I've had my Drobo since February 2011. It's been almost 7 years. Yesterday I got home and went into the computer room and heard a horrible noise coming from the Drobo. It sounded like the fan was on the way out. It made a horrible rattling sound. The bearings were definitly shot. Time for a fan upgrade! Read More...

I got my PCBs in, assembled everything, and uploaded my code. Everything works as it should. I just need to design a case and it's a wrap!
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I had one of those crappy spirit levels with a LASER in it. It was a piece of junk. It was falling apart. It’s been sitting in the tool box for over a decade. I was cleaning some stuff out and was about to throw it out, but I can’t just throw away a LASER. What to do with it? Read More...

I took a break from the VFD Clock to make a Portal Weighted Storage Cube. That took about a month, and now that it's finished, it's time to revisit the clock. Read More...

After a month of hard work my Portal Weighted Storage Cube is complete! This was such a great project because it had a little bit of everything: 3D modeling, 3D printing, laser cutting, painting, electronics, and coding. I got to do things that I'm really good and l try a few new things too. Read More...

All the parts are painted and assembled. All the electronics are complete and installed. I made some awesome progress this week. The last thing to do it put some finishing touches on the code and paint the Aperture Science logos onto the centers. Read More...

I've made some great progress on the cube. All the sanding and painting is well under way, and all the electronics are pretty much finished. Read More...

I've made some serious progress on the Portal Weighted Storage Cube. All the parts have been printed, sanded, and painted. Some last minute touches, the electronics, and it'll be time for the final assembly! Read More...

I took a little break from the VFD Clock to work on the Portal Weighted Storage Cube. Paint is drying, and it's supposed to rain tomorrow. So I'll probably have to take a day or two off from painting and sanding. There's no better time than the present to get back to work on the VFD Clock. Read More...

I picked up some new speed cubes. I wasn't really happy with my last 4x4. I picked it up on a whim since my 10 year old wanted a 2x2 and a 3x3. Take it from me. Don't start off with a cheap junky cube. Spend the money up front and start off with a great cube.. Read More...

I can't believe it took me so long to get around to playing Portal. I guess it all has to do with time. I never have time for video games. Rather than sit in front of the computer playing games for hours a day, I'd rather sit and make PCBs, write code, and design 3D models. Now that I've beaten Portal 1 and 2, I feel like I can finally make myself a Portal Cube and not feel like a poser. Read More...

The good thing about making a lot of clocks is that after a while, writing the code become a bunch of cutting and pasting. The code for this clock closely mirrors that of both of my nixie clocks as well as my LCD clock. I just had to make a few small tweaks. After about two hours, I had all the code written for the time mode, date mode, and alarm mode. Read More...

If you remember my last VFD clock, I attempted to design an AC filament driver for the display. I searched online for a solution and discovered the LM9022 VFD Filament Driver. Like the name suggests, it's specifically design to supply an AC signal to VFD filament from a DC source. It seemed too good to be true. Read More...

When I set out to make my last VFD clock, I decided to drive the tubes with a MAX6921 chip. However, I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. I looked at a bunch of other projects online and tried to reverse engineer them, but I just couldn't get that chip to do anything. In the end, I gave up and decided to just drive the whole thing with transistors. With a new, more complicated clock in the works, it's time to figure out this chip. Read More...

While waiting for the paint to dry on my IN-14 Nixie Clock, I decided to tinker around with a small board idea to do something with this lonely IN-19 that I have. When I bought the IN-14s for my clock, the eBay seller threw one in as a way to make up for a delay in shipping. It's a cool little tube. But what would I ever use it for? Read More...

In order to start prototyping with my new VFDs, I need to make some breakout boards for them. Experience tells me that there's no easy way to jam them into a breadboard. Read More...

I just put the wraps on my last clock, the IN-14 Nixie Clock, and I already can't wait to start another one! I found some really huge ILC1-1/8L 7-segment VFDs on eBay. They're almost 4" tall. The digits themselves are 2.25" tall. Massive! Read More...

