vespine v1.0

LED Cube at the Melbourne Mini Maker Faire! 14th Jan 2012.

2011-12-30T08:40:00.005+11:00

My LED Cube will be an exhibit at the first Melbourne Mini Maker Faire on 14th Jan 2012!

If you want to come along you do have to book a free ticket because space is limited. If you are a "maker", they still have spaces left for exhibits, talks, workshops, performances, whatever.

Christopher Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011)

2011-12-18T16:40:00.000+11:00

There's a little Christopher Hitchens shaped hole in my life now that will be very hard to fill.

"Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated." - Christopher Hitchens.

Tastes of the Caribbean: Chicken and rice.

2011-09-06T21:32:00.003+10:00

I really enjoy cooking. I like experimenting a bit in the kitchen but recently I started to realize that I'm mostly returning to my several "tried and true" recipes. I cook mostly European and Asian, and among those mostly Italian, French and Chinese.

I thought it might be a great idea to expand a little, make some new recipes that I've never tried before, from cuisines that I'm not so familiar with. Expand the spice cupboard a bit and in the process try some new things.

My philosophy with this has been to look for recipes that don't go over the top. I have a full time job and these meals have to feed me and my partner, it's not a Saturday dinner party, it's dinner. So I'm looking for relatively quick and simple meals, the kind of stuff that gets eaten on a daily basis. That's the approach I want to take to learn about these cuisines.

I've done two so far and this is my third, it's only now occurred to me that this might be fun to blog. Don't worry, I'll post the 1st two when I make them again sooner or later.

So tonight I present, Caribbean: Chicken and rice.

I usually just search for "simple *pick a cuisine* recipes" and go from there. I found a few rice and bean recipes and a few chicken recipes and I took what I liked from each and made a bit of a mash up.

This made about 3 portions. There are three elements to this dish:

The Rice:

2 cups of rice. The recipe said basmati, but I buy big bags of jasmin, so that's what I used.

1 tin of beans (black or red kidney beans)

1 clove or garlic crushed

some thyme

2/3 of a cup of coconut milk

The Chicken

600g skinless chicken thigs, it was about 6.

curry powder

allspice

The Dressing

1 Green chili, no seeds.

1 clove of garlic crushed

a lime - I couldn't get a lime so I used a lemon.

6 spring onions

The recipe called for some shallots but I didn't have any.

Trim and chop the thighs in half, rub them down with the curry powder and allspice. I was quite generous with both. Let them sit.

Finely slice the spring onions and chili, (we like spicy but the big green chilies are actually very mild) mix it with the garlic and lime juice. Mix and let it sit too.

Cook the rice in a rice cooker, and BBQ or grill the chicken.

I BBQ'd by moonlight tonight.

Fry up the garlic in a pan with a little bit of oil. Then add the beans and thyme and soon after the coconut milk.

Once it's reduced a bit, mix through the cooked rice and cook it just for a couple more minutes.

Then put the chicken on the rice and spoon a good serve of the dressing on top. The recipe said to garnish with some lime zest right at the end but since I was using lemon I decided to leave it off.

I'm very happy with the way it turned out. If I was going to change anything, I'd think about putting one more element into the rice, it has a sweetness to it which is nice but I thought it was just a bit bland. I can't quite work out what would go in there that wouldn't ruin the balance. Some obvious things I'd add to rice are onion or capsicum but I don't think that would work in this case. Actually having a bit more of a think about it, I bet corn kernels would do the trick! I'll definitely try that next time.

Angry Birds Episode 3 - Score Addict "real scores"

2011-08-09T18:45:00.001+10:00

I had not got episode 3 score addict yet, but someone was very kind to take the time and post it for me. With this chart, I played for about 15 extra minutes on about 5 levels and got the achievement. That was the last score addict I needed. Thanks very much anonymous, who ever you are. :)

6-1 68480
6-2 79360
6-3 74580
6-4 94420
6-5 71540
6-6 80680
6-7 127860
6-8 97320
6-9 106350
6-10 102560
6-11 105700
6-12 109750
6-13 88630
6-14 98170
6-15 129340

7-1 126340
7-2 141930
7-3 70770
7-4 95760
7-5 94950
7-6 76430
7-7 106380
7-8 111910
7-9 141510
7-10 104920
7-11 116300
7-12 102660
7-13 65330
7-14 70530
7-15 163020

8-1 104180
8-2 64110
8-3 136400
8-4 104700
8-5 101070
8-6 116640
8-7 160080
8-8 123030
8-9 147880
8-10 126430
8-11 102270
8-12 110390
8-13 153940
8-14 85340
8-15 144450

Tawny Frogmouth skull

2011-05-25T23:17:00.001+10:00

I found a tawny frogmouth carcass, so, well, to cut a long story short, after a few months and a few experiments, here's the result:

They are an absolutely incredible and beautiful bird. I'm particularly stunned by how much space in the skull is taken up by the eyes, I figured they'd be big, but they literally take up more volume then the rest of the head! I'm very pleased with the result. It doesn't look extremely clean, but the final step was to soak it in peroxide, so I'm confident it's fairly sterile.

Even though their beak does have a bit of a point to it, they are not raptorial. Which means they don't hunt on the wing, or catch prey with their talons, rather they eat things like slugs, moths and small lizards more by foraging then hunting.

Here is a photo I managed to take of one near my house a little while ago, it was an opportunity snap with my phone so it's not the best quality.

If it needs to be said, the bird I found was already expired and I would never intentionally harm wildlife, unless it was about to eat a person, and then only if I didn't think they were a dick.

Angry Birds Episode 2 - Score Addict "real scores"

2011-05-15T17:50:00.000+10:00

Earlier I posted my scores for angry birds episode 1.

As promised here are my scores for episode 2.

Episode 2 - Score Addict - 3 300 000

World 4	World 5
1 - 80790	1 - 57130
2 - 57440	2 - 51840
3 - 57290	3 - 82510
4 - 60920	4 - 70880
5 - 96420	5 - 79550
6 - 57230	6 - 88620
7 - 83350	7 - 87770
8 - 51870	8 - 86260
9 - 43550	9 - 76510
10 - 54900	10 - 50020
11 - 80790	11 - 69860
12 - 95970	12 - 79340
13 - 77440	13 - 67300
14 - 95860	14 - 60570
15 - 91740	15 - 65530
16 - 82040	16 - 118150
17 - 31510	17 - 103320
18 - 83860	18 - 118430
19 - 51680	19 - 125290
20 - 116190	20 - 97390
21 - 87460	21 - 179730

Total - 3 341 210

May your birds fly true and your pigs be well smashed.

Should the west ban the burka?

2011-04-17T19:39:00.001+10:00

France just recently enacted a law which bans wearing full face covering in public. With the specific intent of preventing practising Muslim women from wearing full face religious veils such as the burka.

This is a very hot topic at the moment and I have to say that leading up to this point I was quite undecided on which side I stood. Both sides have some valid and strong points and I'm really not sure there is a clearly right or wrong answer. In the end, while I agree it completely sets off all my “anti-xenophobic" alarms, I have to say I support the ban of face covering in public, especially as a display of religious affiliation.

Here is why.

The bottom line is the burka and similar outfits are a backwards custom which symbolises oppression and inequality, subjugates women and promotes an unwillingness to assimilate or partake in free society.

The main issue seems to be that even if it is all those things, shouldn't Muslims be free to do this in our so called free society? Banning anything just because we don't like it is undemocratic; it reduces freedom not increases it. It is argued that some, maybe many, Muslim women wear a veil completely of their own free will. They don't think it is oppressive or discriminatory, they believe it is part of their religious duty which they undertake, even with pleasure.

Especially in America there really seems to be a culture of aversion regarding ANY laws which can be interpreted to intrude on freedoms in any way, indeed it seems that there is quite a lot of opposition to this law coming from the States. But I think it is too easily forgotten that the freedoms we enjoy today were often hard fought and won by people in the face of opposition, not just the result of "people being free to do whatever they want". The fact is, like it or not, our society already legislates things to conserve a certain level of fundamental cultural norms. Our free and equal culture is not some sort of default that would be reached if everyone did whatever they pleased. People left to their own devices would most certainly not result in a free and equal society for everyone.

There are such things as laws that protect our freedoms, as well as protect certain norms that we consider decent and valuable in society. There's a spectrum of laws which try to obtain a balance, It's not always (or even often) clear cut or black and white, but we do our best, slowly improving on the norms of the past. I'm not claiming every step is in the right direction, but over all progress is undeniably being made. Western cultures have fought for freedoms and rights that we now enjoy and mostly take for granted, some of those freedoms which Muslim cultures have not yet achieved. I'm thinking specifically of movements such the sexual revolution and the woman's rights and more recently gay rights movements. Each of these have had massive impacts on our culture and what we consider to be normal, equal and fair. These are some of the reasons why why we wouldn't imagine creating a culture where one gender is expected to never show so much as a wrist in public, let alone their nose or hair. These are movements which do not have analogues in any Muslim society and I think most of us these days take that for granted.

Do people now assume that anyone growing up in a different culture is just going to come to a democratic western society and automatically "get it"? They'll see our way of life and it'll be like a veil falling from their eyes? Pardon the pun, but that's some of the sentiment that seems to be coming from the people who oppose this ban. As if we got to this point without any effort and as if our society is so obviously “better” that resistance to assimilation is futile. All we have to do is let them see and they'll be converted, but I don't think that is at all necessarily the case. I think it's predominately a numbers game and I think the burka is the very embodiment of opposition to the free democratic western way of life.

There would be some cultures which would like to import customs like genital mutilation or stoning but we already have "umbrella" laws about causing direct physical harm to others, so those customs have to be left behind, no matter how pious they are to the adherents. We also have other laws about direct sexual discrimination which don't cause immediate physical harm, but we still legislate them because they contribute to our free society. However we've never had "umbrella" laws about burkas purely because our society never had that kind of issue to deal with before. This I think is a very important point. Just because we never had a law regarding what we can and can't wear, doesn't mean that such a law would be automatically undemocratic or unfair. But of course we DO already have some laws regarding what people can and can't wear in public.

I think part of the difficulty is that people in free western societies are prone to judge other cultures through their own “filter”, as if all cultures are equally progressive and we should display equal tolerance to all of them. If I think I should have the right to wear a burka if I want, then why should that right be denied anyone else? This seems like the politically correct thing to do. In my opinion however the problem with this argument is the difference in “intention”.

