I've been making things

It's been a little while since I posted last. That's been somewhat to do with changing jobs a couple times, working between 40 and 75 hours a week, and now going to school while dealing with other stuff that life's been tossing at me like barrels down an 8-bit ramp. Fortunately for my questionably existent viewers here, I've been making things other than ends meeting as of late as well. Here's they am.

Sock Monkey:
There were far too many socks that were worn to paper thin or full of holes and they were piling up, so I decided to make a sock monkey from them. A proper and classic sock monkey calls for some basic sewing and cloth working skills and either a lot of free time or a sewing machine. Being as I don't have a sewing machine, but I do have a hot glue gun I made use of the latter to fashion and attach his various body parts. He's stuffed with socks. Daniel's more or less claimed him now so I guess sock monkey's a success!

Pit Bike Bodgery and Robbery:
A couple months ago I'd done some horse-trading with someone for a 110cc Chinese dirt bike and a lot of extra parts. It ran fantastically, but was pretty wimpy in the slowing down department. The old owner had plenty of brake gear to be cobbled together, but hadn't gotten around to putting it all together, so I did. I ground the caliper mount off of the stock small swing arm and welded it an a piece of angle iron into place on the nicer swing arm. I also had to put the brake rotor on, requiring some fastener scavenging from the extra parts bin as well, which also required me to put a bottle jack in the swing arm to stretch it wide enough to fit the rear wheel back in after prying it out. Unfortunately, after a quick spray of paint and a few days of work, someone stole the bike right out of my back yard along with a Honda XR70 I was rebuilding the motor for from the extra two motors I was given for my brother and nephew, so I never got to properly bleed and test the lines. I had big plans for franken-bikng a scooter front end and the pit bike's back end together for a pretty funky little ride. Whoever stole it better hope I don't catch them.

RABBIT HOUSE!:
The old rabbit pen has seen better days, and was probably more a danger to the rabbits than their escaping it's confines, so I decided it was time to rebuild it with some nicer materials. I went to [home improvement gigantorium] and found that they'd left me some slightly warped porch railing for 51c per ~4ft piece. Add to that a bucket of oops isle grey and a couple boxes of nails and I was all set. The pen is almost the same dimensions as the old one, about 6'x6'.

The old cage material was reused, as were a few of the 2x2s and the chain link bottom of the cage. The frame went together pretty easily, and with some scabbed together pieces the ~4' rails spanned the 6' width of the cage nicely. for the roof beam I bolted tow pieces together with a red oak scab and shingled the whole thing with corrugated plastic signs that were in a neighbor's recycle bin. I accidently made the design capable of still watering the grass in the pen (as well as any rabbits that may be within it) by laying the shingles down from the top working my way down rather than from bottom to top. Ohh well, the rabbit's don't go out when it's rainy anyway.

The door is made of the frame of my homemade rabbit pen's bottom since the pen has been replaced lately, and a couple of small eye bolts, a 2" bolt, and a nut make a latch on the inside to let you go in without fear of the door swinging open. This would undoubtedly leave the neighborhood flooding in 3' of rabbits.

Music-upon-opening Ammo Can:
I've been wanting to plant a Geocache somewhere for some time, but not wanting to just plant any boring ammo can in an out of the way place, I decided to make it so when it's opened it'll play some music. I had just such a birthday card laying around from last year, so I gutted the card of it's speaker and circuit board, soldered the contact points for the card's switch to the points on an old telco relay which had a nice leaf switch to it. This was all then glued into the side of a normal ammo can with a large plastic nub to hold the relay switch open when the can't closed. The small speaker vibrating with the whole side of the can as it's speaker "cone" really lets it get loud.

Super Spotlight:
My new (and hopefully permanent for some time to come) job is working retail and tech work for Batteries Plus here in town. This has already afforded me a couple good opportunities to snag some still functional batteries which would otherwise have been discarded. One such set was 6 lead acid batteries around the size of D cells. I decided that together they would make a great flood light power source, so I put them together and shrink wrapped the whole thing for a nice 12v, 2.5AH battery. To give it something to power I got a $10 12v, 20W garden spot light from [the large construction supply house which shall remain nameless to protect the accused] and proceeded to cut the spiked bottom off of it. The two together will run for around an hour before the light is noticably more dim and the working voltage starts to get kinda puny. Cool thing is it's as bright as a car's headlight, so I might mount it to my bike some how or maybe I'll just come up with a nice casing for it all that won't melt from the lamp's heat.

