I received the Blue Bomber TGIMBOEJ the other day from Grant (check out his blog at Splorp) and quickly opened it up to see what treasure was inside.

• Bubble wrap (My daughter took some to pop)
• Barbie digital camera (1MP? Useful for sending up a kite for some KAP?)
• Classic Apple IIe mouse (Taken, going to build a Mousebot)
• Momentary push buttons (I took two, I’m always short of them)
• Incandescent indicator lamps (these could be worth something some day!)
• Male-Female SCSI adapter (I’m guessing? Been a while since I’ve seen one.)
• Soldering Iron Tip
• Audio jack signal adapter
• Servos
• Printer control board
• Potentiometers & Control boards
• Digital Media Players
• Linksys Router
• Multi-pin switches (I took 3, but there’s 7 left)

And in the spirit of sharing, I’m dropping in a Solenoid left over from my Water Fountain experiments from last summer, some pin headers, and a section of pixelboard.

I’m due to send the box out to the next person on the list tomorrow, but if you want to participate, add your name to the list! One more tip: even if you don’t want to participate, check out the list for some excellent blogs & projects. There’s a ton of cool projects going on.

Where things start getting interesting is when you start to be able to share the code with other developers. This is a more complete feature within wonderfl so for the next little bit I’ll concentrate on its model. This looks like a feature that will come with Bespin, allowing contributors to participate in Open Source initiatives.

Wonderfl allows the audience to browse other publicly available projects (does a private mode exist?). If they like the code they are free to fork the code and develop it in their own user environment. The owner of the original code is then notified that their code has been forked and is free to observe the changes. Its a smart introduction of social sharing that has always existed in the coding environment, but never to this level of slickness.

Today the guys over at the Arduino Blog posted this interesting hack enabling Bespin to enable syntax highlighting for Arduino code. Check out the comments, Olle Jonsson has developed a python script that allows you to compile (though still in the initial stages) Arduino code. Wonderfl has already produced some fantastic applications, and Bespin appears to be just getting started. There’s something significant brewing here, coding in the cloud appears to be something to watch very closely over the next couple of years.

This was dug out of the basement the other day. This invoice was for our first real computer. (My family technically started by coding Logo and playing Buck Rogers by tape cassette on an Adam) This AST 286 and its where all of the trouble really began. I remember the night this thing came in the door. Now $27K might seem like a lot of money to spend on a 286, but when you consider how far we’ve come in 21 years I’d say its been probably some of the best money we could have spent.

I wish the invoice was itemized a little better because it would allow us to really gauge the prices. I bet that 1.5MB of memory cost a pretty good portion of the total cost.

The Houston Pen Plotter was an E-Size plotter with an expansion 6 pen tray. I still remember the sound of the pens scraping across the sandpaper when the paper slid out — or rather the sound of my father crying at the cost of replacing that pen. And technically I was the first to figure out how to get that plotter working, but Roberta and my father who were setting it up didn’t listen to me and send me to bed. Around midnight they figured out I was right.

That 286 had two monitors! My machine today doesn’t have two monitors, even if the 286 had one monochrome screen. And that monitor lasted 15 years and could handle the most obsurd resolutions — still the best monitor we’ve ever owned.

The tablet is still around, but today we’re using Wacoms at an eighth of the size.

Eventually this machine was retired for a 386, but it never went to a scrap heap, it was converted to the BBS that we ran for ages.

All in all, a good trip down memory lane. Good find Neil.

• ATMega168 IC — I was using a headless Arduino as a Serial connection. Removing the ATMega IC each time I had to reprogram the XBee chip. Missing one vital component, an IC extractor. The extractor is cheap, at least cheaper than a replacement IC. If you bend the pins once removing the IC by hand, don’t do it again… and again… and again. In the end I bought a new ATMega168, IC extractor, and USB-TTL module so I wouldn’t have to extract it again. (But at this moment the Arduino is sitting on my desk headless)
• HM55B Digital Compass — Red wire, Black wire. Its not that difficult is it? I thought it would save time to just use my existing precut Green wire to wire up the Digital Compass. Wasn’t getting the response I wanted. Turns out I had the positive and negative reversed. Whiff of the burning silicone smell. Definitely not getting the results I want anymore.
• Battery Holder & Two AA’s — Smelled that awful burning smell again last night. Ripped out the power going to the XBee’s, Arduino, USB-TTL. Now I see wisps of smoke coming through the air but nothing’s plugged in. Start throwing papers off my desk to find the culprit. Where there’s smoke there’s two AA’s shorting out. Unplug the AA’s with my IC extractor and promise myself to wire up a two pin plug and clean the desk. (It’s still messy)
• Countless plumbing prototypes — I’ve resoldered the Solenoid structure about ten times now. Still don’t have a final result I’m pleased with. Still have another design up my sleeve but I haven’t spawned the courage to start building it.
• DVD Player — This one’s a good one, I’ve identified hundreds of components scavenged from a DVD Player that didn’t work anymore. IR Emitter and receiver, momentary switches, capacitors, RGB Jacks, connectors, motors, and a frickin’ laser beam. To think this DVD player cost $30. Easily aved me that cost of buying all these little parts at Radio Shack.
• Inkjet printer — Again, tons of little components. Varistors, servos, gears, USB jack, power supply, zener diodes, etc. I’m thinking someone should make a website documenting all the components we can dig out of discarded things. Made a mental note to get rid of the plastic casing before my basement fills up with junk.
• Nintendo Powerglove — I think I just heard hearts shatter. This one was destroyed about two years ago, but it counts in this list because I’m using the parts for one of my project. Recovered Ultrasound emittors and receivers, flex sensors, etc.

One of the guys at work said I probably shouldn’t put a price list on this. I have to agree, it would hurt too much. Oh and this is by no means a complete list, I intend to update as I keep making stupid mistakes.

 Pixelboard

Originally uploaded by Eightlines

Sometimes its worth venturing out to a disorganized surplus store to see what you can find. This is my latest little toy.

Its a fragment of a pixelboard. Alternate the currents from one pin to the other and you can make the yellow dots flip to black. The cool thing is even powerless it keeps its state. If you manually flip the pixel to the other side it returns based on the magnetic pull.

The guys at the store obtained it from a signage company that was dumping their old stock for TV screens. The destroyed all of the control boards because it was proprietary technology (just a couple relays I’m thinking). The larger versions of these pixelboards also come with LEDs to illuminate the structure.

In the photo above I’ve hooked the pixelboard up to an IR Rangefinder so it could light up based on distance of an object infront of the sensor.