I offer a quote:

http://twocircles.net/2011apr12/french_burqa_ban_infringement_women%E2%80%99s_right_bazmekhwateen.html

"President, Bazm-E-Khwateen, Begum Shahnaz Sidrat stated that burqa or veil in any form cannot be termed as a sign of backwardness. "It is a means for women to remain modest while they are venturing out for work or other purposes. The females of western countries do not use veil and are thus promoting indecency rather than development,"

For many Muslims the burka is not just a symbol, but indeed a physical shield to prevent inadvertent “westernisation”.

If we tolerate or harbour these backwards customs, we are in effect giving a "free pass" for some to ignore the freedoms our society has fought to establish. Give out too many free passes and we might find our societies literally divided between those who want freedom and democracy and those who want everyone to obey ancient barbaric customs from centuries ago. If it's not politically incorrect to demand that backwards customs like FGM and stoning be checked in at the border, I really don't see why some people are finding it so outrageous that we could expect the same of a custom so oppressive and overtly sexist as the burka.

However like I said, I do think it's a numbers game. I don't believe every western society all of a sudden needs to ban the burka. In most countries, isolation and alienation play a strong enough part in seeing these kinds of customs disappear, even if it takes a generation. However in countries like France that have large potentially self sustaining communities of Muslims, a law like the one they've introduced might give it that extra needed push.

New Project: Steam punk clock.

2011-04-03T21:47:00.000+10:00

So I've started a new project. Not nearly as ambitious as the LED cube, but I'm quite excited by it nonetheless.

I bought an awesome vacuum tube display clock from the uk:

http://www.pvelectronics.co.uk/index.php

Currently it's the clock on their front page, if that changes in the future, I got the IN-8 & IN-8-2 Clock Kit.

This thing is really amazing, I've been eying off tube clocks for a while and for the price point (about $100) this clock was my favorite by far. I'm not planning to use the bottom illuminating blue LEDs, I might trial amber LEDs, or UV, or I'll probably just leave them off, it looks great without them.
The question obviously is what to do with it. I spent a few weeks around trash and treasure markets trying to find the perfect "something" to stick it in. I think at week 3 I found a guy who has some old telephone parts, I mean "OLD". This is what I picked up for a measly $15!

Bargain. So I've build the clock:

And I've started taking the phone "thing" apart to clean it up and reassemble it in a more aesthetic manner.

This is a very rough mock up of what it's going to look like when it's done, I think i'll somehow try to incorporate the above terminal strip into the design of the front because it just looks so cool.

One thing I'm really happy with is the switches actually still work! So I will wire them to the switches on the clock so they'll actually control the clock! That will be awesome.

Anyway, there's lots of fiddly work that will need to go into this. I'm planning to sand and re-varnish the wood. There will be some cutting of the heavy chassis that will need to be done, that's maybe the most daunting part because the clock PCB is actually about 1cm wider then the chassis, so i'll need to work out how to fit and mount it. Also the terminal strip will need some shaping and i'm not sure how i'll do that yet because it looks like it's actually made out of black perspex or something, i think it must be not an original part. Anyway, just thought I'd throw this up here as a starting point. Will post some more when I make more progress.

My cube project on hack-a-day!

2011-03-21T07:48:00.000+11:00

One thing I've been procrastinating about for a while is submitting my project to hack-a-day. I've been following that site for years now, so exposing my project on it to scrutiny from a hack crowd was a little bit nerve wracking. That plus it really still feels like I need to work on it some more, but I'll probably be saying that the rest of my life! Well I'm very pleased to say that I finally straightened things up a little and bit the bullet and the kind folks at HaD featured me today!

http://hackaday.com/2011/03/20/third-times-a-charm-512-led-cube-kicks-it-up-a-notch-with-rgb-leds/

Thanks to everyone for the kind comments that have been left already, It's really made my day.

Higher quality youtube clip of 8x8x8 RGB LED Cube/

2011-03-19T21:26:00.006+11:00

I've had this clip up on youtube for a while but I think i forgot to link it here.

So here it is:

Leaf bug

2011-03-14T15:52:00.001+11:00

Found this cute little leaf bug, was only about 10mm long.

EDIT 08/07/2011 I've worked it out, it is in fact a planthopper, specifically Acanalonia conica. It is in a separate order then Katydids. Leafhoppers are Hemiptera which are known as "True Bugs", where as katydids are Orthoptera which includes grasshoppers, locusts and crickets.

Angry Birds Episode 1 - Score Addict "real scores"

2011-03-12T15:20:00.001+11:00

I'm a big fan of Angry Birds. I've got 3 stars on all the levels, but I decided to go back and try to get the score addict achievements for at least a few of the episodes. I have now got episode 1, 2 and 4 but i think i've given up on episode 3 for now. The levels in episode 3 seem the hardest to me, I've played through several times and am still 100 000 short, which is quite a lot.

The slightly annoying thing about the score addict achievement is there is no track of how many times you've attempted a level or what your score progression has been. So after a while, a few weeks or months, you completely lose track how many times you've tried a particular level and how likely it is that you'll get a higher score on it.

Which is where a post like this would have come in handy, I looked and never found one, so I thought I'd make my own.

I'm just going to list all the level scores it took me to get
"The Angry Birds Episode 1 - Score Addict Achievement. "

With this you can compare your own score against mine and if you have a much lower score then me on any level, you know that's a level you can try to get a better score on.. Of course i'm not claiming my way is the only way or even a good way to get score addict, it's just ONE way.

I still wish there was a list like this for Episode 3.. If YOU have the Episode 3 - Score Addict achievement, I'd love to see your scores, I know it's a pain to write all the scores out since there isn't one screen that shows them all, you have to actually start each level to read the top score off, but it took me less then 10 minutes. Hope it helps.

I'll post episode 2 and 4 later.

Episode 1 - Score Addict - 4 000 000

World 1	World 2	World 3
1 - 33040	1 - 69250	1 - 65990
2 - 61100	2 - 68080	2 - 53180
3 - 42870	3 - 118890	3 - 62300
4 - 29370	4 - 54430	4 - 40280
5 - 65440	5 - 80150	5 - 91600
6 - 35880	6 - 69100	6 - 60870
7 - 45880	7 - 52560	7 - 57080
8 - 56750	8 - 56990	8 - 86060
9 - 50710	9 - 28930	9 - 68660
10 - 71070	10 - 42140	10 - 50990
11 - 58210	11 - 83610	11 - 55380
12 - 51480	12 - 64410	12 - 56190
13 - 50630	13 - 90160	13 - 47920
14 - 70250	14 - 52290	14 - 54690
15 - 45190	15 - 77580	15 - 55740
16 - 67620	16 - 74000	16 - 74340
17 - 55940	17 - 49220	17 - 74880
18 - 49890	18 - 69730	18 - 89330
19 - 40610	19 - 52950	19 - 67730
20 - 54700	20 - 57350	20 - 145650
21 - 88890	21 - 79810	21 - 125140

Total - 4 001 150

May your birds fly true and your pigs be well smashed.

Adam and Eve: The failed project.

2011-02-13T01:00:00.000+11:00

So I was reading Genesis again, as you do, and even though I have read many critiques and parodies of the Biblical creation narrative, one criticism occurred to me which I don't believe I have heard before.

It's not hard to find criticism in Genesis, in fact you don't have to look past the first two books and many people have concentrated on just those (they're called "books", but they really just take up the first two pages); they point out that there is a different order of creation in the two accounts given in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. They say there are contradiction which proves the stories are "made up". Although Christians, being Christians, have no problem reconciling the two stories, even literal creationists don't have a problem with this...

However it's Genesis 3 where the REAL action begins..

Ok, let me set the stage for you:

Genesis 1:

God creates the world and everything in it, he creates man and woman. Genesis 1 ends on the sixth day of creation. Interestingly, the mandate to not eat from the tree of knowledge is NOT given in Genesis 1, God in fact says “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. " But that's a bit beside the point.

Genesis 2:

Basically recounts the same story as Genesis 1, I'll ignore the discrepancies. There is an important addition:

¹⁷But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

And the very LAST thing that happens in Genesis 2 is the creation of Eve to be Adam's "wife" and the final line is that they were naked and felt no shame.

Genesis 3:

Now this is important, so i'm going to quote directly again:

¹ Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

⁴And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

Well, I think you should get the idea.

So let's get this straight: God's plan was to create a paradise for Adam and Eve. They were immortal, innocent and unashamed, so I think it's safe to assume God's plan was for Adam and Eve to live forever in this paradise.

However, the VERY FIRST THING that happens in this garden after Adam and Eve are created is a snake comes along and talks Eve into doing the one thing she and Adam are NOT supposed to do.

NOTHING ELSE HAPPENS BEFORE THIS!

Forget even that technically, Adam and Eve didn't actually KNOW the difference between right and wrong because God hadn't taught them that. Just ignore that little inconvenient nugget. Also forget that actually God lied and the snake spoke the truth since Adam and Eve didn't in fact die that day.

Now I'm no project manager, but if you were planning something like the Garden of Eden project and the very first thing that happened was a snake came along and spoiled your entire plan, would you really be justified in punishing Adam and Eve for your ruined plan?

In case the answer to that question is still a little ambiguous and you might be inclined to say "maybe", let's put it this way:

If you are an OMNIPOTENT, OMNISCIENT and OMNIPOTENT God and you're working on the Garden of Eden project and you "finish", and the very first thing that happens is a SNAKE comes along and spoils your plan, who's fault is it really?

Hardware complete.

2011-01-20T21:30:00.000+11:00

So after a few more hours of cutting and fitting, the cube is now hardware complete! ..

Pretty much anyway:) There might be a few more minor and cosmetic adjustments, like maybe i'll paint the ribbon cables black, or I might make a cover for that side of the box, but I kinda like the exposed look of the whole thing, nothing to hide.

I have to admit I think I botched the cable routing a little bit, the ribbon cables are much more of a mess then they have to be. The routing from the driver boards to the cube inputs is far from optimal. This is due to me changing my driver interface part way through the build. It's something that could definitely be solved in software, but I really can't be stuffed hacking the firmware anymore.

