Gauss Guns

http://hackedgadgets.com/2009/05/07/mv-coilmaster-mark1-coil-gun/

I . . . I dunno what to say. As a young geek growing up with cyberpunk novels and roleplaying games, I’ve always wanted a gauss pistol. As a photography geek with access to large capacitors, I’ve seen what happens when they connect to a coil and push something ferrous at high speeds. Usually the coil disintegrates.

But I still want one.

18 Joules kinetic energy delivered is pretty lame, though. *sigh* Another project that I want to build, and that would probably get me arrested. Why are the fun projects always so dangerous? Oh, right, that’s why.

 

On a second look, it appears to be only using a single coil, and has no initial boost to the projectile. Add a second coil, maybe third, and a CO2 boost at the start to get over inertia and any pesky vacuum caused by the speed increase . . . I need an electrical engineer on line 1, please?

May 4th/5th

For some, today will be Star Wars day. For others, Cinco de Mayo.

For us at the Lab, it’s a day of mourning. Five years ago, David Reimer killed himself. If you don’t know who he was, that’s kinda understandable. Most of the medical, psychological, and research world knew him as John/Joan, the research patient of Doctor Money.

If those are your fields of study or interest, or if you are interested in gender theory, and why people are who they are, you owe it to yourself to read about this guy.

I wish I could find the quote from the BBC special he was interviewed in. In it, he said something like “What is it going to take to make people start to notice, someone walking out into a field and killing them self?”

It’s actually over

Took my parents to the gallery tonight, and I’m glad I got there early. I guess the email saying “Yes, we actually need you to open the doors for everyone else” never made it to me. Oh well, so they only have minutes to prepare instead of half an hour, it keeps the undergrads on their toes.

Looking at the projects from an outside perspective, it’s odd how much of ours changed from Anna’s original design idea, and how little it changed.

I remember the Wiind Chimes. There was no idea, just “Let’s allow people to make music by moving.” And how we had meetings and brainstorms and sketches to come to a final idea.

That never happened here. We had the idea to hook up sensors to an umbrella and have that affect some video. That’s exactly what we got. Yes, we moved from four projectors to one at the request of faculty because we couldn’t get four. That wasn’t so much an adjustment as a “well, so what else can we do.” When we got moved to behind half mirrored windows, we just grabbed the brightest projector. It still didn’t phase us. When the radios proved not to work, we moved to a different sensor board. All that really changed was that the demo of two and four screens, created for this blog just to show the effects we could get, proved to be more popular than the large single view in our group. It stayed.

It echoed the original 4 walls vision, I think that’s why it was popular. I really just did it so I didn’t have to write four different flash instances and have them each running on the same page. A 4-up display was just simpler. And it worked.

And thanks to WiiFlash for the WiiFlash server and all the functions attached. Without it, our last minute change would have been hell. And thanks to Grant Skinner for ColorMatrix in AS3, without which I doubt I could have figured out the conversion between two different hue and saturation values.

I’m trying to think of how everything changed and when. I really can’t.

• Projector

1. “Hey, your group can only have one projector”

• Room

1. Well, one projector and the only room here that we could get a solid wall is pretty small.
2. Let’s move it out to the lobby!
3. How?
4. Through the window, of course!

All of those happened roughly at the same time, when we met after seeing the space at Kent Sq. Hey, it won’t work, let’s change it. The other choices were outdoors, but that required more wires and landlord permissions and other crap. DAAS might have been a better place, but that would have spread everything out too much.

• Display

1. Wow, that blog display looks nice, let’s do that instead.

Yeah, that’s really how it happened. I have the emails around here, I’ll have to use those as documentation later.

• Sensor type

Another one that was resolved by email. See earlier post for reason and result.

• Sensor Effect

This one I don’t know when it changed. I made a demo that just used two axis on each screen. That was because the mouse only provides two axis, and it seemed intuitive to show the potential that way. I don’t know how or why, but that look was liked. Maybe stacking all of the effects on one screen is too much, with heavy blur and color filtering and distortion. I know that it made it near unwatchable, but I thought that might have been the intent at some point in the performance. Everyone else thought it should be watchable the entire time.

