Staurday Night – eight months

Where to start ? I went around today with some sort of weight on me.. not really knowing what was troubling me. When I sat down to write I realized that today was the eighth month anniversary of Sam’s passing.. Sam was on my mind so vividly and so close to me today,,, all day.,, it’s amazing that my heart knows this stuff even when my brain does not..   

 
   The only thing I had planned today was to take Hannah, Avery and Brittany F to Homer’s to learn about CNC (computer numerical control) routing. Homer is one of the best people I know for transforming ideas into stuff (My brother Billy is great at that too) .

Hannah showed up at around 9…Before we left, I tried  to sweat talk  our pool heater into restarting after it ran out of gas. It responded to my kindness by blowing it’s front door off and singeing all the hair off my forearm.. yikes ! 


It did finally start so Hannah and I headed off to pick up Avery, Brittany and Avery’s mom, Jen. We showed up at Homer’s around 1-:30.

The girls talked with him for awhile and came up with the idea of making a metal stencil for making (appropriate) graffiti. The design was a hand.. with the girls three initials in it ‘B’-‘A’-‘H’ and some curly-queues and what not. They drew the picture and gave it to Homer. He scanned the image and ran it through his miraculous programs that transformed it into cutting instructions for his giant router.

The girls looking at the setup

The router was scary and smelled funny

Homer shows them the ropes

Brittany looking wistful

The scanned artwork

Avery featured on Homervision

Staring Avery’s eye !

A short intelude for me to show them the fire organ idea

He then used the router to cut the girl’s design our of perforated aluminum.   It’s amazing to see that giant machine doing such delicate work

. I think it’s so cool when you have the tools and material to take something from idea to object in less than an hour. We used the stencil and the scrap to paint some pretty cool street art.. and make some cool shadows. It was very cool.   The girls loved it (I think !) . 


Some frolicking was allowed

It was a nice way to spend the day.. but I was somehow grumpy.. I think because of thinking about Sam.

   That ended up taking a good portion of the day.. I came back here to find Diane and Kevin  in the new Adirondack chairs that Scott has been building for us.. It looks like Diane  had a peaceful day.. She’d spent some time up watching the Voices movie filming.. which she enjoyed.   Diane ended up taking Kevin back to Avery’s while I started to putter in my lab… I’d had an idea bout creating a set of lights that bounced in synch with the person jumping on the trampoline. I’d seen someone synch of a flamethrower with his tramp. So I figured lights would be pretty easy.   I though about a few ways to do it.. and finally settled on using ultrasonic. I took a Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller and hooked up an ultrasonic transducer.. Then I adapted some code that sent pings to the transducer and then measured the time for the response.. That roughly correlates to the distance. I wrote some rudimentary code that would allow me to stick the sensor under the trampoline   and measure the distance the trampoline surface was deflected. I then wired up some solid state relays which would let me control lights with that information. I got something crude working just before dark. At that time, Diane suggested we go out to eat.. (India house yum !).. and go by Barnes and Noble.. to pick up tour reserved copy of the Harry Potter book. By the time we got home  there were a ton of Voices people here. I hooked up my circuits to the lights and stuck it under the trampoline.. It Worked !, Travis made some good suggestion on how to improve the visual effects.. by measuring the lights on the amount the surface changed.. not just on it’s absolute deflection.. It Worked Even Better ! . Max was kind enough to test it out for me.. Pretty cool. I think Gabe is going to love it…  Sam.. I hope you were watching.. you would love it too !

 


The Stamp II microntroller I used for the tramp lights

Some crufty BASIC code to do the range measuring and light control on the microcontroller