I also have to fix the power jack and maybe think about rubber feet, those ball end nuts might be a bit tough for resting on wooden surfaces. Apart from that, i'm planning to get back into the programming and work out some more patterns and maybe even some controls, like buttons, but that feels a little less likely at the moment. Will have to wait and see how I go.

Also, i need to get a can of air duster, it needs a bit of a clean.

Base progress

2011-01-19T21:34:00.000+11:00

So I've painted the panels and got the electronics roughly in place. I've cut a notch along the edge with the cables, i think I'll either paint them black, or install a side panel to cover them, haven't decided yet. Next i'll actually fasten the electronics to the base and cut the main bolts to length to secure everything down.

back to the cube

2011-01-15T22:55:00.000+11:00

Finally got my butt back into gear to spend some more time with the cube.

I'm in the process of getting the mount completed and fixing all the electronics down. Once that's done, the only thing left will all be in software, so that will be great.

Here's some pics of the mount in progress. I just used thread bar and nuts and washers.

I haven't yet worked out entirely how big the gap has to be between the top and bottom board. Once I mount the electronics, it'll be easier to see what the gap needs to be.

Once i know what the gap is going to be i'll be able to trip the bolts to size.

I'm actually extremely pleased with how it's coming up. It's quite a basic approach but I think it looks really great, has that utilitarian / industrial look. I have some flat black spray paint that i'm going to spray the particle boards with.

Should have some more progress photos over the next few days.

Electronic Pick pocketing - A skeptical analysis.

2010-12-09T15:40:00.002+11:00

There's a story going around about how people can now steal from you by reading your "RFID enabled" credit card by just walking past you. WREG News 3 report

Everything in the article and clip is technically true and possible, however they do present it in a very biased and hyped way.

In fact, what this clip resembles most to me is a great advertisement for the guy and his company, who just happen sell the special "wallet" which will protect you from this latest "great danger".

This happens pretty much every time a new technology comes around: Luddites protested the industrial revolution as it would leave everyone out of work and ruin the world. Of course in the age of capitalism, people work out how to make money off even this: Label it as the latest "great danger" that will ruin the world and then sell something to protect you from it. it happened to the internet, mobile phones and now RFID credit cards. They call it "technology run wild". What they "forget" to mention is that banks are not that stupid, of course they know this kind of stuff is going to happen and they have some very sophisticated security measures against it.

The only reasonable way someone is really going to get away with this is, funnily enough, exactly how the guy describes: someone has to buy something "not so expensive" on the internet and have it sent to an empty house and collect it after it is delivered. But you can really only do this once; that's quite a lot of effort and risk to steal something cheap from the internet, so who is really going to bother? No one can take a lump sum of "cash" out of your credit card because the accounts would be traced, and if someone tries to buy anything really expensive it is also suspicions and the bank will probably notice. I've been called by my bank before when I've bought stuff overseas, to check that the transaction is legitimate. Someone could try to steal a LOT of card numbers and make a lot of small transactions, but they couldn't have it all delivered to one place since that's also suspicious and they could eventually get caught collecting it.

The most important thing that the report does not mention is that if you do get your credit card number stolen, you are not even liable. It doesn't matter what bank you are with, every bank I know of has this policy since at least the beginning of internet banking. If your credit card is used in an unauthorized transaction, the bank will pay you back, full stop. Whether your wallet is lost or stolen, whether someone steals your credit card number from the internet, from another legitimate transaction, or if someone steals it using a RFID card reader.

Obviously the banks don't want to be paying money just for fraud, they take this very seriously, even with the added "risk" (real or perceived), the banks still think it is worth it for adapting this new technology. Why? Because it makes life so much easier! Imagine a world where you don't have to insert cards, sign pieces of paper, wait for print outs, do people really LOVE doing all that stuff? Do they think that system is more "fraud proof"? Remember before the internet when we had to imprint credit cards with those clunking machines? The 1st thing invented after credit cards was credit card fraud. Do people give up their credit cards because they aren't worth the risk? The only reason I've even known for people to give up credit cards is because they don't trust them selves with the money. That's a real reason.

Trust me, if these wallets were really going to protect your (or the bank's) money in a proper "risk analysis", these banks would be the 1st to make you have one, it would already be incorporated into the card. But who knows: maybe one day such a thing will be incorporated into the cards, if the banks decide it is worth it. That wouldn't prove me "wrong," all that would prove is that the banks are always looking to reduce their risk and costs. For the time being, I'm not going to rush out to buy any "special wallet".

I think part of the problem is that our lives are getting so "convenient" that some people become completely oblivious to the fact that you still need a certain level of vigilance and responsibility over your actions and finances. They think the world owes them a service which gives them instant access to an unlimited amount of money anywhere, at any time and in any place, with no cost or risk or delay. Often a transaction online can SEEM like all those things, but what we don't get to appreciate is the "hidden" costs and risks, so when they do appear, some people feel indignant as if this was not part of "the deal". But of course, it's life, everything has a risk and a cost and I do mean everything.

I don't want to "down play" credit card fraud; it is very real, it does happen and it's probably not as uncommon as a lot of people think, but there are systems in place to help protect us and as long as you take a basic level of precautions and responsibility, you should not be out of pocket even if you are unlucky enough to be the target of fraud. The most important thing do to is regularly check your statements for unusual transactions and report anything as soon as you can, especially a lost or stolen card, as long as you do that the bank should cover you if any unauthorized transactions get through on your card. But this is something everyone should be doing already anyway. I don't believe the introduction of RFID significantly increases the risk of using your credit card.

in pictures

2010-06-23T22:18:00.001+10:00

Here are some pictures, these are much better then the clips at showing how the cube really looks.

running code from 3dleds.com

2010-06-23T21:02:00.000+10:00

here is a slightly better video clip..I have to work out how to take a better clip, this is still pretty terrible quality. It doesn't really do the cube justice at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2dKcKZhF2Q

After i wrote the post yesterday a slight improvement occurred to me to the way I interpret the 3dleds code. The available code is in 8 bit resolution, but my cube runs at 12 bits. That means the code's maximum value is 254 but my cube's maximum is 4096. To overcome this, i just multiplied the code by 15. This was a very quick and dirty approach. It seems obvious now that a much better approach would be to instead use the code's value as a percentage and multiply my full value by it, this gives a much more faithful reproduction of the code's intended outcome.

I did this simply by declaring v as a float instead of an int and changing the line v = rawData[p]*15;

to this:

v = rawData[p];

v= (v/0xff)*0xfff;

explosion test clip

2010-06-22T21:42:00.001+10:00

slightly better quality video of the explosion animation from 3dleds.com running on my cube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlJ9fSPPUEc

For anyone attempting this for them self, I imagine if you got this far it probably isn't very hard to work out how to run these animations on your cube. If you've developed this for yourself like I have, there is no "standard" way to program these so there will no doubt be some tweaking you need to do for yourself.

For me, in my code, the entire cube is represented by a single data array:

display_array[NUM_ROWS][NUM_TLCS*16];

where NUM_ROWS and NUM_TLCS are number or rows and TLC drives respectively. 8 and 12 in my case.

All 12 TLCs are in series, the 1st 4 control RED, the next 4 green and the last 4 blue.

I also have a easy function called SET

static void set(unsigned char row, unsigned char channel, int value)
{
display_array[row][NUM_TLCS * 16 - 1 - channel] = value;
}//set

The trick is, my array is made up of 16bit "ints", however the TLCs only accept 12bit values. You can't make an array of 12bit elements, but my 12 bit values happily sit in 16 bit "ints". Instead of trying "pack" the values into my array like some code I've seen, instead I strip the values out when it comes time to send them through the SPI module. I won't go into that here.

So, after studying the file description on the 3dleds site, I figured out that I would have to transfer the values row by row and color by color, AND frame by frame with a bit of a delay to control the speed of the animation.

All i then had to do was work out the offsets of data for each color, row and the "frame" and create loops for each. 3 colors nested inside rows, all nested inside frames. chr, chg and chb probably didn't have to be separate values, but it was easier to picture for me this way. I'm still only a novice programmer so you'll probably find this either not interesting, or already obvious.. But I like sharing so here it is:

int f; //frame
int r; //row

int chr; //chan r
int chg; //chan g
int chb; //chan b

int v; //value

int p; //position.

for (f=0;f<128;f++)
{

for(r=0;r<8;r++)
{

for (chr = 0; chr < 64; chr++)
{
p = chr+ (r*64) + (f*1536);
v = rawData[p]*15;
set(r,chr,v);
}

for (chg = 64; chg < 128; chg++)
{
p = chg+ 512-64 +(r*64) + (f*1536);
v = rawData[p]*15;
set(r,chg,v);
}

for (chb = 128; chb < 192; chb++)
{
p = chb+ 1024-128+(r*64) + (f*1536);
v = rawData[p]*15;
set(r,chb,v);
}

DelayMs(3);
}//for r

}//for f

8x8x8 RGB LED Cube test pattern explosion

2010-06-21T23:02:00.002+10:00

I worked out how to play the test patterns available at http://3dleds.com/ and this is the result.

I still have some minor tweaking to do and I didn't finish work until late so it's time to go to bed, but i'll work on it some more in the next couple of days and take some nicer video of this and some other patterns! I'll also post the code that translated the raw hex files into something my cube could use.

I'll have to email the 3dleds guy to let him know how much I appreciate having those patterns to try out! It'll take me ages to work out how to make my own good patterns.

Let me just say one more thing: WOOOOHOOOOO!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_njo76C1QYg

I am ROBERT KAUFMAN, the Personal Attorney to a Foreign Contractor: SCAM!

2010-06-21T21:13:00.002+10:00

I just got this scam email and a friend request on facebook that had by real surname. I'm just posting it here so if people google for it they might find this, since there so far seems to be only one other place on the web which mentioned a similar letter. So if you got a something like this: don't be fooled, it's definitely a scam! I know this would be quite obvious to most people who use email and the internet a lot, but there are a lot of people who don't. So don't kid yourself, real attorney's do not use facebook or email when trying to contact people to find beneficiaries of $5.5M USD, especially not from a "yahoo.com" email account. And real attorney's have a much better grasp of the English language. Trust me, in a case like this you have nothing to gain from even replying.

