Year: 2011

Attaching EL Wire

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I’ve started attaching the EL wire to the sign. I first attached it using a Gel Superglue, but it spread terribly and left cloudy marks everywhere, so I carefully undid my work and went looking for another glue….

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iPhone templates for UI prototypes

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I’ve recently started doing a lot of development for the iPhone and iPad and I wanted to be able to sketch layouts on paper. Now it’s one thing to draw a rough iPhone layout, but it’s another to…

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Brushed Steel Plate

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I’ve cut myself a piece of steel for the sign and managed to get it completed to the point where I can attach the EL wire. I first grabbed two washers, bent them slightly and welded them to…

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Obtaining Materials

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I’ve done a bit of work on my bar sign project. First of all, I’ve converted my design to black and white, resized it a bit and printed it out onto A3 paper. This is the (rough) but…

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Electroluminescent Bar Sign Project

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A friend of mine is coming up to his 40th Birthday and he’s having a cocktail party to celebrate. I’ve decided I wanted to make him a “Neon” bar sign for a gift. Neon signs are expensive, use…

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Astro CCD Camera and 50mm F1.4 = Mag 9

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Auckland weather has turned in the last week. Evenings must be about 5-10 degrees cooler now meaning the atmosphere is more stable and ultimately better sky viewing conditions. I set up my Mintron camera with the 50mm F1.4…

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Satellite Tracking Camera – Progress Update

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Regular readers of my blog will know that I’ve been working on building a satellite tracking system. The plan is to end up with a fully automatic Pan/Tilt positioning system with a high sensitivity video camera, millisecond accuracy…

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Adding Custom Characters to the MAX7456 Video Overlay Generator

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I’m playing with the Maxim MAX7456 Video On-Screen Display Generator for my Satellite Tracking Camera project. I’m wanting to use it to overlay accurate (GPS locked) time stamps onto each individual field of a PAL or NTSC video…

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AVR Pulse Per Second & NMEA simulator

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As part of building my Satellite Tracking Camera, I’m building a GPS time inserter to insert accurate time stamps on a video feed. I’m unable to get GPS reception in my test/development area, so I decided it would…

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ASCOM and Communications protocols

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I hope you all had a great New Year and have big plans for 2011. I don’t have much new to report on the Satellite tracking platform. I’ve been looking into equipment for the system and at communications…

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