There was talk of making the display a much larger wall, with many more videos playing at once. Trying that from a single computer running flash just made the system bleed, even if it would have let us look more like our poster. It would have been nice to have 4 different hue offsets each on a separate screen, and 4 more saturation offsets, and a few different blurs and speeds. But, like I said before, it makes Flash cry for mommy when I do things like that. It just wasn’t watchable.

It has felt like, for the most part, this project was laid out at the beginning, and we were just chasing that goal. We didn’t move the goal posts much, other then to account for supplies and time. We didn’t skimp on what we wanted to do, and I don’t recall feeling, as I did with Wiind Chimes very early on, that the entire idea might be better off in the bin as it was just too cliche. This one worked as it was set out, and I think it worked as it finished.

Pictures from opening night are on Picasa, I’ll link a gallery that has the best of pics. I’m not going to provide the same link here as to the other students, as that gallery has so many bad shots that I didn’t take time to prune because they might need them for something. At least here, I can pretend to be a real photog instead of a journalist.

Show’s Over

And we are done with day one of the display. It went well, I think. I got a couple business cards from people doing VR, talked to everyone I think, and got some great pictures. The final display looks nothing like the initial plan, but exactly what we planned to do once reduced to one projector.

*sigh*

I’m sleeping till Friday.

Crap

Well, that’s what happens when you trust a fucking data sheet. It turns out to lie to you.

I picked up some simple FM radio chips, rated serial at 4800 baud. Alright, well the Arduino can’t use the normal pins 0/1 buffered serial while also using the USB. Fine, I can use soft serial libraries to read the radio chips. The BASIC Stamp can do serial over any wire, so no problem. Had the Arduino ready to hook up some sensors, and start piping that data over the airwaves. I thought, first I should check with just a simple counting system. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4…And see what I could read on the PIC.

Nada, zip, nothing.

I reversed it, using the Arduino debug stuff to see what the radio is getting. And it’s getting nothing over serial. Alright, pull the radio chips and drop a wire between them. That works fine.

Shit, the radio is crap. Is it blown?

Turned the transmitter on, blinking high then low at half second intervals. Sampled from the receiver at 4800 baud. And got mostly static. You can almost pick out the high times, as it’s mostly 1s during a roughly half seconder interval. But when it should read 0s I get a fair mix of both.

Radio noise. RC cars? Baby monitors?  Quick, switch chips from 434 to 315 MHz. Same thing, only slightly more reliable. We are so screwed.

 

On the up side, Anna suggested using a Wii remote. Well, I know Flash will talk with a Wii Remote. And I know how to get it out of the remote even if it didn’t. Since the graphics are mostly done, I guess that’s the only direction left to move. We don’t have time to get new radio chips or anything like XBees at this late a date. Damn, I wanted to avoid wii stuff for a while. Oh well, next project will just have to be something else.

Brutal(izing) Flash

Ever wanted to see Adobe Flash curl up, whimpering, and beg for it’s mother? If you are a C++ or assembly junkie, like me, you probably have. Turns out it’s really pretty easy. Take a 150 Meg movie clip, which was tapered down from the 850 mp4 it was originally, and add it to the screen in 4 different instances of VideoPlayer object. Then, apply different filters to them.

You guessed it, the demo from last week is nearing production time, and I just substituted the new video in for the old. I can’t post it online, the 150 meg clip alone is reason enough. However, it’s a sight to watch, seeing the clip slow  . . . way . . . down . . . just . . . like . . . we said it would. No one, myself included, has suggested that the sensors would directly speed the clip up or slow it down. Sure, they affect the speed. The more data they send, the more time Flash has to spend waiting on a network socket to get that data. And the fancier the graphics get, the more time it takes. But actual effect? *shrug* Who knows. I hope to be able to add that in, but it will be the very last detail, probably hacked in the hour before the doors swing open.

 

Which, as everyone knows, is when we write the most fun code. Not the best code, mind. Just the really fun stuff.

