Mandy: The periodic table (teaser)

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About six months ago, I started working on a project I like to call my piece de resistance. It combines a number of maker skills that I’ve learned over the past few years.  I call her Mandy, and she’s a laser-cut periodic table that has a bunch of three-color LEDS, an Arduino that controls the individually addressable LEDs, and a Raspberry Pi that stores information about the elements.  To make it stand out from being “just another bright periodic table”, I added a voice activation component, so Mandy is able to display different periodic trends at your verbal command!

I’m getting ready to move to a different part of the country, so I do not have time to provide more information about Mandy.  In the meanwhile, I created a teaser-trailer for your (OK, my) personal enjoyment.

 

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New adventures

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It was a busy week for me, starting off with a birthday celebration, culminating with Star Wars Day, and it happened to be my last week of teaching at Chicago State.

I have a fake facebook account floating around on the interweb. My original intention was to use it to snoop into other people’s lives and maybe take advantage of a special offer or two. Since the birthday I entered on that account is false, the few real friends of mine who found the account typically wish me a happy birthday some time in the fall. Fortunately, my wife doesn’t do facebook either, so she isn’t fooled by the alternative facts found on-line and knows when to really celebrate my birthday, and she did so this year with a pyramid of lava cakes.

Full disclosure, this picture does not have enough calories in it, so coffee ice cream and freshly made maple-syrup flavored whipped cream were added post production.

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Making electronics projects more accessible

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Increasing accessibility to electronics projects is a mission that resonates with me.  Personally, I find the autonomy and self-sufficiency that comes with “making” to be very rewarding.  With hobbyist sites such as Adafruit and Sparkfun, we have plenty of (inexpensive) resources at our disposal.  As the technology advances, these resources become cheaper – which is a good thing – and smaller – which is a mixed bag.

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OMIS remix

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Here’s the first published remix of my Open Millifluidic Inquiry System (OMIS) made by Thingiverse member Steve Gordon.  There are a couple of nice tweaks, including the use of epoxy to keep the support rods in place (a semi-permanent solution, since many epoxies can dissolve in acetone, and since PLA was used in this build, OMIS won’t be permanently damaged by an acetone treatment).  Another nice tweak is the use of automatic pipette tips instead of syringe needles to connect the syringes to the millifluidic device.  I’ve got some projects that will involve acid in one of the channels, so I need to explore this hack further.

More information about OMIS, such as the bill of materials, build guide, and some ideas on how to use it can be found on my OMIS page.