Projects
About this page
This page will detail my more prominent projects currently in progress, and will eventually link to several other pages detailing the projects individually. I also intend to eventually have a list of relevant blog posts on each project page. Without further ado, here are the projects:
Projects
In progress
- D-STAR Heat Map – Using a serial port interface to an ICOM ID-1 radio communicating with K2CC’s DSTAR Digital Data Repeater, signal strength can be measured in real time during simulated data transfer. This data is geotagged with the data from a USB GPS receiver connected to the same computer. Phil Hart (KC2SGA) and I then drove around Potsdam and recording signal strength all over. This data will be used to build a color coded heat-map of the town to see where signal propagation is best. This is all done in the 1.2GHz range of ham radio spectrum. This will later be used to aid in deployment of emergency data nodes should it become necessary to replace failed mobile digital infrastructure based on the cellular network.
- Mini-DMX – Utilizing at ATmega328P as well as an RS-485 Transceiver Chip as the brains, I’m building a handheld device to generate valid DMX512 serial signals for testing theater equipment on the fly without the need for setting up and manning a full lighting board. This is the first significant project I am building on perfboard and while to me it looks kind of messy, I’ve actually received a lot of praise for it, surprisingly, it is however incomplete, been too busy to put the remaining connections in and the firmware is definitely not ready yet. Soon!
- Homebrew Audio Mixer - Using 3.5mm breadboard compatible breakout boards, and jacks to solder to those boards, I’m intending to prototype a design I sketched up for a 2 channel audio mixer on a breadboard. If it works I’ll try to expand it to a 4 channel mixer and if that works, I’ll have a PCB made and build an actual nice little enclosure for it. This project is on-again/off-again as things come and go in my life!
- CUClock – A giant green and gold Clarkson Themed 7 segment clock I’m designing to propose to the school to replace the old broken digital clock we used to have in the engineering building. Nothing too fancy, just a clock, but hopefully it will be self setting via WWVB broadcast!
- HF Software Defined Radio – Utilizing a programmable oscillator to generate a carrier sine wave, and MATLAB to mathematically modulate AM, Upper and Lower Sideband signals, I intend to build a small software defined radio for use in the Ham Radio 10 meter to 160 meter bands. This is a pretty new project, expect more updates later!
- HP 6253A Dual DC Power Supply Repair – Got this beast off eBay for cheap because it was ‘broken’. Turns out its really just fine, but it was dropped on its face plate so the gauges were loose and the control dial damaged. Hot glue repaired the gauges and I was able to clean up one half of the front panel knobs and recalibrate one of the internal supplies, it’s working perfectly. When I have more money I’ll replace all the busted potentiometers with nice ten-turn ones and matching knobs.
Completed
- Workbench – Constructed out of plywood, and 2x4s, my workbench is a 4′x8′ table piled high with storage drawers, parts drawers, and equipment. On one side is my main computer and work station, Gojira, and on the other is my power supply, and multimeters and soldering equipment. This affords me a great place to work and play with electronics and homework and radio stuff. Pictures coming soon!
- EE316 Final Project: Space Invaders – Utilizing a Terasic DE2 development board with an Altera Cyclone II FPGA, my lab team and I used Altera’s Nios II soft-processor, a hardware accelerated GPU of our own design, and software to build a game console. The premiere game was Space Invaders, and it was played by wearing a brightly colored vest so that a small network camera could track the player. The player stepped left and right, jumping to shoot. As the players heart rate dropped, the game sped up, forcing exercise, and keeping you on your toes! This project was featured on several websites such as Hack A Day, Engadget, and Joystiq!
- Galileo Kinematics Simulation Engine - Written in C++ this engine could simulate the movement of multiple objects in a free space environment, I wrote it as practice to get better at programming but I never finished it. It was mostly functional at the time of shelving, but very inefficient, requiring several rewrites to be of any use. Perhaps one day I’ll pick this up again.