Tonight, I fly from SBA to JFK. I have a fairly long layover in LAX, and my total travel time will be around 9 hours. I get into New York just before 6 am. I’m not really looking forward to all the time on the plane(s), but I can’t wait to get there. It’ll be nice to see the family again. I think July was the last time.
I’ve been playing with EAGLE PCB Cad software, to create the schematic and printed circuit board to finish off my timer project. There’s a bit of a learning curve to it, but I think I’m starting to get it figured out. It’s pretty cool. Below is an unfinished schematic. I haven’t yet figured out how to tell it to connect pins to power and ground, and I haven’t put in a bunch of other stuff that will be necessary to finish. I’ll get there.
I need to stop procrastinating. I should be packing, because tomorrow night I fly to NY for Thanksgiving. Instead, I’m watching TV, playing Rock Band, writing a post… I should really get to it already.
I think I’ll go watch last week’s 30 Rock now.
I guess I forgot to post today yesterday. This will count, anyway. Really, the day ends when I go to sleep, not because the clock happens to pass midnight. I’ll (hopefully, if I remember) post again today sometime after I wake up.
Not much to say, which I suppose could be why I forgot to say anything at all. It was a fairly typical day. Went to work, went bowling, went home. Didn’t bowl very well, and for some reason couldn’t concentrate or focus. Not sure why, but it was weird.
When I first got home, all I wanted to do was collapse in bed. I did for a few minutes, but then got distracted by a few more things I wanted to do with my intervalometer. The whole thing is now set up on a ProtoShield (with a mini breadboard), which is nice. I did that for a few reasons. One, to make sure I could take it all off the breadboard and wire it up again from my schematic. It’s not a terribly complicated circuit. The other reason was so I could take it home with me when I go to NY this week for Thanksgiving. My father wants to see it.
I’m looking forward to the next step, which is designing and etching the printed circuit board, so I can put the whole thing together in a small case and be done. Not that I want to stop working on it, because I’m having fun with it, but I want to be able to take it out with me and use it for photography. That was the point of making it in the first place.
Almost forgot to post today. But I didn’t.
My plan for today was to continue to work on my camera timer project, play some Gears of War 2, and clean up the mess that is my kitchen. Two outta three ain’t bad.
Not on the plan was burning myself on my soldering iron, but that happened, too. It’s making this post a little hard to type, but it’s really not all that bad. My left middle finger got the worst of it, and my left thumb a little bit. It happened because my chair didn’t move the way I expected on my carpet, and I lurched forward badly while reaching for it. Coulda been worse.
As for the intervalometer, the software is pretty much done now. I’m waiting on a cheap RF transmitter and receiver, to see if I’ll make it a wireless release as well. That will require more software, but likely not all that much. Also, it would just be really cool.
Okay, time to go put my hand on ice again.
Yes, yesterday’s Hello, World post counted as a post for the day, even if I didn’t even write anything.
I’ve been working on my Arduino interval timer project a lot. Got a bunch of parts and random electronics. Finally got a breadboard. Got the cheap knockoff cable releases for the camera. They’re very good, by the way. Only $6 or so on eBay instead of $45ish from Canon (on Amazon.. MSRP $70! Sick.) It’s just a simple switch inside a simple plastic case… with a proprietary connector.
Anyway, I got the Arduino actually controlling the camera. All that’s really left now is to work on the software, and that’s coming along nicely. Initially, I just set it up to take as many pictures as the number I pressed on the keypad. There’s a video of that below:
Now, I can set up some variables in the software and get it to take pictures at interval, and set the exposures. The next step is to be able to set those variables from the device. This picture was a 500 second exposure, timed by the Arduino. While the shutter was open, the LCD display was counting down the time left. The lights were off in the room.
This is a lot of fun. 🙂
Well, it looks like that trip to Fry’s may not be necessary. I’ll have to wait a little longer for a bunch of my stuff, but Futurlec has prices on a lot of this stuff that Fry’s won’t be able to beat. Specifically, their Value Packs are a great deal. I ordered a bunch of stuff from there, so hopefully I will have the random components I will need for the near future.
Tonight could be a very long night, or a very short one. It’s the softball playoffs. We’re in second place, so we play the third place team. If we win that game, we have to beat the first place team twice to win the league. I’m really not sure what I want to happen. Three games in one night is a lot, but it’d be fun to win.
I guess that’s it for today. Time to go play softball…
I got a bunch of my electronics parts today. Still waiting on the cable releases to hook up to the camera, but I was at least able to start playing with some of the other stuff. I got the keypad that will be used for number entry working. Well, I got it to get an LED to do something. It really didn’t take much work, though the library didn’t quite work out of the box. I had to make a minor change to it to get it going, but now it seems all set.
This weekend I get to play with the LCD. Also, I think I need to make a trip to Fry’s. It’s been too long since I did a project like this. Gonna be fun.
My sunglasses broke this morning. Annoyed. They were just fine last night, and I picked them up today and it just came apart.
A while ago, Sandisk and Adorama had some great prices on their Extreme IV CF cards. They required rebates, but I generally don’t mind those and don’t have problems with them. So far, this time seems no different. This rebate, though, was in the form of a Visa debit card, that expires 3/09. That’s really not too much of a problem for me. I immediately used it to buy myself an Amazon gift certificate which will just sit in my account until I decide to spend it. Amazon credit is as good as cash for me. I placed two orders with these rebates, so I should have another $160 card coming, too.
Maybe I’ll spend some of that money on a new pair of sunglasses. Dammit.
You thought I’d miss today, didn’t you? Cutting it close, but getting my post in before midnight.
On the way back from the bay area yesterday, I was able to watch the sunset through the smoke from the wildfires. I don’t usually get to see much of anything on this stretch of highway because usually I’m the one driving, and I usually do it at night. The sunset was incredible, and I felt like I had to go back while there was still some smoke to shoot it. So I did.
I couldn’t find a place to stop on the side of the road where I really wanted to, but the place I ended up worked out just great.
There’s a few more from today, as well as some older sunset shots, in my Sunset Flickr set.
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