Movie Filters

attached is a, very small, mouse driven flsah app, showing off the application of filters to a looping movie. The whole things can get pretty psychedelic if you let it.
[kml_flashembed fversion="9.0.0" movie="[kml_flashembed movie="http://sabrina.kilian.googlepages.com/singing.swf" height="240" width="640" /]” targetclass=”flashmovie” publishmethod=”static” width=”600″ height=”240″ align=”left” play=”true” loop=”true” scale=”noscale”]

[/kml_flashembed]

Up and down changes the hue, while moving the mouse left and right changes the saturation. Source code will be available shortly, after I get a nap or get back from the meeting.

 

Frankly, I’m ashamed to admit this took me 6 hours of off and on coding to write. It’s bloody simple, once you figure it out. However, that’s the hard part for the flash newbie like me. I managed to find somewhere near 8 different ways to play a video clip, errors that I didn’t know existed that really only exist when you have commented out code in both the Document class and in the action window, and that pesky NCManager not found error that pops up every time I use the fl.video.VideoPlayer object.

But it was 6 hours I should have been, and probably was, sleeping.

*edit* Added bright and contrast filters to the left movie as well. And fixed some of the scaling, my math was off.

Daze/Days

What to do when I need to kill the annoying hum of a week filled with too many percocets and pain? Why, wander out onto the steps to smoke, of course.

Now, before anyone goes and starts yelling/cursing/flaming or worse, telling me that narcotics are bad, let me say “I know this already.” I was in the ER last Sunday for a very good reason, UVA on Wednesday to make sure that the ER didn’t miss anything, and laid up on the guest bed at my parent’s house to make sure nothing went wrong after that. It was not a good week, and I have new bruises to prove it.

Well, the bruises are just from a busted vein after the IV came out, so it’s not like they’ll stay around long.

The up side to all this time off, and most of it spent in a completely un-thinking condition, was that I had plenty of time to catch up on all the things I wouldn’t normally keep up on.

Almost caught up on all the posts over at Gender Goggles that I try to read but usually have to skim. Nearly finished with The War of the Flowers and wondering how Tad Williams manages to make an 800+ page trade paperback.

Found an awesome name tag generator. Won’t post my tag, most people would be amazed at the selection that showed up. A girl’s got to keep some secrets, right? Quin may post one, but cir first question was “Where is the ‘select all’ button?”

Heard that Bif Naked has a new album soon, and am hitting pre-order as I type this. Was just about to pull out I Bificus from the CD cabinet till I remembered I had it ripped already. Might listen to it now, just till the purchase clears and I get the digital copy of the new one. Sure, I like the harsher songs, and the new cut Sick is right at my speed. But have to have respect for anyone that brutally honest in lyrics.

Finished the draft that Muri and I are scribbling for some . . . shorts, novelettes, vignettes? What would be the correct term for ‘forum posts about role-playing characters in short form fiction’? Wanted to write the next chapter or two of the bigger stories, but dayumitall, while the pain pills make me feel really creative, the thoughts make no sense later. I mean, really, randomly teleporting the main characters to different settings because something on tv looked really cool is not a good way to write a draft.

Did manage to hook up the accelerometers to the Arduino, and got lots of usable test information out of them. Promptly forgot to write it down, of course, but they are still on the bread board and the code is still on the chip. The radio chips arrived while I was incap, and are breadboarded now. One good day to finish the data formatting, and make sure the UART serial works over the radio chips, then a day or two to finish the video code, and all of this new project will be done.

Oh, have I forgot to mention that? You’ll be hearing more about it when I’m back in shape.

The two grants? How far behind can a person fall while sick, I’m about to find out. Oh well, I know what needs to be done in both, just have to have the energy to sit up and code it instead of falling over every couple minutes. Tomorrow, maybe. Friday, at the worst. I hope. Cause now that I type that, I think about what the worst could actually be.

As for why there is no story post about my short* visit to the ER, I’ll just say that Dilaudid made an appearance once I got checked in and had an IV and, after that, it was all kinda blurry.

*short: 9 hours or so. Not to be confused with quick, 5 hours after a bike wreck, most of which was spent trying to con the pay phone with no change, and remembering phone numbers of people to call for a ride home. Or prolonged, 3 days.

