Holiday lighting

What do you get when an old software geek tries to learn about electricity? The same thing you get when you teach a 5 year old not to put their hands on the red coils on the stove. Experience through interactivity. Today’s lesson: fat wires vs thin wires. I’ve been […]

Learning about power

Thu December 24, 2015 in Arduino / General / Hardware / Holiday lighting / PiBox / Raspberry Pi tagged amazon / custom boards / gauge wire / Geek / graphics / thin wires

One of the directions my PiBox project is headed is as a central hub for sensor management. This implies the ability to communicate between the PiBox and the sensor node using BLE or Wifi. PiBox can do that already over Wifi (and supports basic BLE communication though lacks a meaningful […]

Embedded project: 4 channel Arduino-based power controller

Thu November 05, 2015 in Arduino / Hardware / Holiday lighting / Raspberry Pi tagged 4 channel relay / adafruit / arduino / Linux / PiBox / sda/scl / signals / timer / wifi (updated 3647 days ago)

I’m a constant tinkerer on my computers. While I hate system administration I like to experiment with things. But a computer is a virtual world. What you get is visual and (in some cases) auditory. You don’t get a hands on feeling. You don’t really build something substantial. I think […]

makezine.tv: Getting my fix of hands on projects

Tue January 06, 2009 in dept 56 / Holiday lighting tagged colorado springs / dept 56 / dept56 / disney / disneyworld / electric light parade / electrical lighting / graphics / holiday / holiday theme / Make Magazine / makezine.tv / mickey and friends (updated 6046 days ago)

I’ve finally updated my Dept 56 galleries to include both 2007 and 2008 images. The new gallery software on the blog displays the galleries much better than the old software and makes it easier to upload and add captions. So I’ve retro-fitted captions to the old galleries to help describe […]

Dept 56 galleries for 2008

Mon December 29, 2008 in dept 56 / Holiday lighting tagged dept 56 / dickens / graphics / holiday / north pole (updated 6149 days ago)

I finally got some time to put up galleries of the Dept56 dioramas we built this year. Each year gets a bit more involved. This year I spent extra effort building home made lighting out of parts from Radio Shack. I’ve got galleries of the Dickens Village and the North […]

2006 Dept56 galleries online

Tue January 02, 2007 in General / Holiday lighting tagged dept56 / dickens / graphics / north pole

My SSR's arrived from an eBay purchase last week. I got a set of 4 10A / 120V solid state relays for about $24 including shipping. Not a great price, but reasonable enough. I was in a hurry to get this done. I haven't tried the SSRs yet, but at […]