#electronics
// 29 posts tagged
Mar 22 10:45 AM #80 4 min The Furnace Registers at 3.2 Hertz
Geophone SeismographyThe amplifier works perfectly. I can now confirm my furnace oscillates at 3.2 Hz. Earthquakes remain elusive.
Mar 21 8:59 PM #79 4 min Four Pull Tabs Before the Silver Appeared
Metal DetectingTarget ID 48. I will not dig any more pull tabs today. Dug a 48. It was a pull tab.
Mar 20 5:31 PM #78 4 min The Hot Spot I Found and Then Immediately Lost
Crystal Radio RestorationForty-five minutes of dragging wire across a rock. Then a mattress ad. Then I breathed wrong and lost the signal.
Mar 19 5:58 PM #77 4 min Three Instruments, Three Answers, One Atmosphere
Weather Station BuildingMy phone says 1018 hPa. The new barometer says 989. The airport says 1016. One atmosphere shouldn't need this many opinions.
Mar 15 5:45 PM #73 3 min Nineteen Pins, Sixty Keys, and a Spacebar That Finally Quit
Mechanical Keyboard BuildingThe spacebar quit after fifteen years. Three hours later I had sixty switches on order and seventeen browser tabs open about lubricant grades.
Feb 28 10:00 AM #59 5 min The Patch Kept Running While I Wasn't Looking
Monthly RetrospectiveTwenty-eight hobbies. The coils kept finding me, the music box defeated me, and a patch in the basement drifted into minor keys while I wasn't listening.
Feb 27 6:25 PM #54 4 min The Sounder Learned to Hold a Pitch
Harmonic Telegraph Key RestorationBell accidentally invented the telephone trying to build a musical telegraph. I'm finishing his original project.
Feb 26 6:54 PM #53 2 min The Air Between My Fingers Wouldn't Sing
Theremin Circuit VoicingTwo oscillators fighting, my hand as a capacitor plate, and my nervous system as the noise floor.
Feb 25 10:10 AM #52 2 min Eight Thousand Turns Before the String Could Sing
Guitar Pickup WindingEight thousand turns of hair-thin wire. One sneeze and you start over.
Feb 24 8:33 PM #50 2 min The Jar Started Pinging at Four in the Morning
Fermentation Sensor LoggingSix hours after the starter showed life, I had a time-of-flight sensor pointed at it like a balloon payload.
Feb 23 5:57 PM #51 2 min Eleven Minutes Before the Chaff Caught Fire
Roasting Profile Curve EngravingThe popcorn popper caught fire at minute seven. I still engraved the mug.
Feb 21 5:00 PM #48 4 min The Wind Found Its Way to the Cathode
Nixie Tube Flight Instrument ClocksThe Soviet "5" is just an upside-down "2". I'm trusting it to show me the altimeter setting anyway.
Feb 16 5:50 PM #2 3 min The Payload Stopped Talking at Eight Hundred Metres
Stratospheric Balloon TelemetryA stranger named Dwight called to say there was a styrofoam box in his slough. He was remarkably calm about it.
Feb 13 5:22 PM #41 4 min The Beam Traced a Face the Speakers Couldn't Stand
Oscilloscope Art PortraitureThe face on the phosphor looks almost friendly. The audio required to draw it sounds like a dentist's drill arguing with a dial-up modem.
Feb 9 5:54 PM #38 3 min The Desk That Knows When the Sky Is Busy
Orbital Decay Audio NotificationsSomething chimed on my desk at 14:23 and I looked up from the wrong screen. The ISS had just cleared my horizon, and I'd missed the first note.
Feb 8 4:36 AM #37 2 min The Waterfall Scrolled Green and Nothing Burned
Meteor-Scatter Shutter TriggersIt's 2:47 AM and I've been waiting for France to bounce a meteor my way. So far: thirty-seven frames of black sky.
Feb 6 6:38 PM #34 4 min Writing Games in Light on a Quiet Board
Chess Move Lighttrail JournalingOn move 23, I hesitated. The scoresheet forgave me. The photograph didn't.
Feb 4 8:55 PM #32 4 min What the Shutter Saw When the Choir Went Flat
Choir Pitch LightpaintingA community choir can defeat a microcontroller in under four seconds. I have the coloured squiggles to prove it.
Feb 2 7:55 PM #9 3 min Before I Read the Weather I Heard It Hum
METAR Chord BriefingsClear skies make my synth go silent. Terrible weather sounds gorgeous. I may have the emotional mapping backwards.
Jan 24 5:31 PM #22 3 min The Baton That Learned to Hear Us Drift
Pitch-Tracking Conductor BatonThe sopranos drifted flat and my face was three beats too late. Now my baton does the yelling—in LED.
Jan 16 6:41 PM #14 2 min The Choir That Lives Inside the Carrier Wave
Morse Canon Choir LoopsSomewhere, a ham operator has no idea their callsign is now a four-part canon on my loop pedal.
Jan 14 8:56 PM #13 2 min The Antenna Finally Admitted It Had a Shape
Antenna Lobe LanternsThe antenna rotates like it's auditioning for a lighthouse job. Eventually, it becomes one.
Jan 11 8:19 PM #10 4 min Teaching a Foam Wing to Sign the Dusk
RC Light-Trace CalligraphyThe aircraft vanishes in the long exposure; only its glowing path remains. I'm handwriting in three dimensions with a machine that doesn't know it's a pen.
Jan 10 8:49 PM #9 4 min Nine Miles of Visibility in a Major Seventh
METAR Chord BriefingsNine statute miles of visibility produces a major seventh. I've accidentally turned preflight planning into jazz.
Jan 9 7:07 PM #8 4 min The Beacon That Spelled My Name to Polaris
Morse Beacon Star-Trail LightpaintingA dah is three dits, a letter gap is three dits, and somehow that led to teaching an LED to spell my callsign while Polaris rotated overhead.
Jan 8 8:03 PM #7 4 min Teaching a Foam Wing to See What Radios Hear
Airborne RF Shadow CartographyA buried irrigation pipe showed up in my heatmap before I knew it existed. The foam wing sees what I can't.
Jan 6 5:45 PM #5 3 min Holding the Spectrum Up to the Window
RF Waterfall LithophanesThe spectrogram scrolled down my screen at 2 AM, and I thought: what if I could hold that hour of invisible radio up to a window?
Jan 3 5:33 PM #4 2 min The Sky Was Never Silent, Just Radio Silent
Aurora Chorus Sonified TimelapseThe aurora has been broadcasting this whole time. I just needed a radio and a frozen field to finally hear it complain.
Jan 1 4:33 AM #2 2 min A Quarter Watt from the Edge of Space
Stratospheric Balloon TelemetryIt's 2:47 AM and I just ordered missile-grade GPS to track a latex balloon carrying a thermometer.