Toga:
I did manage to find myself at a toga party for my roommate's friend, but finding ourselves short on ancient grec0-roman attire, we went to the store and each got 6 yards of cloth. I got a nice dark orange. It's pretty easy to do, just sling it around your waist, throw it over your shoulder, and tie off any extra like a belt to keep the whole thing in place. Feel free to play where's Waldo with me in that photo.



Hammock:
With all that's been going on I've been needing somewhere to relax. The evenings are getting just about bearable, and with a few days of nice cold snap I decided to repurpose my toga as a hammock. Two pieces of rope with loops on the end knots tied in the ends of the orange cloth and I was all set. I've since replaced the orange cloth with some nice flannel since it's stretchier, softer, and stronger. I just slip the knots out of the ends and carry the cloth inside when I'm done so I don't have to worry about a wet butt when I go out to read or chill out.

I made light (and a ladder)

Electric bills suck. So does wasting power using more light than you need to. I try to light the house by sunlight whenever possible, but when there's a mid-sized planet between the giver of free light and my windows this becomes more difficult. Since I had a few battery and some 12v lights around though I figured all I needed was a solar panel and I could harvest the power of that giant burning gravity well for my nocturnal illumination.

All five dollar words and odd perspective aside though, I've come up with a pretty straightforward solar setup for my bathroom and reading lamp. I have a small 1.5 watt solar panel up on my roof held down with 3m tape with a wire run to my room on the other side of the house held down by duct tape (renting a house makes permanent mounting unideal) Then the wire runs to the charge controller that came with the solar cell into either a 12v car jump start pack or a pack of two 7.2AH lead gel cell batteries in series with a switched car accessory adapter on it. The batteries are manually swapped every other day to keep them well charged.

Then the batteries feed lights. I have a simple 10w 12v car work light in the bathroom and a desk lamp with another 10w 12v light. They're not going to blind anyone, but for reading a book or getting a shower or going to the loo at night they're plenty bright.

Also, I needed a ladder to get up to the roof, but I didn't have one. Having already blown my (nonexistent) budget on the solar panel itself and knowing I don't really need a ladder often I set out to make one. I did have some sisal rope, nails, and some decent sized oak saplings around the house in the woods, so I made a pretty rickety but serviceable ladder from them. I'm hoping once the wood dries and shrinks some I can rebuild it and have it more sturdy than with the current green wood. I'll probably reclaim my lag bolts from my dad at some point to hold it all together as well. I'm still sure OSHA would have a fit even then though.

In the future I'd like to mount a larger 5 watt solar cell on the roof as well since they're only twice the price of a 1.5 watt cell, run the charger to both packs at once, and make the wiring and power switch for the bathroom more cleanly run. It takes 6 2/3 hours to recharge for every hour of use with my current setup. Replacing the lamps with LED lamps or adding a larger solar panel would make that better, but for my current use it's enough.

I Made My Niece and Nephews Have Fun, and Make Things

I feel it's my duty to pass the spark of taking things apart, hoarding random interesting bits of things, and fixing things that others would simply toss to the next generation. Since I don't have kids of my own yet to pass this trait onto I practice on my brother's kids and their friends. To their friends I'm usually introduced to their friends as "uncle Ronnie, the one I told you makes all those weird things". I'm not sure how many kids I'm not the uncle of I'm uncle Ronnie to. It's kinda cool.

Anyway, on the way to work today I picked up a Razor electric kids chopper from someone's trash. The speed controller and batteries were long gone, but those are always the first things to die in these cheapie kids' rides and the drive train was still there. When the yung-uns came over this afternoon and saw this they wanted to know immediately if I could make it work and if we could do so before they left. It was already kinda late, but when my youngest niece came in and asked I couldn't say no. So I set them all to work helping to get it functional. My nephew holding wires and helping solder, his friend grabbing, stripping, and cutting wires, and my little niece testing that the beefy power switch made it go once it was all together. I used a couple mismatched, but fairly equal capacity batteries I had around for power, and we were ready to go. This was all frantic as it was already past dark and they were worried they'd be headed home at any moment.

