I’m working on a new art-engineering project with my brother Lex. It’s a Secret Project so I won’t say too much. The project has to do with fish, and making the fish do our bidding. Jump through hoops fish, jump! The first fish, Goldie, died just a few days after she came home. She wasn’t [...]
Hello- It’s been nearly 3 months since I last posted (bad, distracted, Sophi), and I went back and forth about whether or not to post about my new Art project (hint: it involves temperature control and major logistics) or Engineering. I’ve decided to write about one of my most useful lab tools, the oscilloscope. An [...]
Hello! Update: I’ve started a new website, which is keeping me very busy. It’s a website about working for yourself, with interviews with people who have left their “Job” or “Career” and are happy doing what they do now. It’s called The Super Green Dot Project and I hope that you’ll check it out! ~Sophi
I made a couple of PCB versions of a cell phone signal detector and my board layout didn’t work as well as my evaluation board. Thanks to Daryl Mitchell for the photo For a long time, I thought it was because I was home-reflowing the QFN chip. Recently, I had the opportunity to talk to [...]
Hello! I’ve been writing over at Engineer Blogs since February 2012. I’ve written 7 posts so far. As I blog at EB more, my plan is to focus more on writing about Making Time For Projects and Creating Freedom-based Income Thanks to Jeannie for the photo My thoughts and ideas on this are many, and [...]
Scientific research mice are often trained behaviorally by giving them treats as rewards. Some Neuroscience students that I met recently train their mice by giving the treat when they poke their noses into an area of the enclosure they are running around in. The area contains an IR emitter and receiver. When the mouse pokes [...]
This year, Ollie Tanner and I brought the Texting Trapper project to the Bay Area Maker Faire. Update: This project was in the MAKE: Blog … Hooray! I’m also in a Maker Faire after party video (around 8:13) from Dangerous Prototypes The Texting Trapper is a product that detects when people are texting. It is [...]
Oliver Tanner and I are exhibiting the Texting Trapper at Maker Faire Bay Area this upcoming weekend. The Texting Trapper is a large scale exhibit which detects the strength of your cell phone. Oliver designed and fabricated the 8 foot tall VU meter. It’s made from 8′ tall aluminum, which he welded into custom extrusions [...]
I needed a board layout NOW. While I love Laen’s PCB service, I can’t wait 2-3 weeks for boards. I’d never etched boards before, but I’m always up for a challenge! I based my procedure on a bunch of email with my friend Jon and this Hackaday post, which I started reading at 9am. I [...]
I’m building a giant bar graph for the Maker Faire in San Mateo, California. If you’re there, you’ll be able to use it to show your cell phone power level when you’re texting, calling, or going online. I’m definitely nervous about how this is going to work with so many phones in the area and [...]
UPDATE: I have been officially accepted to Maker Faire Bay Area! I will be exhibiting the Texting Trapper, which is the cell phone signal detection circuit I’ve been blogging about. SOOOO excited! The posts will return to all things geek early April. I’m traveling in Switzerland with my husband and partner Ollie. We’re visiting his [...]
For the purposes of my project I am defining cell phone signal detection as a change in power level sensed at the frequency of the cell phone. I am not doing any decoding of signals and there is no jamming (although I fully support projects of this type), I am only detecting a very small [...]
This is a placeholder post, I am going to add to this brief post (graphs! math! antennas!) in the next day or so. So check back! I did want to report that I got a small mention in MAKE blog which was SUPER COOL. Last week, I visited GigaHertz LLC in Pittsburgh. They have been [...]
20 days until Spring! This has been the suckiest winter ever for snowboarding, I haven’t gone even once. It snowed today and I just didn’t feel like it. Instead I’ve been procrastinating with a Mindbands brainwave detector. Last week I re-spun my cell phone signal detector board in two different versions, both to include smaller [...]
I recently designed my first RF signal detector circuit and PCB layout. There’s all kinds of RF layout warnings out there. “It won’t work if you lay out your board wrong” “You’ll have to troubleshoot invisible wireless signals with no spectrum analyzer.” “How are you going to solder that itty bitty QFN package crucial to [...]
Update: I am still building circuits that detect a cell phone signal. I’m only detecting that there is a signal, or the fact that there is current present. I’m not detecting what that signal actually means, decoded. That would be illegal. Update: it’s not going to be good as a kit design as the chips [...]
DO IT NOW!
High frequency signals are so mysterious! How to design PCBs around them, how to detect the signal, how to usefully process… I’ve ordered some building block parts to string together a detection circuit in the 700MHz to 2.8GHz frequency range. I’m starting with an evaluation board from Analog Devices. I decided to go with an [...]
From some of the emails I’ve gotten, and recent conversations I’ve had, it is clear that many of us are curious about how to characterize, decode or simply identify the level of cell phone signal power/radiation. Wikipedia says typical cell phone transmission power is in the 125mW to 500mW range. I grabbed this picture from [...]
I’ve been building circuits to detect a cell phone signal. I use Verizon service for my smartphone that runs on the 3G network. 3G by the way, stands for 3rd generation, 1st gen being analog, and the 2nd being PCS. Verizon uses the 800 and 1900MHz frequency band for the 3G network. The basic concept [...]
It’s been a busy few weeks. Lots of traveling, Finowfurt, Black Rock City, New York City and last week to Washington, DC for the Solar Decathlon. The Solar Decathlon is an exhibition where 20 student teams compete in 9 categories centered around energy efficiency. I had been wanting to go to the Decathlon for the [...]
Since my last post, I have been to Burning Man, the Open Hardware Summit and World Maker Faire NYC. All of those recent events were AWESOME and have been documented hugely online. However, this post is about Getting Started in creating an electronic or interactive piece. Daniel Rozin’s Wooden mirrors are my absolute favorite interactive [...]
From Ran Ortner, winner of the Grand Rapids Art Prize 2009. “… if I ever encounter a young artist who has any doubts about investing the next ten years of his or her life in his or her work, my advice is always to quit. If you have any capacity to quit whatsoever, most certainly [...]
Last week I visited Finowfurt near Berlin, Germany, Europe, Earth, Milky Way, Universe for the Chaos Communication Camp conference. The conference was billed as a conference for Hackers and Associated Life Forms. This photo, taken by Jake Blau, is of a rocket sculpture in the center. The talks included everything from DIY solar to e-waste [...]
Every Maker or Engineer needs some kind of workshop to create in. In 1994 I rented a barn on the property of a friend’s rental in Olympia, WA. The barn was awesome, with a high ceiling and huge doors that opened up to the outside. In October, when we arrived, it was warm outside. In [...]
Shutter glass goes opaque when current is applied, and clear when there is none. I grabbed the following gif from Liquid Crystal Technologies. I had the cost of 100 1″ x 3″ pieces estimated and it was in the $4,000 range. Sigh. Since this material is essentially glass, the material is fairly stiff, even in [...]
Problem: I have a 12VDC fan that needs to be switched on and off. It’s a pretty windy fan with an Endless Breeze label on it, claims to be 900CFM and uses 36Watts. Problem: I’m using a microprocessor (PIC16F877A if you must know) to switch the fan on and off. The fan needs about 3A [...]
This…you have got to see. .