Robert says, "Attn: **********

I am ROBERT KAUFMAN, the Personal Attorney to a Foreign Contractor Engr. B. J *********** i. He died along with his
entire family his wife and two children in airplane Boeing 727 ghastly Air-Crash on 25 5 2003 .
Before his death, he had an account with the bank valued at ( 5.5 M USD) at his Bank in Benin here.
I called the Bank Maneger about this matter before contacted you and he
said that i should contact any of this family member before the money can
pay to them as i want.
So that the proceeds of the pâyment of the money to your account number to
your Country so that i will come over there for the sharing of the money.
present Back to me with your contact informations as follow.
1 YOUR NAME:
2 YOUR PHONE NUMBER:
3 YOUR FAX:
4 EMAIL :
I will forward to you all the necessary documents attached.
Email me here:barristerrobertkaufman@yahoo.com
Regards,
Barr. ROBERT KAUFMAN. (Esq.)
Phone: 00229 99105363.".

8x8x8 RGB LED Cube controlled with PIC32 and some overdue homage.

2010-06-19T18:22:00.006+10:00

HERE'S THE VIDEO!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ohi4aGWeFs

The rest is a big long rant so feel free to skip it! ;)

So I've spent more hours then I'd like to admit during the last week trying to get this thing going, including a session until 3am last night but I am very happy to say I think I've nailed it! I've finally got some awesome TLC display driver software running on my PIC32. I've very pleased with my self, so much of what I've learned over the last year seemed to come together and it looks great!

Don't get me wrong, there's still a LONG way to go ;) But this is a very important step. This is potentially the end of "hardware development". I do still have a couple of little bugs to iron out, but i'm pretty sure that's to do with cable routing and stuff which should be minor in the scheme of things.

For anyone interested in the technical side, I wanted to try to get the cube to refresh at 100Hz, this meant I would need a layer refresh of 800Hz, since there are 8 layers, obviously. The TLC requires 4096 gray scale clocks (GSCLK) per layer draw so this means I needed a GSCLK of about 3.3MHz.

I used Output Compare modules to generate the GSCLK and also the required BLANK and XLAT pulses at the end of EVERY cycle.

This is something I came up by myself. The other codes I've seen always have a routine to pulse XLAT after the data has finished being sent. But after studying all the signals and with the help of my dad's oscilloscope which he lent me, i realized that my data HAS to send at every layer swap so there's no point having a routine pulse BLANK or XLAT, they just have to pulse at the end of every layer draw, full stop.

So I have the three different pulses set up on three separate output compare modules, and the timer which they are synched to generates an interrupt at 800HZ which then sends the data to the TLCs.

At this point i'd like to say if I didn't borrow my dad's oscilloscope i'd still be guessing what's going on! That thing has been invaluable. Just to be able to see the waveforms and confirm what frequency they're running and stuff like that. I really couldn't have done this without it. Especially the waveforms made by the output compare modules, I'm sure if you decypher the datasheet it has all the details there, but at high frequencies where delays of one clock pulse can make the difference between 2MHz and 3MHz, Trying to work out exactly what the datasheet is trying to say and get it right to the single clock pulse with pen and paper, I just don't have the skill to do that confidently.

If you are attempting something like this, or considering it, buy, beg, borrow or steal an oscilloscope, I don't fancy your chances if you don't at least have access to use one once in a while. This is something i didn't consider when I started this project. Fortunately, my dad has one I can borrow whenever I need.

There one other "main" thing to work out at this stage is whether the the way I have the "display driver" code running will allow enough cpu time to run "pattern" software as complex as I imagine i'd like to get it. Either way it shouldn't be terrible; either it can and it's fine, or it can't and I might have to enlist a 2nd uC for the pattern control. That would be another challenge but I think it would be fun too! There are some things I've learned about pic32 which make the idea of doing that no so scary. The main one being no separate DMA memory space!

My "data" was too large to fit into the 2Kb of DMA memory in the pic 24 so the idea of shooting the data between two chips was scary! It would double the amount of data the display chip would have to process, which pretty much defeats the purpose of processing the data on another chip. However the PIC32 doesn't have this limitation, so I theoretically should be able to send it the whole array at a decent refresh rate without the CPU taking a hit at all!

Anyway sorry for the technical ranting.

Also at this stage I'd like to acknowledge some of the inspiration and assistance I've had over the last year. I've got a while to go yet but it's probably something I should have done a while ago.

If you are thinking of building a big RGB LED Cube, this is pretty much a road map so far of the journey I've made.

First of the bat "chrmoe" and his amazing instructable:

http://www.instructables.com/id/LED-Cube-4x4x4/

This is what really got me started in LED cubes and microcontrollers. I've dabbled in electronics before this point, but never programmed a chip my self. I completed this project and knew straight away that this was just the beginning. So thank you very much chrmoe, you rule!

I also have to mention the awesome folks at avrfreaks.net even though I betrayed them and moved to PICs. When I was doing the above project and experimenting myself with the code, the help I got from that forum was awesome. The people there are some of the most helpful, witty and funny people I've come across a internet forum anywhere!

Two users in particular went way beyond the call of duty to help me out, JS and Kartman, thank you both!

Next is the

http://www.hypnocube.com/

This thing is awesome! This is really what inspired me to build my own RGB cube. I still had no idea how I was going to do it, but I knew I had to give it a shot! My cube assembly is pretty closely modeled on the build documents available at the hypnocube site. I came close to buying one of these but really wanted the challenge of doing it for myself, plus i wanted to go BIGGER! If you don't have a spare year to waste ;) then this is the way to have your own cube without developing it from scratch. It's easily the nicest RGB Cube i've seen for sale.

Then I found Dave Clausen's LED Cylinder.

http://www.nycresistor.com/2008/07/26/led-cylinder/

This project is what I based my basic control design on. Using MOSFETs on the high side and TLC5940 LED drivers. Also seeing his code helped in creating my software.

Next acleone and his Arduino TLC library.

http://code.google.com/p/tlc5940arduino/

This code is really what got me started on the control software. First I ported this to straight AVR and eventually to PIC24. Not much of the original code is there, but the process flow is similar. Now I've moved to PIC32, the code has changed substantially but I wouldn't have been able to do it without what I learned from this code.

Last but not least Matt Padina and his book

http://sites.google.com/site/artcfox/demystifying-the-tlc5940

Which was pointed out to me only recently by someone who had read this blog. This document was really the icing on the cake! It came at precisely the right time and gave me precisely the right information. It let me rewrite a few key issues in my code and make it heaps more efficient. Without it i might still be struggling to get the PIC32 up to speed.

So to all of the above, thank you very much! If I've forgotten someone please forgive me, i didn't get much sleep last night ;)

PIC32 Starter kit reference code for TLC5940.

2010-06-14T12:50:00.001+10:00

Well it's taken me about 3 nights worth of mucking around but I've finally got some reference code for the TLC5940 working with the pic32 starter kit.

Because of a few things I've found out since I got the pic32, I've decided to write the TLC control software from scratch, instead of trying to port the program I've already got straight in.

Now when I say "write it from scratch," I do mean of course copy it from other code I found

When I say "I found," I mean someone else found and told me about it, lol, thanks very much Jason!

Jason pointed me to this document
http://sites.google.com/site/artcfox/demystifying-the-tlc5940

This document has been really great, if only it was around a year ago. I hope the guy puts some contact details so I can thank him. Also i'd like to ask him about licensing, since the BSD style license requires I leave his header on the file which pretty much attributes the software to him, but I didn't really even start with his file so i'm not really sure what happens now. I admit I've pretty much copied the process flow which he describes but the vast majority my code is different, so i'm not sure what that means. He uses the document to SHOW you how to get the code out of the process flow of the TLC so that's what I've done. I can understand if this was like a big program with lots of custom functions, but if I was to start from scratch now and write the program myself, i mean it's still a TLC chip so there's really only a couple of logical ways to implement control. If you got a few people to do this exercise, no doubt most would result in something pretty similar to the code in the document. At this step right now I probably wouldn't have a problem putting the author's name on it since this document has definitely helped me, but later as I build on it and I've added to it and copied some of my old code over, it won't make sense to keep attributing the original author,

Anyway, what he's got is for an AVR micro, so it has still taken considerable work to rejig it for PIC. So i'm just going to share my code. I'm not into "licenses" or anything yet so anyone can use this code for anything, i don't really care. If you do use it and find it useful it would be really nice if you could let me know, that's all.

This is really just "test" code. it isn't useful in it's current state as anything except to test that you have everything configured and plugged in correctly. If you are doing anything with the TLC I recommend you read the above document.

This is the end result of the code

Now I'm working on getting timers and interrupts configured. I'm actually finding it a bit confusing since there is a lot of compiler specific things going on which I have no idea about. For example, in the PIC32 reference manual for timers, they have an example of an ISR (interrupt service routine). Now NOT only is the document LOCKED so you can't even copy and paste, but they use a FONT where 0 and 0 and 1 (one) and l (lower case L) look almost identical! Now in a blog post you can probably guess the context and if you guess wrong, who cares, but in code, that you can't even copy and paste, it makes a BIG difference!!

Not only that! But even after working this out I still couldn't get the blasted code to work. It wasn't until I came across other code in another example that I got it to work. If you have this problem, look for a document called:

32-bit-Peripheral-Library-Guide.pdf

The problem was somewhere in the interrupt configuration, I haven't worked out exactly where yet because the 2 examples use different approaches in their configuration. This document has actually been a big help. It's supposed to be in the MPLAB docs directory but I have 2 MPLAB installs, one from pickit2 and one from pic32 starter kit and I do not have that document, it's not even on the microchip site from what I've found, I found it somewhere else. Anyway, it's good! And the code examples there actually worked for me!

Anyway, i'll post some more when i have the TLC working with my ISR code.

Also I don't think you can directly upload to blogger so i'll put the code up on my google site and link it here a bit later.

Message to fellow cuber.

2010-06-09T10:57:00.003+10:00

Hey Jason. Thanks very much for your comment on my post below. I mainly write this blog just for my own amusement and to show the occasional friend what I'm up to. Sometimes I do wonder if anyone else has ever actually looked at it. ;)

You raise a few interesting points I'd like to comment on so I'll just point them out, otherwise this'll turn into another massive rant:

Nine layers? Wow, well you're braver then me! :) I did at first consider doing something different, like a sphere or pyramid, but the more I looked into it, the more I realized there are some pretty good reasons why the 8 cube is so popular. Maybe most significantly eight is a "byte" and a power of 2. So is 64 and so is 512. Having 8 layers to multiplex, and 8 "blades" becomes extremely convenient when you start mucking around with the data. There's 12 TLC chips, there's 12 bits per channel, there's 16 channels per chip, there's 16 bits per SPI send, they all divide nicely into each other. A central axis does indeed sound great, but an odd number of LEDs means you'll constantly have an odd "left over" bit (or bits) to deal with.. Don't mean to scare you, I'm sure there are probably ways to deal with this, maybe without too much trouble, but it was more then I thought I'd be able to tackle.