We aired up the front tire with my air compressor, grabbed a flashlight for a headlight, and they rode it up and down the dirt road a few times on whatever power the batteries had. They had fun and I also got the chance to teach them about basic electronics, soldering (using my 40 year old 200w soldering iron), the precautions to be taken with big batteries (after shorting together the batteries in loop), and they were really having a good time trying to beat the clock and bring the little chopper to life. It's a squirrly little ride that ought to be on paved cul-de-sac rather than dusty dirt road, but it's fun none the less and I think they had more fun getting it running than from actually running it. We'll see if that changes when I get the batteries to full charge.

I Made an Air Compressor Work Nicely

I picked up an old air compressor that had seen better days from my brother a couple days ago. He'd gotten a larger permanent setup going and didn't need his old beat up compressor so I get the hand-me-down. Cool :)

When I asked what was wrong with it the list was along the lines of "something with the wires, it has a leak, and the gauge is broken." The pressure switch was also MIA, the belt has seen better days, and the whole thing looked rough as a pine cone. Time for a tear-down and cleaning.

I started by running it to figure out the problems since it did run if very poorly. The wiring was a lamp cord wrapped around the motor's terminals, the leak was from the compressor's leaf valve and from the copper feed to the tank, and the guage worked but was way off and sticks on 20PSI.

I took the head off the compressor, revealing a sludge in the piston chamber, as well as all over the two reed valves. Cleaned those up well with degreaser and a razor blade on the reeds, put it back together and it didn't leak there (and added about 10cc per cycle due pumped to not being full of sludge. I tried sealing the bad feed to the tank, but had to cut it shorter and put a new faring on the line, which solved that problem. I trimmed the frayed strands from the belt, oiled the motor, and attached the wires with proper connectors. With this done, I decided to check the crank case oil. This was a scary sight, as there was enough water in the oil to turn it a milky grey, and it was so old when I drained it most of it slowly plopped out for several minutes like grey snot. New oil in the case and it sounded happier while running. For now I'm testing pressure with a shrader valve and tire guage, unplugging the compressor around 100psi. After tightening the wobbly wheel up, I wire brushed the whole thing and painted it up. I also added a handle to make it easire to handle from my small blue pressure tank.

That "ka-pook-ka-pook-ka-pook-ka-pook" of an air compressor is a nice sound. Especially when it comes from something that was otherwise destined for the landfill. I know it might look a little rough now but by comparison to when I got it it looks great and runs fantastic. I expect this little thing will keep me in inflated tires and filled potato guns for as long as I like.

I made another ray gun (and a new term)

A couple of friends of mine are going to an anime convention in Atlanta this weekend, and were wanting to do some steampunkish cosplay. They were looking to have some props and pieces for their costumes, so I obliged and made up a new ray gun.

The construction is pretty obvious, I pretty much just took a look in my junk bin and pulled out anything with a neat coil or old looking electromechanical component. I wound up soldering a copper pipe to the shaft of a vacuum motor core. Then, using pipe clamps I mounted that to a pull saw handle. I attached the other bits with super-glue, some more soldering, hot glue, and adding magnet wire where it looked necessary and what you see below is what I wound up with.

It's pretty hefty since it's got so much steel and copper to it. I was originally going for steampunk, but since I didn't have much copper or brass on hand, but did have plenty of coils and simple but chunky electronics on hand I went with that and I've decided to further splinter the "old looking things that look like more modern things made with old technology" movement and dub this a Teslapunk death ray. It's not quite Buck Rogers looking enough to my eye to group it with that time, and the round motor core on top kinda looks reminicent of a revolver. My original plan was to have there be a button and battery to trigger the solenoid so there'd be some motion to it, but since they were headed out I decided to put further additions off for the moment. Maybe I'll add that and some sound effects when they get back.

