Category Archives: Electrical Fascination
New Toy: Chumby!! (open source hardware!)
I get to play with a Chumby! Chumby is an open source hardware “Window to the Internet”, or ambient information display, meaning it scrolls through a variety of information sources and presents the data for you to check out at a … Continue reading
Filed under Electrical Fascination, Project Updates
Electronics Update: My New Workbench
I’ve finally arrived in Cambridge: I built myself a work bench to do electronics on. That means I’ve finally arrived here! I think it’s pretty sweet. Here are Star’s essentials: Stuff on the desk: my awesome weller soldering iron (I … Continue reading
Filed under Electrical Fascination, Project Updates
The Coolest Open Source Hardware Projects In The Land
The coolest open source hardware project I’ve seen to date is the TuxPhone + Open Cell Phone Project. The Tux Phone is a GSM cell phone you can build from parts, originally developed by Surj Patel. Apparently he got into … Continue reading
Filed under Electrical Fascination
Hack Tragedy!
In classic pre-deadline efficiency, I’ve spent the last two days finishing EVERYTHING before I travel home and can’t work on this stuff anymore. This push culminated, tonight, in my determined wiring up of the motor controller for what would be … Continue reading
Filed under Electrical Fascination, Learning Experiences, Project Updates
Electronic Scooter Hacking
I’m learning. I’m converting an electric scooter I found to a horseless electric roman chariot, for personal transportation, of course, and I’m making the motor controller work today. I was lead to believe that I could treat my scooter throttle … Continue reading
Today in Magnetism
Oh physicists, you’re always injecting so much personality into the way we think about the world. Today brought the discovery that when a physicist talks about reluctance, they mean the magnetic version of electrical resistance. A magnetic resistor, so to … Continue reading
Filed under Electrical Fascination
Magnetic Circuits and Permeability
New levels of understanding! From the well-recommended text, “Electric Machinery”: A magnetic circuit consists of a structure composed for the most part of high-permeability magnetic material. The presence of high-permeability material tends to cause magnetic flux to be confined to the … Continue reading
Filed under Electrical Fascination
Speaking Electronics
To learn language, we begin by flat-out imitating, generating more of what we experience in order to sift for meaning, by positive feedback. Can you think of any other processes where this is the model of learning? A couple of … Continue reading
Filed under Electrical Fascination
On understanding waves
Xander wrote a post on How Not To Make a Faraday Cage where he experiments with shielding his oscilloscope from the interference of the electricity running all through his house, and I found this astoundingly clear way to think about shielding … Continue reading
Filed under Electrical Fascination
Jake’s Crazy Antenna
so Woz notes that nobody teaches non-standard antenna design, even though it’s a really fascinating field. The other day, Jake showed me this really sweet antenna he made, which I’m still trying to fully understand: It’s a piece of … Continue reading
Filed under Electrical Fascination
