have been involved in seting up a system to digitaly record our church service. I also have been setting up my home PC to post process the recording into a CD and a podcast. So good so far. But I'm

6 weeks behind on producing CD's. The podcast went live last week. And then today, we wern't in our usual location and the recording equiptment wasn't available. Looks like I need to work on getting a portable system too.

Other than that, I tore apart our old microwave that finally wore out (the oven chamber began rusting through in places). The keypad still works and is simple enough to reuse, runs on 110VAC, has an auxillary 110VAC output and a heavy relay rated for 18 Amps that switched the magnatron. If I ever need a touchpad opperated timer with time of day display and a long duty cycle pulsed output, I'm all set.

Same thing I've been working on for the last six months or so, induction heater. Final version will be 10 kilowatts (running off a 240V 50A circuit) and operate in the 10 or 15kHz range. Hoping to melt 10 to 20 pounds of steel (white hot!) in an hour or so.

The current implementation is a prototype board with a space-wired output stage, using six MOSFETs (the final version will use beefier IGBTs) for the switching job. This morning I just smoothed out the phase detector, which controls power output by regulating phase between the oscillator and tank circuit. Next, I suppose, is detecting and limiting tank voltage, then measuring, detecting, limiting and protecting current levels (since a 200A spike on the output isn't a good thing :).

To learn more, Google "induction heater". There's lots of basic information out there; very little of high detail however, what I've developed on my website is about it! I'll put up a complete, functioning schematic in public domain when I've got this thing finished.

Tim

-- Deep Fryer: a very philosophical monk. Website:

Excellent responses, folks....

What do you plan on doing with these completed projects?

Just curious. Since day 1 had all sorts of drive to design, build and create things and gadgets "just because". No real problem to solve, other than to prove i could do it. I got especially excited when I could use normal everyday household objects for things they were never considered for. Sometimes I integrated Lego Technic or Erector set type construction toys into it. Sometimes I gutted cheap RC cars and used their servos and radios.

Somewhere in my mid to late 20s my desire to do these things kind of peaked, and now it feels like it's languishing away. I'm trying to rekindle it and save it. It's just that at age 31 I don't feel much like a 'kid' anymore and accomplishing things like say, building a simple bug bot isn't as spectacular for an adult as it was when I was 8.

--Hey are you blogging this on a website or something? Sounds interesting...

-- "Steamboat Ed" Haas : Whatever happened Hacking the Trailing Edge! : to Tom Nelson?

---Decks a-wash in a sea of words---

I'm building an RF digital 418MHz RF receiver into a Radio Shack project box to drive a couple of relays.

The receiver has five pins that go high when the corresponding button on a keychain transmitter is pushed. Range is 75 feet.

The box will have two pairs of binding posts to connect to whatever the relays are controlling, and a third pair of binding posts to connect to an external 7-25V DC power source. Or there'll be a clip for a 9V battery inside.

I'm putting in a socket for a Parallax Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller, that will read the five receiver pins and which can be programmed to turn on or off the relays in whatever ways are appropriate. But I'm putting in a pair of jumpers that will have two of the pins control the relays directly

- so that it provides the default behavior of relay 1|2 is closed when button 1|2 is pressed when I've pulled the BS2 to use in something else.

It's a simple enough little thing to put together, and I'm sure I'll find multiple uses for it, in the future. But my initial intention is to wire this thing into my doorbell.

And the reason for that is to train my dog to ignore the doorbell. The easiest way to teach a dog to not get excited when the doorbell rings is to have nothing exciting happen when the doorbell rings. Nobody gets up, nobody goes to the door, and most importantly, there's nobody there.

--
The history of liberty is an unbroken history of bloodshed.  Every right
that the free citizen enjoys today was gained by some other citizen with
arms in his hands.
		- H. L. Mencken