I made something to clean rust

I was reading a post on makezine.com about electrolytic rust removal. The setup described called for rebar, washing soda, a battery charger, a bucket, wire nuts, wire, and several other parts. Looking over the whole thing though it seemed like the whole setup just needed the charger (or any low voltage, decent amperage power source), an electrolytic solution, the metal to be cleaned, and an anode which could be any conductive metal. I wanted to test it out as cheaply as possible to see how effective it could be without making a big to-do about setting it up.

My materials were as follows:
Salt (1/4 cup or I just poured til I felt jazzy)
Water (the wet kind, not the solid kind)
Baling wire (cheap, metal, and flexible)
6-12v charger (anything more than 10 amps is serious overkill and won't work any better)
Bucket (which you should always has)



Setup is pretty simple. Fill the bucket with water, mix the salt in well, bend a piece of baling wire so it sits in the water down to the bottom of the bucket in a couple places. Next attach the + (red) charger cable to the baling wire and the -(Black) cable to the piece you want cleaned. Set the peice in the water (fully submerged is preferable) and plug in/turn on your charger. You should start seeing bubbles within 30 seconds on both the submerged wire and piece. My scissors bubbled more on the side with clamp because the joint in the middle doesn't connect them terribly well I guess.





After leaving the whole setup in a well ventilated place for about an hour for smaller things, more for larger, you should be able to take a wire brush to clean off any remaining rust, then redipping any parts that weren't under the water before. You can leave it in longer, but I was happy with the results I got with about 1:30. Taking a wire wheel, wire brush, or steel wool to clean the whole thing and then keeping it either clearcoated or covered in light oil will prevent further corrosion. Shabam!, from rusted solid to ready for re-sharpening in an hour and a half. I need to hit up a flea market and get some rusty but awesome old tools to do next.

I made a toy into a guitar pedal

I went to Cracker Barrel a few days ago and among the balsa wood airplanes and lawn ornaments, I came across a red toy megaphone that has switches to change your voice when you talk into it. High and low pitch shift and "alien voice" which makes it monotone and warbley. It made for some pretty interesting sounds, so I got it and decided to see what could be done with it. I stayed pretty tame with it, just adding an input and output jack, a power switch so you don't have to hold it on, and a speaker cutoff switch. The sampling is so slow that anything that goes through it is bitchrushed pretty well. I might put it into a pedal like thing or I might leave it as is. WHO KNOWS!!?!?!

Update 1:

I decided to make the guitar pedal style case for it. I looked up the size of a normal pedal, roughly went with that. A couple hours and a couple dozen dremel cut-off wheels later I'd taken the lid of an old server case that had a nice baked on paint and turned it into a rough pedal case. It actually makes for rather nice project cases, and I'll probably make a post on how to make them some time. If you have old computer cases or any thin, flat sheet metal around it's very easy. Anyway, there's a photo of it as it stands right now on the right.

Being as I still need a proper stomp switch to cut it on and off I'll have to get back to finishing it later, but for now you get the idea. I'll probably get a DPDT switch if I can and see if it can be wired to either feed the signal through the pedal or around it since the circuit doesn't do that on it's own.

I made a mystery (in 2002)

Some time in 2002 I took apart a dead IBM model 5051 computer which had an equally dead 10MB hard drive in it. The computer went to the dump, but the hard drive was too unique to toss. There had been some bad head crashing, to the point that one of the read heads had been smashed off and was bouncing around inside the drive when I took it apart. I wasn't sure what to do with it; it was of not use in a computer since it was too broke too fix, but it did have a pretty good size space inside it once I'd removed the brassy platters.

I came about the idea that I should use it to store some information I could look back on after reading through old journals I wrote in 3rd grade, and eventually decided on writing a letter to myself, which I would then store in the hard drive as a time capsule. I wanted to try keeping it sealed for as long as possible to make sure I had time to forget what I'd written, originally wanting to keep it closed for 25 years, but I wanted to be able to crack it open before I was terribly old as well, so I weaned back the time to 10 years instead. Since screwing it back together with it's new "data" stored in an aluminum casing, I set it in a closet and tried to forget about it. I still pull it down every once in a while while I'm cleaning and resist the urge to crack it open. I originally taped a piece of paper with "2012" on it to the top, but eventually decided it would be better to replace that with "2012" etched into the metal of the case, so it couldn't be lost.