I'm really happy with the way that this clock came out. It's so much nicer than my IN-12 clock. I can't wait to get started on another one! Read More...

This clock is coming along nicely. I know I designed it a few months ago, but I shelved it for a month to wrap other things up. Now that I've decided to go ahead with it, it's been less than a month and it's almost complete! Read More...

My son wants to get into speedcubing too. I picked up a 2x2 and a 3x3 for him. I wasn't going to buy myself anything, but I just couldn't resist picking up a 4x4 while I was at it. Read More...

I left off last time with the notion that I'd be able to create a new IN-14-nixie clock based off the design that I used for my IN-12 nixie clock. The plan was to use the main controller board as-is, and combine the driver and display boards. This proved to be more difficult than I had anticipated. The routing of the high voltage traces left much to be desired, simply due to the lack of real estate. I decided to not only use the original controller board, but the driver board too. After all, OSH Park gives you three boards for each order, so I have some left over from the last clock. I might as well use them up. Read More...

It's been about 3 months since I picked up the Gans 356 Air Master. I've done several hundred solves on it and I love it. When I was first shopping for a speed cube, it was a toss up between the 356 Air and the Valk 3. The main reason I went with the Gans was because it's what Feliks Zemdegs used to break the last World Record. However, I was really curious to see if I made the right choice. Is the Valk 3 better? Read More...

Have you seen the new trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2? If you pay close attention to the opening scene, you'll see Starlord holding some kind of handheld scanner. I took one look at it and knew it was an old video game. I just had to have one. Read More...

Look what I scored on eBay! (LEGO guy for scale.) I've been wanting to do another nixie clock for a while. It's been a year and a half since I completed my first nixie clock. I think it's time for another one. Read More...

The OMEN really is a fantastic desktop replacement. It’s exactly what I was looking for in a laptop. I’m used to the speed and the power of my Mac Pro. To hop on an underpowered laptop and try and perform the same tasks and use the same apps as my Mac Pro just isn't going to work for me if it’s not the same experience. I'm glad I picked one up, and I’m thrilled that I saved over a $1000 by not buying the new MacBook Pro. Read More...

The VFD Clock is finally complete. I started it almost a year ago. However, once I actually figured out how to drive the display, it was another 7 months before I actually started it. I had so many other projects to finish first. I'm glad I waited until my plate was clear to work on this. It really came out nice. It's definitely one of my favorites. Read More...

What a long two weeks it's been! I was dying to get my hands on the boards! The assembly was a snap and I think it came out way better than I had imagined. Read More...

My wife and I just finished watching the first season of Westworld. What a great show. I don't want to give away any spoilers for those that have not seen it yet, but there's a cool maze prop in the show. As soon as I saw it, I thought to myself, "I am so 3D-printing one of those!" Read More...

A friend of mine at work cut the cord on his cable TV. Needless to say, the cable box had to be returned. Unfortunately, he relies on that little clock under the TV all the time. He asked if it was possible to basically take my Mini 7-segment Clock V2 and cut it in half. Challenge accepted! Read More...

The electronics have been assembled, so it's time to work on the enclosure. I'm almost finished with this clock. I ran out of black PLA for the base, and I still need to stain the woodfill PLA top, but I'm making excellent progress. Read More...

I've been cubing for exactly a month now. While I'm no speedcuber, I'm still pretty proud of the fact that I've been able to go from never solving a cube before, to having a 12-solve average of 2:10 and a best time of 1:29 just using the layer-by-layer method. I don't think I will be able to solve it in under a minute without learning some more advanced techniques, or getting a faster cube. I could learn new algorithms until the cows come home, but at the end of the day the fact still remains... there's only so fast you can turn a stock Rubik's cube.
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All the electronics are complete. I'm so pleased that everything worked on the first go without any tweaks. All that's left to do is design an enclosure for it. Read More...