Sometimes when I'm feeling a bit bummed out about my project, it occurs to me that If I had started a 4x4x4 RGB cube, it would almost certainly be finished by now. There will definitely be highs AND lows, so don't let that discourage you.

Multiple microcontrollers are also probably not impossible, but as you note it adds a whole layer of complexity. If you can sort out the synching issue, it might actually not be that big a deal, but you'd need to invest a bit of time just to find out. It might just be a matter of synching everything to an external clock. The slaves can "draw" the cube fast as they can, but it doesn't mean the "animations" have to be that fast. I actually think it makes more sense to keep the animations at 24-30fps or so, even if you can get your cube refresh up to 60hz - 100hz. I'm yet to decide how far I'm going to try to push the pic32.

As for moving to PIC, you might not have to! I also started my very 1st single color cube on an AVR. Back when I started the 8x8x8 project tho, there was no AVR chip that competed with the mid and higher end PICs. They had actually announced the xmega, but, let's just say, "good luck getting your hands on one of those" back then. However! That was a year go, and having a quick look at sites like http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/xmega seems like they are around now! So, that's definitely an option for you. It'll be a little bit of a move from arduino, but not "that" much, I ported the acleone arduino TLC code to "straight" AVR without too much trouble, easier then to PIC that's for sure. (If you haven't seen that code yet by the way, you must have a look at it http://code.google.com/p/tlc5940arduino/ I found it a massive help and I wasn't even using arduino) Also, the avrfreaks support forum is awesome! I mean really awesome! Compared to the microchip forum.. No offence to the people on the PIC forums, I've talked to and got help from some amazing people on the PIC forums, but the format is just not as friendly for someone like me; it's quite technical, broken up into a hundred sections, fairly "formal" which is probably great for people who actually work with PICs. But the AVR forums are just amazing, more informal, only a few main sections, very "hackish", very involved, people have a great sense of humor, that's definitely the thing I miss the most about leaving AVR… Far out, reminding myself about this makes me think I probably should have looked into xmega again, before jumping into pic32! Oh well. ;)

Another thing i came across which convinced me I needed more processor power was this site http://lumisense.com/?page=eightcubed you might have seen it. For their "version 2" they actually use an intel ATOM processor, which is essentially a PC, running linux. Don't ask me how they actually interface the cube, i have no idea. :)

Cheers for the link to your site, http://www.photosbyjasonsmith.com I'll definitely keep my eye on it. Good luck with the soldering, I still remember the relief I felt when I got to the end! Put some music on while you're doing it, that really helped me through, and re-runs of Futurama. :)

Kicking it up a big notch to 32-bit with PIC32 STARTER KIT

2010-06-07T22:40:00.002+10:00

So I have been working away on my cube for the last few months, whittling away at the issues I'm having. I installed a de-multiplexer to free up some pins and tried to implement the 2nd SPI channel, but it still felt like even in I squeezed everything I could from it, it would still fall short.. Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt someone could do it with a 16 bit PIC24, just not me. I still consider myself very much a novice programmer so there's only so much I can do with my limited knowledge.

One of the issues I recognized is that the TLC LED Driver can receive a serial signal (SPI) at 30MHz, but the PIC24 can only spit out SPI at 10MHz, this is something I didn't realize at the start because the PIC24 runs at 40MHz. I thought its SPI would run closer to that, it was only when I started playing with the SPI modules that i realized it didn't.

So, I was searching for options, if the TLC can receive at 30MHz, there must be something that can provide that, but I had no idea what. I suspect FPGAs probably do it, but I still have very little idea what they even are so that option's out. :) So the obvious thing seemed to look at what else PIC had to offer I notice their "top of the range" offerings, the PIC32, these chips are 32bit, 80MHz and can run SPI at 25MHz, not quite 30, but close enough! One BIG advantage of sticking with PIC is that the development is vary similar. I shouldn't have to relearn everything from scratch to port my program.

However there are several problems with stepping up to PIC32. Firstly and maybe most importantly, my "programmer" the Pickit2 which cost me, from memory, about $60, is not compatible with PIC32. Secondly, the silicon it self is considerably more expensive. Where as the AVRs I started on were in the $7 range, I could just about eat them for breakfast. The PIC24 were in the $15 range so still reasonable, not outrageous to buy 2 at a time, the PIC32s are more in the $30 range, so it's really time to start considering it carefully.

The bare chips however are surface mounted, which is not good if you aren't into SMT like me. Also you need a higher range programmer such as the ICD2 which is almost AU$250.. A good investment if you plan on doing a lot of projects, not so great if you plan on doing one or two.

Fortunately there is another alternative which is fairly decent for a hobbyist like me and that's what they call the "started kits". Basically you get a chip on a board, all wired up and hooked up and everything, but the really great thing is it has an extra preprogrammed microcontroller on it which acts as a debugger so you can program and debug the main chip with just a USB cable! There are a few options of these starter kits, with the basic one, which is still quite awesome, costing something in the order of $60. It's a lot smaller then I thought from the pictures on the microchip sites.

Unfortunately that's not quite all. This starter kit, all it has is a crappy high density socket on the bottom! I don't even have a clue what it's called.

The only way I've figured out that you can interface with this sucker is if you buy the "I/O Expansion Board" which sets you back another $80ish. So in all you have to fork out something like $150, which is still a hefty investment. BUT there are a couple of really great things about this, it's all factory mounted, so you don't have to worry about power, crystals, caps, programs sockets or anything like that, there are even 3 surface switches and LEDs which I definitely intend on using in my application, plus a couple of other great conveniences like probe points and a power socket.

So yeah, if you were going to be making heaps of projects and you etch your own boards and you solder SMT components blind folded, this is probably a bad way to go. But if you have one big labor of love project, and you need lots of processor power and you aren't great at SMT, then this is a really great option.

This is what it looks like all attached. The grid in the background of all these pictures is 1cm.

All the info and more about these products can of course be found on the microchip.com site.

So I'm not pretending I don't have quite a bit of work to do now, to port my stuff and learn about this new platform so I can get it all going again, but hopefully with the new power and flexibility, I'll get somewhat closer to completing this thing.

One last great thing is that all the starter kits are pin compatible, so even if i start with the basic one, and I want to buy the souped up usb starter kit II, which is about $80 and has the top of the line PIC32 chip on it, all I'll have to do is plug it in!

And if it needs saying, I am in no way affiliated with microchip.

eBay scam: pay back money to a chinese bank account.

2010-05-11T14:57:00.002+10:00

I recently sold some PS3 Games on eBay. One of them went to a guy who had a new account and zero feedback, call him "The Buyer". He says he's a Chinese student and wants to use bank deposit because he doesn't have paypal. No problem there, so I give him my bank account details.

The next day I get this message:

My god, this is so bad, I paid a error amount of money to you, just I wantto pay the money (776AUD) to my chinese seller,but i paid all money to your Bank account,i have tried to cancel the payment,but i cannot,after you got the money,you have to return my other money,i think the transfer fee is 20-30AUD,u have to return my excess money 710AUD (776-30-36),i hope you are sincere seller,this is my bank details

Bank transfer
Bank name:bank of china NanYang branch Henan province
Address:No.129.QIYI road. NanYang Henan china
Account Name: Wang Ting
Account number:636666020028246
BIC/SWIFT code: BKCHCNBJ530
i am very worried now,waiting for your letter!- saft1

Call me a cynic, but I smelled a rat straight away. You probably don't have to be a genius to tell, but it would not surprise me if a lot of people fell for this kind of scam. On the face of it, it really does seem innocent enough, most of my friends asked me if I was sure it wasn't just an honest mistake. I checked with the bank and the money had definitely cleared, so you really would not be personally out of pocket if you followed through with the suggested transaction.. However I've had some training in the arts of deception, in the form of illusion and magic and it still surprises me a little when I come across a situation when the skills transfer to the real world. There is actually a lot in common between con artists and magicians, they both fool people and often using very similar methods, it's mainly their motive that differentiates them. One of the main things you learn is that you can never be "too clever to be fooled". The best you can hope to do is reserve judgement, if you think something is afoot, even if you don't know what the scam is. The more you practice, the better your bullshit detector gets, but no nobody's BS detector is perfect. That's why scammers very often try to create a sense of urgency, like you might miss an important opportunity, this is designed to reduce the amount of time you think you have to come to a decision, it creates stress, which increases the chances of making a mistake, which should be obvious. I believe absolutely anyone can be fooled, even very clever people can be fooled if you design a clever enough scam. Fortunately, most scammers are not clever, their victims tend to be the less critical and weary amongst us. But never let that lull you into a false sense of security, somewhere out there, there very well could be a tailor made scam with your name on it.

Anyway, continuing with the story. The first detail that struck me as suspicious was that The Buyer had his last name listed as Singh, which is a very common Indian name, but he says he is Chinese. I thought about it but I couldn't quite work out what was going on. At first I thought it was money laundering. I didn't really want to keep the dirty money, but I didn't just want to hand it back either, if they are a crook, I don't want to be a witting or unwitting accomplice. So I sat on it for a day to see what would happen. I was a little scared, what if I was withholding money from gangster thugs? They had my real name, what if they came to visit looking for their money? I got another email from The Buyer playing the guilt card, telling me how honest I am and how he doesn't have a lot of money and really needs it back, that he knows I would do the right thing. Well he had the last part right, that's for sure.

I spoke to my bank, the first guy I spoke to said it sounded like a "phishing" scam (which it is not), I think they guy was just waiting for the opportunity to say "oh that sounds like a phishing scam".. The next person suggested it was money laundering, which is what I first thought and sounds more plausible, but something still didn't add up! The Buyer was willing to lose $66 in this transaction, that's nearly 10%, that's a lot to lose for a very small amount laundered..