I still remember feeling somewhat guilty for not putting the exact date I closed it up on there, knowing that I would forget when that was, but I also remember doing that so I would be able to open it any time in 2012 I wished. I might carry it with me to whatever new year's party I do that year. All I can remember of what's written on it is a list of the friends I had at the time, but I know there's more than that. So that's about it, it's a mystery I've set my self up for. Maybe when the time comes I'll write some reflections on the first letter and make up another letter to myself for 2022. I'd like to make it a tradition if I can. It's always good to keep some mystery in your life, even if it's just an old hard drive in your closet.

I made some small things (Part II)

There isn't a whole lot to this one folks, but a couple months ago I rode out to the beach, and while looking for things to build my shade out of, I also happened upon two coconuts that had washed onto the beach. I took off the husk and when I got home, cut it open, emptied it, and glued it to a slice of bamboo I also found on the beach and made a cup. It looks pretty neat, but the inside smells a little odd so I don't plan to use it to hold my margaritas any time soon. Ohh well, might have to make one from a fresh coconut some time.

I also was doing some cleaning over the past couple days, and decided to make something out of the junk I have around. The first thing I made was originally meant as a homemade leslie speaker, but I couldn't get it to turn at a usable speed, so Daniel and I turned it into a spinning, shaking, whirring, mesmerizing light ring of death. It's made of an aluminum plate with a fan motor (and mangled fan blade), controlled by a dimmer switch. The effect was very entertaining and turning the speed up made the whole thing shake like a Chihuahua on a vibrating motel bed.

The last thing I made is a spot light. It's pretty simple, just a large switch, 3 wires, a battery, a light, and a few blobs of hot glue. It works well and shines a ton of light, so I'll be keeping it around and keeping an eye out on a good enclosure to put it all in.

I made a strange looking guitar

This is a project I've been messing with on and off for a long time now. Since I've known my friend Daniel I've been learning about guitars, the forms they've taken, and musical things in general. One thing I've often tried to do is imagine strange configurations or ways of modifying guitars to make them elicit a previously unknown sound, this proves to be very difficult since there have been close to 80 years of people doing strange things to guitars to amplify them. It seemed like every time I would think up or imagine some combination of parts to make a guitar do something none had before Daniel knew of some obscure instrument that does just such a thing or my idea had been tried and wasn't of any real use.

During one of my idea-making moments though, playing with one of his guitars while it was partially disassembled, I came up with an idea he hadn't heard of before. The idea was to take a Stratocaster-style guitar, and move the middle pickup to the outside of the guitar, sitting over top the neck pickup. I figured it might make for a clean sound like a single-coil pickup, but also be useful in clearing up the "hum" that humbuckers "buck", or cancel out.

Between the two of us, we got a Squire Bullet from a pawn shop, a simple, no frills strat and set about figuring out how to turn it into something neither of us had ever heard of. We eventually came up with the idea that as long as we're modifying the guitar and since we'd have to route room in the body for switches to set phasing, turn on/off pickups, and run pickups in series or parellel we might as well make a spot to move the bridge pickup and modify the bridge to have an extra run of strings below the bridge with a pickup under it. This would allow for the guitar to directly pick up playing on this short and high pitched length of strings. To the left is what a similar Bullet looks like, and what the Hoverbucker started out like.

I quickly dumpster dived some white sheet plastic (shower wall panel) and made blank copies of the Bullet's original pick guard. A month or two later I cut and shaped an old aluminum "out of order" sign into a replacement bridge and made a mount for the exposed pickup from some scrap plexi-glass and wood left over from making the lightbox. There won't be much of an ability to intonate the bridge without filing it down, but we'll cross that bridge when it comes (holy-crap-pun-lol). Since I'm not familiar with the specifics of setting intonation (I can scarcely tune a guitar) I'll leave that to Daniel to advise on. I also removed the bridge saddles from the stock tail piece so it can be used for a tail piece at the bottom of the guitar.