‘ =========================================================================
‘
‘ File……. Ping_Demo.BS2
‘ Purpose…. Demo Code for Parallax PING))) Sonar Sensor
‘ Author….. Parallax, Inc.
‘ E-mail….. support@parallax.com
‘ Started….
‘ Updated…. 08 JUN 2005
‘
‘ {$STAMP BS2}
‘ {$PBASIC 2.5}
‘
‘ =========================================================================
‘ —– Program Description ———————————————
‘
‘ This program demonstrates the use of the Parallax PING))) sensor and then
‘ converting the raw measurement to English (inches) and Metric (cm) units.
‘
‘ Sonar Math:
‘
‘ At sea level sound travels through air at 1130 feet per second. This
‘ equates to 1 inch in 73.746 uS, or 1 cm in 29.034 uS).
‘
‘ Since the PING))) sensor measures the time required for the sound wave to
‘ travel from the sensor and back. The result — after conversion to
‘ microseconds for the BASIC Stamp module in use — is divided by two to
‘ remove the return portion of the echo pulse. The final raw result is
‘ the duration from the front of the sensor to the target in microseconds.
‘ —– I/O Definitions ————————————————-
Ping PIN 15
Light PIN 0
Light_2 PIN 1
‘ —– Constants ——————————————————-
SELECT $STAMP ‘define constants based on hardware/environment variables
CASE BS2, BS2E
Trigger CON 5 ‘ trigger pulse = 10 uS
Scale CON $200 ‘ raw x 2.00 = uS
CASE BS2SX, BS2P, BS2PX
Trigger CON 13
Scale CON $0CD ‘ raw x 0.80 = uS
CASE BS2PE
Trigger CON 5
Scale CON $1E1 ‘ raw x 1.88 = uS
ENDSELECT
RawToIn CON 889 ‘ 1 / 73.746 (with **)
RawToCm CON 2257 ‘ 1 / 29.034 (with **)
IsHigh CON 1 ‘ for PULSOUT
IsLow CON 0

‘ —– Variables ——————————————————-
junk VAR Word ‘ raw measurement
rawDist VAR Word ‘ raw measurement
inches VAR Word
cm VAR Word
old VAR Word
diff VAR Word
‘ —– Initialization ————————————————–
Reset:
DEBUG CLS,
“Parallax PING))) Sonar”, CR, ‘ setup report screen
“======================”, CR,
CR,
“Time (uS)….. “, CR,
“Inches…….. “, CR,
“Centimeters… “
‘ —– Program Code —————————————————-
Main:
old = 99
DO
GOSUB Get_Sonar ‘ get sensor value
inches = rawDist ** RawToIn ‘ convert to inches
cm = rawDist ** RawToCm ‘ convert to centimeters
IF inches > 120 THEN GOTO done
DEBUG CRSRXY, 15, 3, ‘ update report screen
DEC rawDist, CLREOL,
CRSRXY, 15, 4,
DEC inches, CLREOL,
CRSRXY, 15, 5,
DEC junk, CLREOL
‘IF inches < 26  OR inches >120 THEN GOTO down
diff = ABS(inches – old )
IF   diff > 10 THEN GOTO way_down
IF   diff > 5 THEN GOTO down
DEBUG CRSRXY, 15, 6, DEC old,” “, DEC diff, ” up”, CLREOL
LOW  Light
LOW  Light_2
GOTO OOR
way_down:
DEBUG CRSRXY, 15, 6, DEC old,” “, DEC diff, ” way down”, CLREOL
HIGH Light_2
HIGH Light
GOTO OOR
down:
DEBUG CRSRXY, 15, 6, DEC old,” “, DEC diff, ” down”, CLREOL
LOW  Light_2
HIGH Light
OOR:
PAUSE 100
IF inches > 120 THEN GOTO done
old =  inches
done:
LOOP
END

‘ —– Subroutines —————————————————–
‘ This subroutine triggers the PING))) sonar sensor and measures
‘ the echo pulse. The raw value from the sensor is converted to
‘ microseconds based on the Stamp module in use. This value is
‘ divided by two to remove the return trip — the result value is
‘ the distance from the sensor to the target in microseconds.
Get_Sonar:
Ping = IsLow ‘ make trigger 0-1-0
PULSOUT Ping, Trigger ‘ activate sensor
PULSIN Ping, IsHigh, junk ‘ measure echo pulse
IF junk <  9200 THEN  GOTO ok
ok:</span>
rawDist = junk
rawDist = rawDist */ Scale ‘ convert to uS
rawDist = rawDist / 2 ‘ remove return trip
‘IF rawDist > 9200 THEN GOTO Get_Sonar
RETURN

The setup.. the transducer is under the tramp

OK.. Gotta sleep now.. I’m heading off to NY tomorrow at 6AM to go to a memorial for my friend Bill’s wife.. I’ll be back on Monday…  

Love to all.. you, too Sam.

 

-me