I even called the police but they really weren't interested in talking unless I was reporting a crime. So I asked: "Well isn't money laundering a crime?" The officer I was speaking to replies: "Uh, I don't know." I kid you not.

I finally called the number in the details of The Seller, pretty sure I knew what was going to happen and confirmed the details belonged to someone who hadn't been on eBay for 3 years. So it was fraudulent information, that didn't ease my conscience much; I thought it was still possible the scammer was in Australia and they'd still be after their money. At this stage, The Buyer had emailed me a couple of times asking for his money back. I had to fight the urge to reply that I was onto his scam, because I still didn't quite get what the scam was.

But after a while a few pieces fell together and it clicked: The money in my account didn't belong to The Buyer in the first place! It belonged to someone else who had also been scammed. The Buyer gave my account details to someone else who was also being scammed! Of course it seems obvious now, but it would rely on people not catching on before they "give the money back" thinking they were either doing the right thing, or they had no other choice. I told more then a few people the details, including friends, my bank and the police and no one clicked as to what was happening, everyone assumed as I did that it was some strange money laundering scheme, or scheme to get money out of Australia into China. Maybe drug money or stolen money or something. Well the money was stolen, but not how we first thought.

This kept me up at night wondering for about 3 nights, until I finally had the epiphany! It wasn't The Buyer's money to begin with! One thing that didn't fit was the money came from an Australian bank. When I checked my statement, the message beside the deposit was the word "iPhone" preceded by a strange word.. Until then it hadn't clicked, I thought it must have been something The Buyer had put there, but I did a user search on eBay and sure enough, the strange word was an eBay ID! I sent the user a message just asking if they had recently bought an iPhone and sure enough, they had. They said yeah, it's not a scam is it? I really hope not.. I replied yeah it's a scam, but it's your lucky day, because your money is in my account! So, needless to say, they were very happy to get their money back. And my conscience received a well deserved reprieve! I'll sleep like a baby tonight. :)

I couldn't help myself but reply to The Buyer that I was onto him from the start and he's stupid and any money he gets from cheating people will poison his life… You know, the usual.. Now I've got a negative feedback from him, since the account hasn't been banned yet, which is a little slack on eBay's part since I reported the user ID on Friday. Hopefully it gets done soon and the feedback gets removed from my profile.

From all this I really get the feeling I've got a better grasp of this scamming thing then a lot of people supposedly working in the fields that would come across it, banks, eBay, police, etc, I'm thinking maybe I should look for work in security..

Maybe my next post will be a list of tips to help protect yourself from being scammed.

Power Balance Bullshit Scam

2010-05-04T19:39:00.021+10:00

AFL "Aussie rules" Football "stars", highly regarded for their penetrating insight and discerning mental acuity seem to be the latest unwitting promoters of this Power Balance (PB) scam.

I've come across way too many people and too many news reports recently discussing this subject credulously. I had to have my say.

If you don't know what PB is, it's basically a "magic bracelet", a lot of places discuss PB, for and against, but I feel a lot of the information is still misunderstood by most people. Even in the places which expose the scam, a lot of people keep commenting: "but I've seen it work!" and my favourite: "I don't care if it is a placebo, it still works". This I'll address at the end of this post.

The Power Balance bracelet is far from unique, it's one of a class of products called "Ionized bracelets". There have been more then a few different ones marketed around the world over the years and they all make various claims, but you can tell them by their Modus Operandi, which they all share: Magic frequencies embedded in something like holograms or magnets interacting with body energy fields. And of course, promise of some sort of real physical enhancement; some claim pain reduction, management of inflammation, arthritis, circulation, coordination; PB specifically claims increased power (strength) and, wait for it: balance! (Genius!). Some promotional material claims an increase of 500%! Whatever that means.

One of the most famous, or infamous, "Ionizing Bracelets" is the Q-Ray bracelet. The Q-ray made claims about improving sports performance and also about helping with conditions like arthritis and other kinds of pain. A study by the Mayo clinic in America, a very prestigious non profit research organization, found in 2002 that there was absolutely no basis for the claims made by the manufacturers of Q-ray (QT.inc) and subsequently led to a high profile court injunction against them in 2006 by the American Federal Trades Commission (FTC). Further, a federal judge ordered QT Inc. to pay back $22.5 million "in ill-gotten gains" and ruled that the whole premise of the bracelet was invented, I quote: "to defraud consumers". Astonishingly, Q-ray bracelets are still on sale and still going strong, only minus the bogus health benefit claims, of course. Now they're just "wellness - lifestyle bracelets". Unfortunately it seems like their past promotion and the seemingly endless "testimonials", which are unregulated by the FTC, are more then enough of a wave to perpetuate the sale of US$60 - $200 daggy looking bangles that do NOTHING. Land of the free? Sounds more like land of the "free to rip people off".

For people at this point who wonder "if they really didn't work, why do people still buy them after this many years?" All I can say to that is a fool and his money are easily parted. I think it's obvious not everyone who bought a PB is a fool (well, the footy players excluded). So I imagine it must be hard to reconcile this if you bought one but don't actually consider yourself a fool, which very few, if ANY fools... I mean PEOPLE, actually admit.

So let me qualify: You do NOT have to be a fool to be fooled!

This seems to be an extremely difficult concept for a lot of people to understand: Perfectly normal, intelligent, perceptive and discerning people can be fooled, if they are not very familiar with the subject under consideration, or sometimes even if they are! In fact, magicians and con artists partly rely on the fact that most people don't think they are fools, because it means most people are far less likely to believe they are being fooled, even when it's happening right in front of their eyes!

You could argue and I'm sure the makers of PB actually do, that Q-Ray and PB are "not the same thing". On the face of it this is true, but the important fundamentals are the same. I could tomorrow invent the "BS Bracelet" TM. It increases your Brains and Sex drive by tuning into the frequency of your chakras; the icing is different, but the cake is the same.
DISCLAIMER: If you steal my idea, i want a cut!

So how can I be sure the PB, or the Q-Ray or the BS bracelet don't actually do anything? There are people going around “proving” that they work with some simple tests that can be repeated, these tests are very convincing because they are performed by YOU, the person they are trying to convince, if YOU notice the effect, that's what counts right?

WRONG!

The problem is that most people don't realize what's happening, they think there are only two possible scenarios: Either there is an effect or there isn't. They think the test is trying to fool them into thinking there's an effect, but they feel an effect so they think the effect must be REAL. Even if the source of that effect is fake, like a placebo, it doesn't matter to them, they can really FEEL the effect, therefore to them it is as good as real.
But this is actually NOT the case. There is a 3rd possible scenario most people don't consider: It is the EFFECT that is faked, not your perception of it.

The difference here might seem slight, but it is critical, you “THINK” you are balancing better with the bracelet, but you are actually not. The test is "rigged", it's designed to make you THINK you are experiencing an effect which is not real. The effect that you “THINK” you are experiencing is actually an illusion, it's a trick. It feels very real when you are doing it, but doing a simple double blind study reveals it as a trick. If you are actually interested in the phenomenon, it is related to Applied Kinesiology, look it up, I won't go into it here.

Importantly, this does not mean that having a PB is an effective "placebo" that makes you balance better using the power of your mind. It means a TRICK can be used to make you THINK you are balancing better when you have the PB. This is the vital part: The same trick could be used to make you THINK you are balancing better when you take the mobile phone out of your pocket, or when you wear a tin foil hat, or anything else you chose. It's a TRICK. It's not the effect that is in your mind, which might be attributed to a placebo effect, it is the ILLUSION of the effect that's in your mind, which can only be attributed to a trick.

At this point, people who have experienced the “test” will still probably say: “I wasn't being fooled, the test was objective and fair. I was stronger/ better balanced /whatever”.

At which point I would argue that the test was NOT objective, you might think it was but it wasn't. The OBJECTIVE test is the blinded test Richard Saunders performed with the promoter of PB on Today Tonight. The test which was utterly and miserably FAILED by the promoter, because as soon as THE PROMOTER didn't actually KNOW who had the bracelet, the effect miraculously vanished.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlhvgG8lRhk

Even the TT team make the mistake of attributing this "trick" to mind over matter, that's NOT it at all. There is NO effect, the effect is purely a "trick" demonstrated by the person doing the testing, in this case the promoter. The fantastic part is that the promoter himself is not necessarily at all devious and consciously trying to trick people! He is likely falling for the same trick because he has no idea how it works either.

This brings up the last point I would like to make. The vast majority of people are NOT aware of how subtle and intricate bias, deception and maybe most importantly: SELF deception can be. The promoter seemingly willingly participates in the test on Today Tonight, it's hard to believe he would if he knew he was going to fail so miserably. I actually think it's very likely the promoter really believes in PB and “thinks” that his tests are objective and fair too. I hazard a guess that failing the tests hasn't deterred his belief or made him skeptical, since he has so much personal stake and reputation riding on it. How does he justify it? I bet he just thinks he was having an off day or the forces weren't aligned for him at the time, or the cameras, lights, or skeptics were interfering with the test, or some other such similar excuse. I also bet he still happily promotes and sells PB to the masses, who like him, can't imagine that they are being fooled.

Golfball hailstorm in Melbourne 06/03/2010

2010-03-06T16:52:00.000+11:00

We were driving home when the storm hit, we pulled up under a tree for a while and got battered by some ice cube sized hail. We then decided to drive a little further to the cover of a petrol station and this was the hail that came down.

It was so loud pelting the windows and panels, and that was just the smaller stuff, I don't doubt if we'd got caught out in the big hail it would have done some damage.

controller roundup

2010-02-10T22:06:00.003+11:00

I've decided to make a post outlining my control electronics and how everything is going.

Here is the power module i've been using from the start.

i use an LM317T to produce 3.3v for my logic and a trim pot voltage regulated LM338T for my LEDs. i needed the extra current of the 338T as i expect my peak current could possibly be up in the 3A range, though i doubt it will get that high in practice.

Next is my control board.

Up until recently I only had the one PIC on there but i've decided to try to implement 2, one will be purely the "driver" while the other will be used to generate and process the actual animations that will be displayed, hopefully taking that strain off the driver. Also in the bottom left I am planning to place a demultiplexer which will let me free up some required pins on my driver PIC. This will also let me get rid of the annoying "prog /run" switch i had to put in since I had to use two of the programming pins for my layer select bus.

Lastly is my layer select board.

