24Eng Portfolio Year 09

Before the blog
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Third year
Fourth year
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Seventh year
Eighth year
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Tenth year
Eleventh year

I have a list of my Press STUFF.



I created a project to share at Grindfest that I could use as a tool to teach people some basic electronics and Arduino programming. I copied a project from an issue of MAKE magazine that measured distance and used servos to press on a user's hands to give them a SONAR sense.

One of the Grindfest topics was implantable LEDs. I brought some inductively powered LEDs from Amazon as a talking point, but I coated them in biosafe resin and received a three-LED cluster in my left arm. They get powered by a coil that comes with the LEDs.

It would not do to have a copper coil, battery, and bare PCB in my pocket, then dig them out when I wanted to show off my LEDs, so I built a plastic cuff with the coil concealed on the underside. The electronics sat in an enclosure over my wrist like a clunky watch. When I turned my arm, the circuit automatically turned on the subdermal lights.

AI artwork was starting to look cool, but less than a year after I did this project, the improvement was already noticeable. The concept was a cooperative card game where players were trying to escape a haunted mansion. They draw cards to find clues to escape while dodging monsters. All the artwork was generated by WOMBO.

The wind was an obstacle when I went longboarding, but it was delightful when it was at my back. I started a project to make a sail capable of propelling me on a board. The tricky part was that it had to be able to deploy and retract quickly, or I might be unable to slow in an emergency. This project had more usable iterations than others, but I ended with a sizable triangle I could collapse in less than one second.

My sister had a paranormal investigation company and asked me to build some niche equipment. There were plenty of places to buy the unique things she wanted, but they were costly for what was effectively a barometer. I do not believe these will detect anything supernatural, but I do not want my sister to waste money when I can build the thing for her.

Battery-powered inverters are easy to find on shopping sites, but I wanted to use my power tool batteries. I used an inexpensive adapter that held the battery and gave me some wires, which I tapped into the inverter and mounted everything together for a compact and portable unit.

I took the drill battery another step, added a robust DC power supply to an adapter, and built a frame from laser-cut wood and metric hardware. I used a barrel connector as the output, which was convenient for assembly and portability, but suboptimal because I could have used screw-down terminals.

I may have gone overboard with the batteries because this version fit inside a backpack. I built it to power motorized skates, see below, but I added another adjustable DC power supply should I need one on the road. I had room for two batteries and a voltage converter for the skates.

I have always loved the idea of electric skates, but the commercial versions were sketchy, expensive, or both. I built a pair with the powered wheel intended for an electric scooter. It worked and even had brakes, but they were ludicrously tall.

I wanted a way to hold headphones under my desk and some experience making a 3D object with the laser cutter. It held together beautifully until I bumped the fragile thing and broke it. It looked nice while I had it.

A custom workspace can be fabulous. I had some audio equipment from my podcasting days but added a wheeled standing desk as a platform for everything I needed for voice acting. It had two dedicated monitors, a laptop docking base, articulated microphone stands, and USB audio converters. The keyboard was silicone and therefore silent, plus my 24EngThumbKB and 24EngSilentKeyboard from Year 8 to round out the computer inputs.

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