How USB Charging in iProducts Works
This may seem tirade-ish, and if so I'm sorry. This was spurred by the story posted here at TUAW. Basically, there's a little USB pass through dongle that you can buy to eliminate your iPad "not charging" woes. TUAW kind of misses the boat on bothering to explain or understand it, so here's how it works, in comment-on-the-article form (so read the article first):
Custom Breadboard
My custom board
A few people asked about this. I've seen breadboards with binding posts before, but usually they're nothing special, just some banana plugs near the board that you can screw a jumper wire into. I wanted something a little more full featured, so I whipped this up.
Touch Brightness Bulbdial
Let's make it touch sensitive!
UPDATE: People keep asking about the breadboard setup. Fair enough. I'll throw together a quick overview when I get home today.
UPDATE: here it is: http://www.alexwhittemore.com/?p=462
The Bulbdial clock from Evil Mad Scientist is probably the coolest clock idea I've ever seen. Even cooler are my parents, who got the kit for my birthday. The basic idea is that three rings of LEDs cast shadows onto a clock face to form H/M/S hands, somewhat like a sundial, with the hands slowly animating around. A lot of thought clearly went into making this kit, and it's very nicely done, but there's a major drawback: I want to use it on my bed side table, where I usually keep a clock, but it's too bright for me to fall asleep! Of course, that's been thought of too: in the normal view mode, the three buttons at the bottom of the clock are brightness up, down, and "mute," which turns off the LEDs entirely. But they're hard to get to buried underneath the frame of the clock, and it makes muting the display cumbersome in the dark. Let's fix that!
How to make iPhone headsets suck less
Crappy Buds
Say what you will, but iPhones are pretty awesome, and so are the headsets that come with them. At least up until you put them in your ears. The inline controls are awesome, but the speakers are uncomfortable, lacking in low end punch, and do nothing for sound isolation. Other, much better headphones exist, but for under a gajillion dollars, none come with the same kind of inline controls. Here's how to have the best of both worlds.
TI LaunchPad: First Impressions.
Meet the LaunchPad
I've been playing with the TI LaunchPad the last day or two since I've been home in the US. I ordered two when they launched, but I was abroad and only just started playing with them, and I have some first impressions to share.
ATX -> Bench Power Supply Mod
Yay bench power!
WARNING WARNING WARNING! Switching power supplies have many BACs (beefy-ass capacitors) that can hold lots of juice long after you've unplugged the unit. Do not crack one open like I did without knowing what you're doing, it could seriously injure you or at least be really uncomfortable when you shock the crud out of yourself. I'm not responsible if you do just that, don't say I didn't warn you. I have a cable I made with a brush at the end that grounds everything it touches, I use it to brush the back of all power electronics before I work on them. You should too.
This is a pretty common one, but I like to add flair. I needed a bench power supply. Sadly, bench power supplies are very expensive, and I'm a poor college student. What I do have are computers. Lots of computers. In fact, I just brought to the recyclers about 100lbs of computer waste from machines that are too slow for even my standards. Luckily, one thing computers have going for them is very refined, VERY powerful power supplies.
USB Breakout Cable
USB metering goodness.
A while back I wanted to monitor how much current my iPhone could draw under different conditions. I had seen a cable before where somebody brought it into a project box with a couple of screws on top exposing the two unshorted positive leads and the straight-through ground (such that you could measure both current through the cable or voltage across it), but I felt I could make things both smaller and more fully-featured.
WESD51 Lockout Pencil Tip
I just received a very nice Weller WESD51 soldering station from work where we had a few that just weren't frequently used. I was annoyed, however, to find out that the temperature lockout was set - that is, I couldn't raise the temperature above an arbitrary value set by someone as an upper limit earlier. I was more annoyed to find out that there's no control on the panel to set this. Instead, there's some silly magic wand that you're supposed to hold over a logo on the panel to get the job done. A wand that I didn't have. So I was looking around online to try to figure out what the thing was, and I noticed it looked like the tip was a little magnet. And so it is - there's a magnetic reed switch mounted underneath the "ESD Safe" logo on this unit that controls a number of functions. In the end, I am now just keeping one of the many magnetic reaching wand pencils I have laying around next to my station to set the lockout temperature. Hopefully, if you found this via Google, you're less confused now.
As an aside, a bunch of the other settings of the unit are managed via this reed switch too. I'm including a link to the documentation here, since it was a bit difficult to track down.
Weller WESD51 Soldering Station Documentation
Soldering The Thinnest Wires Ever Conceived: Headphone Modding
Acrylic insulated wires stink, for sure, but when they're stranded and micro-fine, they stink WAY more.
I may use this blog to post mainly iPhone or software related articles, but I am an electrical engineering student, and as an EE, I love me some good, clean hardware. Therefore, when my favorite pair of earbuds kicked the bucket the other day, my first thought went to the in-box iPhone headset and, more importantly, how much those earbuds suck. My favorite bang-for-the-buck earbuds EVER are Skullcandy Full Metal Jackets, primarily because I got them at TJ Maxx for $25. In general though, they have silicone pads that seal out sound, instead of the hyper uncomfortable iPod earbuds that fall out and sound like crap. I was super bummed when my FMJs broke, but luckily, the part that broke was on the plug end of the earphones. That is, both earbuds themselves still work fine, only the plug is dead. My thought was to cut the crappy iPhone buds off their cable (which includes a microphone and remote button) and graft on my beloved FMJs.