After that, I posted pictures and the idea on the Harmony Central Forums, asking anyone there for their input and ideas, as well as finding a wiring diagram for a similar setup that allowed for a lot of choice with regard to the switching setup. From here the project sat untouched for several more months while other things in life needed more attention such as school and my nephew's guitar. It went in a bag next to my hand made longbow that needs to be tuned and set. Now that I've had some time to work on it some more and I already had need of a router thanks to the cigar box guitars I've worked on over the last week I figured it would be a good time to make the body modifications that the hoverbucker guitar needed. I got to try my hand for the first time with both a table and hand-held router and they both were nice to use thanks to Mr. John's assistance explaining their proper use.

As a side note, this blog is serving as a good motivator for me to finish projects that have otherwise sat half-done for a while. It's nice having somewhere to show off the stuff I do with the added bonus that someone might actually care enough to read about it. What ever will I do for updates once I run out of half-finished projects to finish for a quick post's worth of material? I might have to go back to building things from start to finish. :O

Anyway, I then went about cutting up another of the pick guard blanks into a cover for the bridge pickup, I just cut it into a rectangle, rounded the corners, and smoothed it with a file. I then drilled some holes for the switches to mount into, widened the hole for the kill switch from the original volume knob hole, and for the screws in the bridge cover. I put it all together and dummied up everything in place. I have to wait until tommorow to get a DPDT switch to replace the SPDT switch I have in place for the phase switch right now, but you can get an idea of how it will all look now. I'm still not sure how it will work or if it will unlock some strange, never before heard sounds, but it certainly looks interesting so far and even if it's just a strat with an extra weird pickup it'll certainly be a unique instrument.

(Update 1)
I finished the guitar, and it does some interesting things. After showing it off on this Harmony Central thread it seems to be getting a good recepion. Here's a couple videos of Daniel playing it. He seems pretty stoked about it too.






As usual, there are more photos on my Flickr page.

I made an arcade game cabinet

A few years ago I got into old arcade video games. They represented a time that I wasn't a part of which seemed to have it's own story with dimly lit caves full of kids and teenagers who were free to roam around and try their hand at besting rows of machines that would entertain and cast a cool light over their faces until the quarters were gone and their three initials had been etched into the game's record of heroes. It seemed (and still seems) a shame to me that these places of social video games are slowly fading away, and I wanted to have a part of that time. I looked into it and found that much like home video game systems like the NES, Sega Genesis, and Atari have been translated into programs that emulated their games for modern computers, arcade games have much the same thing going for them with a program called MAME (the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). I was able to not only play something similar to those original arcade games, but actually play the originals, their code and idiosyncrasies pulled straight from their original game boards and loaded for me to play on my PC, even down to having to press a button to "feed" the game a quarter.

For a while this was very interesting and fun, but it still wasn't the full experience of standing in front of a real arcade machine and mashing buttons and joysticks. I looked into MAME's community more and found that there were already many other people, maybe hundreds, who had the same want for a full arcade machine in their home that I did, and thanks to the Internet, they had gotten together to share stories of how they made it happen and what they did along the way. Some people had gotten old arcade games and fitted a computer to the original screen and joysticks; others had started from scratch and build their cabinets, ordered brand new controls to use in their machines. Some had used old keyboards and PC joysticks with a rat's nest of wires connecting everything while others had come up with or used very professional looking, very clean machines that were custom designed for their purpose. Many people had created huge four player behemoths that have every controller from every arcade game one could imagine while still others had created coffee table sized machines that were best suited to earlier, more simple games. I was hooked on the idea of having my own.

I poured over every instruction page, build log, and relevant site I could find, trying to figure out the best way for to go about bringing this idea to life. I slowly collected parts that I thought would be useful and saved my pennies for either buying a gutted/dead game or buying the materials to build my own. I happened upon a dealer at the local flea market who sells video games and used to work with arcade games. He had a few boxes of old controls which I bought, along with a marquee panel for Robotron 2084. Most of these had 20 years worth of grime, grunge, and cigarette burns from having spent as much time in arcade games and parts bins. I managed to salvage and clean enough controls to get a full set of control for 2 players. I still didn't have a cabinet to put them in though.