This is the one i'm least sure about. I'm using IRF5210 P-Channel mosfets as the layer current source. My main problem at the moment is layer ghosting. I've been reading that in this kind of application N channel is more suitable so i'm going to make another layer select board with N channel mosfets. The main hurdle is that N channel requires a gate voltage higher then source so i need to use mosfet drivers. I have almost everything sourced except for some DIP sockets and a couple of other bits.

So all together and all plugged in it looks like this now:

Bit of a mess, but once it is all worked out, it will tuck neatly out of the way under the cube.

youtube clip of cube in action

2010-01-05T23:13:00.001+11:00

Here is the youtube clip i promised.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7aDkQCx92Q

It has been way too long. 8x8x8 update

2010-01-05T22:18:00.005+11:00

Well it's not because I haven't been doing anything! I've been hacking away for the last several weeks, trying to get back on top of this monster, but it hasn't been playing nice.

I was still suffering from the terrible interference type problem I've had pretty much from the start. Even with the ribbon cables and the fancy new custom PCBs, i was still getting a very noisy signal. Anyway, after hours and hours of analysis, i think I've finally got it going pretty well. The secret was to create a signal loop of all the control lines. Ok, probably obvious to someone who knows about such things, but I felt pretty proud of myself when I came up with it!

Anyway, the result is, a very nice test pattern, no noise, no distortion. The pattern moves, which you can't tell from the photo, but i might put a clip up on youtube soon.

bee close up

2009-12-06T16:01:00.003+11:00

sammich sid

2009-11-30T21:17:00.003+11:00

I've wanted a SID Chip based synth for a very long time. I even bought a couple of SID chips knowing that I'd eventually get around to doing something with them. So, as it happens I started digging around and found the Sammich SID project. I won't bore you with the details, but this has hands down been the most fun I've ever had building a kit. What a great project. After slaving at my cube for over 6 months I really wanted a bit of a break and this was perfect. I pretty much put the thing together over two nights, but as it turns out I don't have a suitable 12v power supply. I thought I had one but it was burned out, then I found another one and it was only 750mA and this needs 1A.. I went to Jaycar today to pick one up and they'd sold out, pretty much of ALL their 12v power supplies, from like 1A to 5A, there was about 6 empty hooks. The guy said the stock had arrived and was being unpacked tonight, so i'm going to go back tomorrow. I have to read through the instructions and stuff, the interface wasn't immediately intuitive. In the mean time, here are some pics.

The perspex mask is left on intentionally until I get around to filling the engraving with paint.

fun with USB microscope

2009-11-08T18:41:00.003+11:00

I borrowed a USB microscope which can magnify up to 200x. So, as I'm sure just about everyone would do, i went and found a few dead insects and took pictures of them. the first pic is a scale photo to give you an idea just how small the subject was. If I take any more particularly good pics I might post them. I did run the bottom photo once through photoshop's sharpen filter, nicely takes a bit of the fuzz off.

macro shot with my canon IXUS
80x

200x

old vs new

2009-11-07T15:29:00.002+11:00

The pictures pretty much say it all.

Finally the PCBs arrive.

2009-11-06T10:52:00.004+11:00

It's been a month since I ordered them, they were shipped on the 11th, but there was a mix up with the postage. At last the PCBs have arrived. Very excited to receive my very 1st custom circuit boards and they look great!

BIG PC Upgrade. Core i7, crossfire, SSD.

2009-09-27T17:17:00.006+10:00

Decided to upgrade my PC a bit, and as usual, one thing leads to another and by the end of it, i have a bit of a monster!

This is what ended up making it to my shopping list:

Intel core i7 920

Asus P6T

G.Skill 6GB tri-channel RAM kit (3x2GB)

G.Skill Falcon 64GB SSD (Solid state drive)

2x Gigabyte Radeon 4890OC video cards (crossfire)

Zalman ZM850-HP

Noctua NH12P i7 CPU cooling unit.

So as you can probably tell, not much made it into my new computer. My case, my DVDR drives and a couple of my SATA drives.

Here are some pics from the build.

This is what my PC looked like before.

This is what was lurking beneath the surface. Dirty dirty PC!
Confessions of a hopeless early adopter:
Nice LGA1366 socket and chip! 1366 contacts!

Monster heatsink!
Erm, i actually didn't think it was going to be this massive!
Even with the modular powersupply unit, it was quite a task to get everything wired up.
and the almost finished product.

I mean it's pretty much finished. Just a few minor tweaks left. Everything even worked 1st time! Which was nice. The side of my case fits but it has a fan on it which doesn't because of the ginormous heat sink, so there will be some cutting and drilling required to set it a few centimeters lower. Also need some brackets and a few other minor adjustments before everything is screwed down tight.

PCBs on the way.

2009-09-27T17:16:00.001+10:00

So I just heard they've started on my PCBs and they should be here in a couple of weeks, so i'm looking forward to that. To pass some of the time, I decided to upgrade my PC somewhat. Look out for the next few posts.

No progress

2009-09-23T12:06:00.002+10:00

The only point of this post is to say that I haven't given up or forgotten yet, it's just that there hasn't really been any progress since last time! I have ordered my personally designed custom PCBs, however I've been negotiating with the manufacturer, and the combination of the fact that English is not their 1st language, and this being my very 1st design, I think I've only just now managed to be convinced that everything is ok to continue. So hopefully, in another couple of weeks I will have the PCBs and will be able to make more progress..

pcb design

2009-09-09T22:45:00.003+10:00

Here are some pics.

The first is my PCB design in freepcb. The thing to note here is that you don't create routes as part of your PCB, you create things called "nets" (which pins are connected to which pins) which then the program uses to make "rat lines", which are the purple lines. You can edit these, but the ones the program chooses are pretty good. From here to put the file into "freerouting" and it generates a routing scheme. You can edit this and set parameters and all that, until you've perfected it. You can import it back into freepcb and keep editing it in there until you have it just right. I'm not quite there yet.

Slow progress.

2009-09-09T14:49:00.003+10:00

No recent updates because unfortunately there's nothing exciting to report. I've spent a lot of time hacking and troubleshooting since last week, but I just can't get my flickering LEDs issue resolved.. I've tried rewiring my driver board, I've tried filtering my power lines, I've tried adjusting my power levels, nada. What I have managed to do so far is burn out my microcontroller, which was no fun. I think I accidentally must have discharged a capacitor into the power line when I was trying out different filtering caps. I'm buying the micros from farnell who aren't the cheapest, but easily the fastest. Besides, no one else I've found stocks the pic24s. The chip it self is $17 and delivery is $10, so I ordered 3 to have backups..

My strongest lead at the moment is electronic/signal noise. There sometimes seems to be a correlation to how much flickering there is and how far away from the controller board I hold my hand. That to me indicates magnetic fields and capacitance and stuff. But I also know sometimes you can swear your hands making something happen when it is actually entirely random. What I've started to do is consider getting a couple of PCBs made up for my driver boards.. This would cost about $100 - $120 from futurlec.com.au, I've read some reviews around and most people seem to suggest they are decent enough. There are lots of places in America that do it and seem to offer more service, but as usual, you typically add US$50 for shipping to Australia. Futurlec is in Thailand so the shipping is almost non existent, for my normal orders under $50 it's $4.

The can of worms that this idea opens up of course is; I've never designed my own PCB, so the last few days has been a crash course in PCB design. I'm still not 100% sure I'll get them made, but I'm probably 80% sure now where as three days ago I was only 50% sure. I had a quick look around on the net for PCB design tools and picked up express pcb, let me tell you here and now: do not use express pcb. I spent about 3 hours making up my first pcb until I realised that this program could not export the industry standard "gerber" files. Instead it uses a propriety file format which, guess what? Only works for orders placed with express pcb. From all accounts their service is reasonable and competitive and the software was easy to learn and use, but locking you into a service with the design software still smells like a dirty trick, plus they charge US$50 for shipping. So needless to say, express pcb has now been uninstalled and I have seen the light of freepcb. Freeware open source and not locked into a manufacturing service. Not quite as intuitive, but so much more powerful, if express pcb was MS paint, freepcb is Photoshop. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert, but it has been a lot of fun getting my feet wet with it, especially once you have the components placed and start routing. The latest freepcb comes with a java app called freerouter which automatically configures the pcb traces, you just sent the links and parameters and the program does the rest, it's amazing, it's borderline a video game, in fact I don't think you would need to do much to it at all to make a game out of it..

So for now I'm going to keep playing with the pcb design and probably in a week or two I'll concede and order a few boards from futurlec. Not really sure what else to try. I'll take some screenshots of my circuit and schematic soon and put them up here.

Oscilloscope fun. PWM in action.

2009-08-31T00:08:00.006+10:00

I've made some progress tonight after a lot of poking around with the CRO I borrowed. Turns out, I've probably wasted quite a lot of time investigating my LED "issues", what I've worked out is the TLC5940 boards I've made are not actually working how I thought they were. It turns out, the signals to the 6 chips on each board is degrading to the point where the chips are not functioning properly, I probably should have picked up on this earlier, but i was so convinced it was the LEDs that I neglected to check the chip boards until now.. I mean, they were "working" enough to convince me it was ok, but not enough to actually light the cube up properly. It's only once I stared programming the chips to light separate LEDs that I realised the problem.

At this stage, I'm not sure, I'll have to sleep on it, quite possibly I will have to re do both tlc5940 controller boards, make them better, use better wire for the connections perhaps..

You can't really make it out very well but in the below, ten LEDs are supposed to be lit and the rest not, the ones which are lit but dim are actually flickering, which you obviously can't see in the photo.

This is the traces of 2 of the 8 layer select MOSFETS doing their thing. I was happy to see this, it looks pretty good. You can see the high segment on the bottom trace followed by the high segment on the top trace, this is where the mosfets are "ON". The remaining 6 mosfets would fill the rest of the gaps where the small bumps are, but the CRO only has 2 probes.

This is interesting, i took measurements of what comes out of the TLC5940 output at various intensity levels. This 1st photo shows 2 traces, the bottom is at full brightness, the tlc5940 has 12 bit brightness so that equals to 4095. The top trace is at 3000, so you can see roughly a quarter is high and the remainder is low. Of course the tlc is a current sink so low is actually ON.

Similar thing with 2000 brightness on the bottom trace and 1000 brightness on the top trace. Nice to see PWM in action.

build complete, sort of.

