{"id":3131,"date":"2011-11-26T21:01:44","date_gmt":"2011-11-27T01:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/?p=3131"},"modified":"2011-11-26T21:01:44","modified_gmt":"2011-11-27T01:01:44","slug":"saturday-night-make-more-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2011\/11\/26\/saturday-night-make-more-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday night &#8211; make more stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week has been full of contrasts. the very sad days around Sam&#8217;s memorial date, the bittersweet mix around Thanksgiving for us.. Few obligations, decent weather.. snow\u00a0 and sun.. lots of sleep. I&#8217;m doing my best to keep work thoughts at bay.. so.. I&#8217;ve had lots of time to think . .. and to putter.. It&#8217;s been a good time to refocus on a few of my adjusted personal goals.. after good talks with both Max and Gabe I&#8217;ve decided to try:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>make more stuff &#8211; I just love figuring out how to make things&#8230;. but I usually don&#8217;t make enough time to do it.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not actually that good at it.. but I love doing it anyway..<\/li>\n<li>finish more projects before starting others\u00a0 &#8211; I generally have a half dozen or so big projects going at any time.. I usually finish what I start.. but it can take time.. I&#8217;m committing to finish things\u00a0 more quickly before taking on new projects.. My goal is to divide my time a little less.<\/li>\n<li>more making, less talking &#8211; it&#8217;s very exciting to talk about new projects.. telling people what I&#8217;m <em>going<\/em> to make.. It&#8217;s not always as much fun doing the hard work to get soemthing really working.. I am trying to build things <em>then <\/em>talk about them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In that spirit.. it&#8217; s been a very productive week..\u00a0 I&#8217;ve finished lots of projects.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>With Scott&#8217;s help, I got my solid state tesla coil working again, I added a feature to let it play to music. I wrote some code to let it play old school telephone ringtones, now I have sparks to Black Sabbath&#8217;s &#8216;Iron Man&#8217;.. Sam would have loved it.<\/li>\n<p>(I&#8217;ll post a movie of that later tonight) <\/p>\n<li>For work, I figured out how to program a wireless NXP chip that we build here in Vermont so that it can talk to IBM&#8217;s MQTT pub\/sub protocol. Doesn&#8217;t sound like much of a project.. but it was no easy task.. 4 operating systems, two types of wireless networks, two wired networks, three hardware platforms.. but IT WORKS !..<\/li>\n<li>I figured out how to use a cheap cell phone and an arduino processor to allow me to control anything by txt message..\u00a0 (Unfortunately.. that&#8217;s the key elements of an\u00a0 IED roadside bomb)\u00a0 I hope to make a a statue that shoots fire when you txt it like this one I saw in Krakow Poland a few years ago.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"dragon !\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ilovepoland.co.uk\/smok%20the%20dragon%20in%20krakow.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"400\" \/><\/li>\n<li>Gabe, Diane, Deb and I finished a few pieces of furniture we&#8217;d hoped to make.. We had two slices of an old maple tree that we had to take down a few years back. Thanks to Deb&#8217;s finding the slices, sanding them and helping us think through the stand.\u00a0\u00a0 Gabe and I welded the stands ..Diane and I finished assembled them on Wednesday<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i147.photobucket.com\/albums\/r319\/johncohn\/nov2611\/IMG_6822.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i147.photobucket.com\/albums\/r319\/johncohn\/nov2611\/IMG_6821.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/li>\n<li>Deb also had a cool slab of maple.. she also found an old sewing machine base&#8230;\u00a0 Diane and I put them together to make a table for plants to replace the table we&#8217;d been borrowing from Deb.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i147.photobucket.com\/albums\/r319\/johncohn\/nov2611\/IMG_6816.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i147.photobucket.com\/albums\/r319\/johncohn\/nov2611\/IMG_6817.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i147.photobucket.com\/albums\/r319\/johncohn\/nov2611\/IMG_6819.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i147.photobucket.com\/albums\/r319\/johncohn\/nov2611\/IMG_6820.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Here they are ready for those plants.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i147.photobucket.com\/albums\/r319\/johncohn\/nov2611\/IMG_6823.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Today I made some good progress on the touch controlled musical instrument that Homer and I are building for freind Mike. I managed to figure out the source of an unacceptable delay in the touch sensors.. I haven&#8217;t completed the fix.. but at least I now know what to fix..<\/li>\n<li>Finally, today Chris and I worked on his jet pack sculpture. It&#8217;s a very cool steampunk piece made out of old copper and brass.<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i147.photobucket.com\/albums\/r319\/johncohn\/nov2611\/IMG_6881.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nChris wanted a detachable feature that\u00a0 detects when someone approaches the piece.. He wanted it to queue a recording of a jet engine, start a smoke machine and simulate flames with colored lights. I made an arduino based sequencer, hacked a smoke machine and a simple recoding memo taker and an ultrasonic distance measurement device. Chris and I did a first pass integration today.. we still need to adjust the timing , better duct the smoke, mount the sensors.. but the effect is pretty good.. looks sort of like real flame..no ?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p> I appreciate the patience  of family and freinds as I got back to my maker roots.. it felt unbelievably good&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>ok. that&#8217;s it for now..<br \/>\nnite all, nite sam<br \/>\n-me<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week has been full of contrasts. the very sad days around Sam&#8217;s memorial date, the bittersweet mix around Thanksgiving for us.. Few obligations, decent weather.. snow\u00a0 and sun.. lots of sleep. I&#8217;m doing my best to keep work thoughts at bay.. so.. I&#8217;ve had lots of time to think . .. and to putter.. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2011\/11\/26\/saturday-night-make-more-stuff\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Saturday night &#8211; make more stuff<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[330],"class_list":["post-3131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-make-more-stuff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3132,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3131\/revisions\/3132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}