After a false start with someone on eBay selling me a cabinet for cheap, but refusing to ship it, I decided it would be best to build my own rather than wait to happen upon one locally. I decided to go with a design called LuSiD's Arcade Flashback. It's large, and gave plenty of room for the needed parts, as well as being fairly simple to construct. A friend of my dad who's a fantastic carpenter helped me construct the cabinet out of Melamine backed MDF. It's a type of particle board often used on counter tops, and was what many people used for their cabinets since it's got a nice smooth surface. The problem was that it's hard to work with. You have to pre-drill all holes and glue all screws and seams together or you risk the materials breaking apart. It also weighs a ton and has nice sharp edges, so any time it would slip it would cut me. With the help of my dad's friend these concerns were minimized and in the end the cabinet went together as planned, with a few additions such as a piano hinge on the control panel to make adding controls easier down the line and a slot for the marquee to slide into so that I could easily swap it later if I wanted to. I had construction photos for the cabinet, but they may be lost to the digital sands of time.

Now that I had all the major parts ready, I began putting things together. I cut a clear plexi cover for the control panel and mounted the controls, wiring only one side since I still wasn't sure how I was going to set up the second set. Then I scrapped together a computer from my parts bin and set the huge 19" monitor an uncle had given me in place only to find out the case was too large for my cabinet. I removed the plastic case over the screen and that made the clearance just right.

Once I got the cabinet up and running in a basic sense it sat unfinished for some time until I got the urge to work on it more. This time I took it apart, painted everything one cold morning, and then rewired the controls, this time hacking up a USB game pad to allow me to wire all the controls, though I left a few of the P2 buttons unfinished. I also added a large Donkey Kong decal to the side so I would have some side art rather than a blank black cabinet. For a marquee light I used whatever I had most available. At one time that was a nice florescent lamp, which was later repurposed, giving way to duct tape and a desk lamp, which I didn't like the idea of after a short while. I replaced that with a florescent tube powered by the driver circuit from a CFL bulb. This idea later became the idea I also used in the lightbox a friend and I made.

That was how the arcade cabinet usually went for a couple years. I'd work on it once in a while, slowly scrapping together better pieces and a better computer, but it would generally stay in some state of disrepair and general untidiness. At one point another uncle of mine, knowing I was working on this, brought me a very beat up, damaged, and barely working N.A.R.C. cabinet, from which I finally got a coin door to put in the cabinet as well as some other working parts. I'd snag a part from the computer to feed another project or the controls would snag a loose wire while playing and kill one or more buttons. Eventually I got tired of such things though and decided to fully finish it. I wired all the controls properly and cleaned up the rats nest that had developed beneath the control panel, made a bezel to go around the screen and shroud the less than clean paint job behind it, and set up MAME with a pack of several thousand games and made sure the settings allowed you to control as much of the system as possible with the arcade controls.

Everyone who saw or played with the cabinet liked it (especially when it was working properly), but since I'd had it a couple years now and I'd long since appeased my bug to have a full-sized arcade machine I started thinking about how much I needed the space the cabinet took more than I needed the cabinet. I also felt somewhat bad for having it and using it as little as I did since the time I first got it going.

I posted the machine on CraigsList, hoping to pass it along to someone who would get more use and fun out of it, and after letting it sit for about a month, a kid about the same age I was when I started looking into MAME offered me more than I'd ever put into the cabinet (not counting labor time of course). I was happy to see it move on to someone who would get some fun out of it, and it seemed like it was passing full circle since before the kid (I say kid, he wasn't more than 5 years younger than me) and his dad left, I heard them already talking about how big it was and trying to figure out how to find somewhere to put it; a discussion my dad and I had when he first saw how large the empty cabinet really was.

It was really an enjoyable project, and I really learned a lot about wood working, electronics, soldering, how things like video games were made in the past, and how computer interfacing could be done. I might get a taste to make a newer machine some day, but it would definitely be much smaller (something that could fit on a counter top) and likely be made of normal plywood. If anyone reading this would like more information about this machine or anything related to it's construction, please leave a comment. I'd love to be able to give back to the community that helped me make a piece of video game history come to life for me.