Samples

I’ve talked with Muri, she’s gone through the database by hand and can not find the old posts. Since I have them backed up, I’ll just have to re-enter and backdate them all. Sucks, but there is no tech support when we are running the site ourselfs. Now, on to the real stuff.

The weekend has been hell. I’ve needed pain killers every 6 hours just to stay standing, and I have no idea what that’s done to my brain. I know I’m out of it, but no one around me actually seems to notice. It’s like the reverse of being drunk. But, it pays off, at least in the regard that I can get some work done without distractions of stabbing stinging nerve pain shooting through my limbs.

And that work includes way too much free stuff!

I hit up Professors Harrison for parts for Singing in the Rain. 2 3-axis accelerometers, 2 force/touch sensors, and some breadboard and other misc pieces. Still need a micro controller; pic, basic, atmel, arm. What ever we get will work. I’ve got an order in for wireless units too, xbees or something of that nature. The accelerometers are going to be a pain to read, though. 1 data pin for each axis would be lovely, but no these want to be treated as something that looks like I2C but isn’t. Really, I could give up 3 digital I/O pins for 3 serial signals, if it would get the data sent quicker than strobing a clock pin . . . I think 12 times per axis? Must check the spec sheet again, there have got to be a better way to do this . . . maybe I’ll just read the first 4 bits then throw the rest away. 4 most sig bits at +-3g, assuming linear, could work. Just have to figure if its’ 2s compliment or what, cause if that first bit if sign, then the I only have 3 bits of data. Gaah, and any faster of a CPU would just be a waste, since it would have more I/O pins that I’m not going to find enough sensors for!

Oh well, at least I have a second electronics project to bide my time with.

Went to the camera shop downtown. Should never do that with more than 10$ in my pocket. 20$ got me 3 old camera bodies, minus a few minor parts like battery covers. Actually, those were free as ‘repair parts’ when I paid 20$ for the PC cables, a star splitter for said cables, and the 5 or 6 studio heads, 2 battery packs, and a AC charger for said packs. And these things are freaking bright. Guide number looks like 160 per head. Spent a few hours letting the unit charge, the capacitors are old and seem good for one burst after 30 seconds, but nothing after that. Another hour or so charging, and they should be gold.

Now, what to do with the camera bodies? One is a X-700 minolta. If it works, then someone might steal it from me. If it doesn’t work, then I’m still hesitant to tear it apart. I mean, it’s an X-700! I learned to shoot on one just like it, I might mistake the broken one for the working one and . . . wait, no, wouldn’t happen, I know every scratch I put in mine. But still, it would feel like I was killing the sibling of a dear pet. Nope, might just salvage the focus screen for my A-300.
The other bodies are being dismantled. Penta prisms look really cool, and the hot shoe mounts will get wired to my micro controller, via a few SCRs, and start the basis of my smart flash board. Plans are up in the air, just yet. But if you have any ideas on what a computer should be able to do with a room full of flashes, just let me know.

And through all of this, I still haven’t had room or time to ponder about the free samples from the various circuit manufacturers. I’ll have to write that up tomorrow.

Art and Culture

Tonight’s lecture . . . I dunno. It looks like a Venn Diagram, in multiple higher dimensions. Art can encapsulate a culture, and embody it, or it can represent a side of the culture.

 

I just don’t know. I don’t think any piece of art can encapsulate a culture. It can borrow from it, it can present parts of the culture. But to represent everything that it is to be in a place, I just haven’t ever seen it. I’ve seen what some people embodies everything about their culture, but it is usually their take on their culture and not the entire landscape. The ideas brought up in the lecture were interesting. The concept just doesn’t stick with me. It feels phony to say “my latest artwork embodies everything I experienced growing up and visiting grandma’s farm.” Someone else who grew up on a farm, maybe even the next one over, is going to go “wait, that isn’t the way it went, we never did that.” If I tried to represent the way I look back and see the religious overtones to everything in that small town, people there wouldn’t recognize it. People outside might recognize the intent, but wouldn’t see the inside of it.

So, sure, a person can represent a culture in a piece of art. I just don’t think they can wrap the entire culture up in one piece of art, just as they can not derive an entire culture from one surviving piece either.

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