2009-08-26T22:35:00.002+10:00

Well, i've pretty much got the whole thing complete now, but it's not quite doing what I was hoping. After a bit of troubleshooting, I think I'm not getting the juice through my mosfets which is causing the colors to be all out of whack again.. So I think I still have a power supply problem.. I think I'll have to spend a bit of time actually drawing a schematic for this thing now so I can post up on some forums for advice.. For the time being, here are a few of the latest pics.

Queue the trumpets, we have white!

2009-08-19T21:02:00.004+10:00

Another big relief! So I guess I was right third time. I built a second parallel voltage regulator at about 5.8v and now I have nice solid blue layers and nice white too! If I try short all the layers together it goes back to rainbows, so I suppose that does have an effect on it also. But as I said below, only one layer will be on at a time. So here's a nice pic of white, yes it looks like it has a reddish tint to it, but I can calibrate that out, and another photo showing what my electronics look like so far.

Another theory!

2009-08-19T09:50:00.006+10:00

Alright, i never said I would flip again! Here's another theory.

The thing that's still bugging me is that when I test the LEDs by them selves, they are fine, when I power all the colors I get white, but when I try to get "white" in the grid, by applying equal power to the 3 elements, it looks like a rainbow!

So I've just done a bunch of reading and it says that silicon diodes have a forward voltage drop of 0.7v, which makes sense, this is what could very well killing my blue diodes. I'm only running off about 3.4v, this is what my logic runs at and I thought it would be enough for the LEDs, but obviously there is too much of a voltage drop, even without the diode, I mean the LEDs are diodes anyway so they must have a voltage drop too!

RED: Typical: 2 V Max: 2.4V GREEN: Typical: 3.4 V Max: 3.6V BLUE: Typical: 3.4 V Max: 3.6V So possibly, all the LEDs create a considerable voltage drop which is causing the blues to be dim, come to think of it, not possibly but probably! Potentially a gross oversight on my part, owing to my newbness.

So maybe the answer is just to pump up the voltage! The only problem is, I can't just pump it up because my logic can't run at more then 3.4v. So I have to work out if I can run separate power to the LEDs, and if I can then I need 2 different power supplies. And having a look at this diagram it looks like I can do it, there is a separate Vcc and V(LED) !! So next step is to make a 2nd power supply for the LEDs, that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

So I'm not saying there isn't an inconsistency in the LEDs, or that this will 100% fix the problem, but I never noticed this kind of issue in my previous RGB LED projects when I was running on 5v like this http://sites.google.com/site/v3spin/Main/electronics/RGB_LED_3 , so there is hope yet.

bugger

2009-08-18T21:51:00.003+10:00

Well, i'm flip flopping, but I'm back to believing the LEDs are inconsistent.

Check out this picture, it plainly shows some leds are brighter and some are barely lit. This is what I got when i put a diode in series with the common source voltage. I don't quite understand it, it seems almost impossible, but two of my planes are ENTIRELY made of LEDs which are blue dim. they were packed in a bag, loose, i took them out and bent them and threw them one by one into a box, still loose. It seems almost impossible. This is what made me think the plane it self may be at fault, like an earth leak in the plane. But sure enough, i swapped a dim one for a bright one in the plane beside it, and sure enough the dim LED remained dim and the bright one remained bright. The top right corner is where I swapped the LEDs, you can see it. This made me suspect my soldering technique, maybe I was over heating the LEDs at one point, or someting, but sure enough, all my spare LEDs which have not been bent or toutched a soldering iron give similarly varied readings. When i juice them up I get currents anything between 2.6mA to 7mA.. i'm confused, i thought these were "constant current" drivers. I'm going to have to find some forums to hit, i'm a bit stumped.

Maybe I spoke too soon!

2009-08-18T08:42:00.006+10:00

I just had a bit of an epiphany! Last night I was doing tests and swapped a dim led and a bright led around in the grid. Indeed the dim one was still dim after the swap and vice versa. That eliminates an earth leak in a row/column which I thought might be possible. But it was still bugging me because when I had the 2 LEDs removed and powered them up side by side out of the grid with separate power, they looked the same, I couldn't really tell the difference at all. I did put a tiny black dot on the underside of the weak one to make sure I didn't mix them up..
So after putting them back in I also noticed that the less power I applied, the bigger the "apparent" difference between the bright and dim LEDs became. So just now it occurred to me, one thing that would explain exactly this kind of issue is if the internal resistance of some of the LEDs was a little bit higher then average! Because I'm shorting the columns together and powering them with constant current drivers, it effectively makes 8 LEDs in parallel. If a column of 8 is getting a fixed amount of current, any LEDs with a higher internal resistance will get less current then their even share and therefore appear dimmer then the others! However, when powered alone with its own current, no other "less resistant" LEDs are out competing it, therefore it appears just as bright as any others.
IF that is correct, the brilliant thing is that my design will NOT run the LEDs in parallel! When it is complete, the "layer select" electronics will power only one layer at a time. The only reason I have the layers shorted together like I do now, is because I don't have the layer select electronics done yet and this was the easy and nasty way to get all the LEDs lit up to test the construction so far. So this might not be even an issue after all! That would be great, I'm not completely absolved yet, I'll have to do some test tonight to confirm this, but I have my fingers crossed.

bit of a set back

2009-08-17T21:31:00.004+10:00

So, it looks like the quality of the cheapest LEDs I could get is not what I'd call consistent, it's come back to haunt me. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, and certinally not that I think i definitely wouldn't have this problem if I'd spent more on LEDs. I can't help be a bit disappointed after all that work. It's not something I spotted testing the LEDs, when they are powered alone they look fine, but lined up like this, they do stick out as a lot dimmer. At least it seems to be only the blue that is affected, which I suppose comes down to the manufacturing process, blue being the newest and therefore no doubt least well controlled. If you look at this photo, only the 1 plane of blue is lit but you can distinctly see that some of the LEDs are considerably dimmer then most. In this one plane I count 11, which is fairly poor, over 10%. They do still work, and frankly, i'm a bit burned out on soldering LEDs at the moment, so I'm going to leave it. I'm going to take a few days off and then finish doing the control electronics. Then after I start programming some patterns, i'll reconsider taking it apart and swapping out the dim LEDs. I'd probably have to order some more since I only have about 30 left over and I'll potentially need 80 or 90, and if 10% is the normal failure rate, in other words I'll need 100. :(

A little more info.

2009-08-17T08:23:00.003+10:00

I should qualify the below, in case I gave the wrong impression. I am no where near finished the electronics. I've just about finished one of the 2 driver boards and partly finished the CPU board. All I've managed to do is power up each color one at a time through the driver chips that I have finished. I've also just wired the layers together to light the whole cube, since I haven't started the layer control board.

Fiat Lux

2009-08-16T23:58:00.004+10:00

All I can say is that at this point I'm not actually as happy as I thought I would be. The last few sessions have been mostly trouble shooting and each time I take stock of the situation the end seems further and further away. Not quite the smooth sailing I was hoping for from this point.

More pics.

2009-08-12T19:28:00.005+10:00

Here are some detail photos of the cube. There is still a little bit of work left to do on it, mainly just the "common" wires, I'm wiring the planes together with 8 wires to join the planes, 4 on the front and alternating 4 on the back. i thought this would be much easier then dropping 8 common wires PER plane, like they do in the 4x4x4 RGB hypnocube. So i'm just going to drop 8 commons down one side, it should be hardly noticeable.

What i'm fairly impressed with myself about is how straight the planes lined up, I especially took these photos on angles you could see rows of LEDs across planes lining up.

CUBE COMPLETE!!

2009-08-11T21:52:00.009+10:00

Big milestone!! Ok, I have to take a break now, i'll write up a bit of a report in the next few days. For the moment, here are some pics..

I've just powered up one LED for the photos, there aren't any electronics connected to it yet. That's the next step.

BIG update for Sunday!

2009-08-09T23:19:00.006+10:00

Well, I've put in probably over 12 hours this weekend and I'm really happy with how much i've got done! I have 7 out of 8 planes finished and I've completely finished wiring the baseboard. So, phew! I'm going to try to do the last plane over the next day or two and then it's time to really get stuck into the electronics. I've pretty much been ignoring it up until now, except for what I needed to work out to get this far. When I've finished what's on top of the baseboard, the last thing I'll need to do (other then programming) is work out the controller boards, of which there are going to be at least three or four, maybe five, including the power.

5 of 8 finished.

2009-08-06T22:01:00.004+10:00

Getting there... this is definitely the most tedious part of the project... Finishing the wiring of the base is going to be a bit of work too, but nothing like this.. I should have timed myself to see how many hours this would take, on the other hand, maybe it's better if I don't know.. A rough guess including bending the LEDs, straightening the wire and soldering it together is probably 35-45 hours by the time i'm finished.

Here are a couple more pics

4 out of 8 planes completed, begun working on base.

2009-08-03T22:16:00.009+10:00

On the weekend I finished the 4th out of 8 planes. So half way there with those now. It's starting to get tedious so I'm trying not to think about what working on the 7th and 8th one will be like...

I've cut all the wire to length, that's the second spool of 75m, yes, 150 m of spooled wire cut into 50cm lengths..

I've also started working on the base wiring. this is the underside of what the planes are eventually going to plug into.

This is 3 "boards" which is half the base, there is another 3 I'm yet to do.

So I think I pretty much have everything I need now, save a few minor things like paint for the stand and some bolts and stuff. But as far as silicon and wire goes, the inventory is complete and just have a crap load more soldering to do...

8x8x8 project moved to this blog

2009-08-03T22:14:00.003+10:00

Hello.

I've decided to try the blog since I don't like the way my website was turning out. The previous information can be found here

http://sites.google.com/site/v3spin/8x8x8_rgb_led_project?pli=1

Not sure yet if I'll bother migrating any of it across, probably not.

to blog or not to blog...

2009-05-27T22:54:00.002+10:00

i'm not sure if i want to try a blog or not.. I'm trying to post bits about my projects on a website but the format is a bit rubbish. i'm not great at lay out and it's just going to turn into a jumbled mess.. On the other hand, i don't really give a shit if anyone reads my posts so it feels like blog isn't the right format for me either... I just want a place where I can ocasionally put some pics to show my friends what i'm up to and make code and things like that available for anyone who might possibly be interested in similar things..