I made a light box (with help)

My buddy Daniel was wanting to make a light box for his girlfriend since she's quite the artist, but has until now lacked the ability to properly back light her drawings as she makes them. I'm not much of an artist in that regard so I'm not familiar with how back lighting helps one draw but apparently it does. So Daniel and I decided to make her a light box.

We roved the local Lowes for some materials: an oak 1x2, a sheet of thin plywood, a sheet of clear plexiglass, some hinges, and some small LED tap lights and small fluorescent lights from wally-world next door.

Though we were both very tired we managed to cut the wood and paint the clear plastic with a frosting spray to help diffuse the light, and assemble it all into a working (if dim) light box. He presented it to her the next day and she was very happy with it, but since we were tired while making it there were some rough edges and the spray on the top panel was somewhat splotchy. I picked up the light box about a week later and use an extra sheet of plexi we'd gotten and sprayed it on a flat concrete surface since the fact that the first sheet was sitting on top of a milk crate somehow left the impression of a milk crate as the spray dried, possibly due to heat differences in the sheet. I also sanded and stained the box, as well as putting some rubber feet on it.

I then went about making some more powerful lights. A while ago I used the driver board from a burnt out CFL bulb to power a normal fluorescent tube, and was quite pleased with how well it worked, so I'd been saving any CFLs that had burnt out around the house as well as a few tubes that I'd had for a while. I put two tubes together and hot glued them into the box; it was much better lit now, even though one tube was more purple than the othter X(.

In any event, the light box works well and looks good now, and though I'm not sure what the use of it is, I am sure there is one and it appears that Daniel's artistic girlfriend is getting use from this box with lights they call a light box.

I made some small things

Not everything I make is big enough to warrant it's own post, so here are some smaller thing's I've made.

The first thing I made was a 15 foot long rope made from smaller rope I braided together after a rope twisting tool I made couldn't hold up to the tension it needed to.








The next thing is pretty usual, an omelet I made with BBQ Vienna sausages up at my family's hunting camp when I went there to get some alone time last summer. It was my first omelet and I was proud of how well it came out. Very yummy.






I also made an "LED tree" from a couple of dead AA batteries and a pile of old green LEDs. It was a pretty neat little toy and stayed lit for a couple days on batteries that were pretty well dead. for any other use. I guess the batteries being drained so low already was why the LEDs didn't burn out without a resistor in the circuit. Organically shaped circuits are fun.










Santa's little helper here was a result of an old dead VCR and a slow Saturday at work. He's made from various components off the VCR's circuit board and the Christmas tree is made from the board itself along with some wire and LEDs. The light at the top actually lights up off a 9V battery.






That's all the mini-makings I've got for the moment. I guess I'll toss up some more after I snap some photos of more of my smaller projects. TTFN

I made a robot's head

Every once in a while I realize I've got too much junk. This realization usually comes after I've had said junk for a while and when I decided to toss out a pile of junk, there was a smaller pile that I couldn't bring myself to toss. The pile had some parts from a couple of old camcorders, random motors and lights, an old joystick from an old arcade game, and some buttons and switches.

I didn't want to toss this stuff, but at the same time I didn't quite know what to do with it, but I decided that I'd have to make use of it or toss it. I started looking at two parts, a viewfinder and a lens from two different camcorders and thought they looked like eyes, so I decided to make a robot of some sort.

I carried an old shoe box stuffed full with parts along with some solder and my soldering iron to work and over the course of my shift used the down time to cobble together the robot (or at least it's head) and mounted it to a metal case with the controls.

You can turn the head, zoom the eye inand out, record, and play back up to 20 seconds of sound. Or at least you could. A few days after I made it the little guy took a dive off a counter and was "rapidly disassembled" by the floor. I decided to put it back together, but the sound recorder doesn't work now. ohh well, something to work on another day. I'm just glad that most of it survived the fall. I also used much more hot glue to hold it together this time.