Finished sign earlier this week. The calibration software I made took a long time, but now it’s pretty robust and the end result is a sign that is much more accurate. I should document how to use it. Rick also came by and filmed the sign. Which means I’m done. For now.
Ok, I’ve seriously fallen off the wagon. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t working. I finished the sign. I had a major setback, however, when I first assembled everything and turned it on. The sign wasn’t readable. I thought the letters would be more readable when more were added—the more letters, the more context, the easier to read. However, the opposite was true. The visual noise from the still-visible inactive lights were overwhelming to the eye, and the result was a mess.
So I bought some gels, and with Rick’s help, we covered up some of the lights with a dark grey gel, which helped a lot. The blue gel looked weird. However, the light that shone through the gel was of a very different character than the original. In the end, the solution I settled on was to paint the light bars black and put electrical tape on the sides of the fluorescents. This was so incredibly tedious, and I was unsure of the final result, that it was extremely demoralizing slow-going as I went along. I’m really happy with the outcome, though. Now I need to film it and show it to people.
It’s been a kill-yourself, hardworkin’ marathon of soldering and assembling at the studio. Hopefully it’ll get done soon. It took me one hour to make those two rainbow cables, btw.
Got a new bench grinder for the shop. It came in mega handy when I made these light bar assemblies. I think something might be wrong with my die–the shafts tend to screw in crooked, and it was hard to get the die to catch. The cutting, tapping, threading, and grinding took many hours and is turning my mind to mush.
I may have to do the shafts over again if they are too crooked. I can either: 1. Bend the bars so the shafts are at right angles or 2. Buy a new die and hope that it threads straight.
Assembled the linear actuators. Yay.
I’ve got some serious catching up to do. I’ve spent the last week making the shuttles, among other things (like ordering parts for the pcbs, and cutting/drilling the guide rods). Also, rick has been taping me for a documentary.
Tuesday, what happened? I don’t really remember. I probably had a bad day and didn’t get much of anything done. Wednesday I decided to sleep in. I got a shit-ton done Wednesday. I did all these little things, like pay bills and write emails and do my laundry. Then I finished up the PCBs and sent off for them.
Thursday I went down to canal and bought some more plexi. I then, over the course of the day, drilled three plexi pieces, and routed one of them. The routing looks good. The slot is small, however, so I’m waiting to see how assembly goes with this board before I route the others.
I also went to Maya’s opening. Everything was working well. Went to raku’s mom’s opening. Went to some other openings and saw lots of people I know.
I’m thinking of starting my day with this log because I enter an internet vortex when I start with email.
Drilled holes in another piece of plexi. Here you can see how I’ve mapped out the holes. I also tested out the router. That thing is scary. It will work well for cutting the slits in the plexi, but it’s not precise enough for the nylon shuttles. Called Leif to see if I can come by an use the mill at Madagascar. Got my hair cut at that old-timey place outside my studio.
Yesterday was productive, thus today was not really. I did two tests. One tested all letter combinations on the device. I found one problem: Y->X. This turned out to be mechanical, as the shaft caught on some of the chipped plexiglass. A little work with a file fixed this right up.
I wrote a script that will take lists of words and isolate only the 4-letter ones, and arrange them alphabetically. Thus I can put a word into one of my other apps like “KILL” and generate alliterative poetry like this:
BOMB
BOOM
BURN
BURY
CHOP
CITY
COMA
COOK
CUSS
DEAD
DEER
DICE
DOPE
Things I did today:
