New Pool Toy

For a long time now I've wanted a "sports camera" to make videos of bike rides and other outdoor activities. The most popular camera for that purpose is the GoPro Hero series. Two days ago I finally bought a Hero 3 Silver Edition.

Of course we had to play with it right away. I charged it during the evening and, as is my geek habit, I read the owner's manual cover to cover. One of the main features of the GoPro line is that it comes with a waterproof case that protects the camera to a depth of 160 feet. So yesterday we took it to pool to experiment with the camera's time-lapse and slow motion capabilities. Click on the picture to see a video I made from our experiments.

I chose a 5 second interval for the time-lapse portions. That turned out to be too long for the activity we were filming so the motion of people in the pool looks almost random. Perhaps I'll try it again with a 1 or 2 second interval.

The slow motion footage came out quite well. This model can shoot at 60 or 120 frames per second (fps). Normal video framerate is 30fps. Video shot at 60fps can be converted to 30ps, resulting in half speed slow motion. 120fps footage converted to 30fps results in 1/4 speed slow motion. I shot some of each.

One pleasant discovery I made is that even though the 120fps footage must be shot at a lower resolution, iMovie (which I use to edit videos) had no problem scaling it and it looks great at HD resolution.

The video we shot comprised a bunch of random length video clips. When the camera is in its waterproof case it doesn't pick up much sound so I decided to put the video to music. Then as I watched with the music I found that I really wanted the cuts to match the beat of the song I'd chosen so I edited the clips to sync to the beat. It's the first time I've tried that. It's not perfect but I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

We'll think of lots of other activities during which to use the camera. It can be mounted on a window, a helmet, bike handlebars, etc. Even the front of a ski! Maybe that will be the next video you see from me.

Jupiter!

One of my many interests is astronomy and astrophysics. I read a fantastic blog called "Starts With a Bang" by Ethan Siegel, an astrophysicist and great teacher from Portland, OR. I often share what I learn with the girls. Ethan frequently uses images from the Hubble Space Telescope which are especially amazing and inspiring. I try to inculcate the girls with a sense of wonder about the sheer scope of the universe. Audrey has taken a real interest, to the point where she sometimes says she wants to be an astronomer.

For some time I've been desiring a telescope for skywatching with the girls both at home and while camping away from the light pollution of the city. It took me a long time to learn enough to select a telescope. Last week I finally felt confident enough to choose and I ordered an Orion XT4.5 Dobsonian telescope. This particular type of telescope strikes a good balance between observing planets and deep space objects like nebulae and clusters.

From reading the amateur astronomy forums, it sounds like there is a law of nature that when you buy a new telescope it will be cloudy on the day you receive it. It was true the day we received ours. Last night, however, the clouds dissipated around sunset. We went out to dinner and when we returned I pulled out the new scope. It was only 34F out so I knew we wouldn't be outdoors too long. Jupiter was conveniently right overhead so I sighted it in. Each of us got a good look at Jupiter and we could also clearly see four of its moons. We don't have a camera for our telescope yet (you can bet we will) but what we saw, other than the positions of the moons, looked very much like the image above.

I've very satisfied with the instrument I selected. I'm very excited to have many years of skywatching ahead of us and it's going to be a fun addition to all of our summer camping trips.

Squishy Circuits

Squishy Circuits 2012

The second annual Melrose STEM Expo was held on November 17. STEM, if you're not aware, stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. It's an area gaining a lot of attention and emphasis in schools due to the perception that the United States is losing the technological edge it has held for decades.

Our family has hosted a booth at the expo both years. We present Squishy Circuits, which teaches kids about electricity and circuits using homemade play-doh that is made either conductive (containing salt) or insulating (containing sugar).

Audrey and Charlotte really love working in the booth - being "behind the table." And they are pretty good at teaching. The expo lasts three hours and that challenges the girls' attention span but they switch back and forth between teaching and playing themselves.

We estimate that more than 120 kids stopped by the booth! It's rewarding to watch them build a circuit - when they succeed in lighting up an LED you can see their mind light up a half second later.

Our neighbor Jen is one of the organizers of the event. She took a great photo of Audrey and me working in the booth and that photo made the local newspaper!

We'll be back next year.

iPhone Macro Photography

iPhone Macro Photography

We went to a mini Maker Faire in nearby Somerville. It was run by Artisan's Asylum, a very cool hackerspace where I've taken classes (metal machining, printed circuit board design) and regularly attend a robotics meetup. While there I bought an Easy-Macro lens for cell phone cameras. It's an ingenius little device that is really easy to carry with you and to install and uninstall. The girls love finding stuff to photograph up close.

Maker Faire 2012

Maker Faire 2012

For the third year in a row Audrey and I traveled to New York for World Maker Faire. Maker Faire celebrates "maker" culture: people who like to learn their own technical, mechanical and electronic skills and bend technology to do things it wasn't designed to do. I like to bring the girls (Charlotte and Carol went last year but Charlotte chose not to this year) so they can see that they can make anything they want if they put their minds to it.

Audrey enjoyed the day very much. She loved all the cool and creative things to see and do, but her favorite part of Maker Faire is the gyro stand.

This year we drove down and back on the same day to save hotel costs and to have all of Sunday back home for projects. When we left Maker Faire at about 6:30 we discovered we had a flat tire. Audrey had the opportunity to see how to change a tire, but the 50 miles per hour maximum speed rating on the spare wasn't going to serve us too well for the 200 mile drive home. In an excellent use case for smart phones I was able to find a Sears auto center not too far away and they agreed to stay open late to help us. They were incredibly efficient and kind and they wouldn't even accept a tip for staying late. 20 minutes after we arrived Audrey and I were heading to the freeway for the drive home. That was the cherry on top of a great day.

Homework-o-bot

Audrey brought home some school work she did around "inventions". Her invention is a Homework-o-bot that contains both a Math-o-maniac and a Math-o-matic. Can you tell which subject's homework gives her the biggest challenge?

My dastardly plan is working - my geekdad activities are rubbing off on Audrey!

Click on the image for a larger version.

Two-Legged Robot Walker

The Christmas list I gave to Carol contained mostly electronics hobby stuff, including a couple of servos and a Lynxmotion SSC-32 serial servo controller. The servo controller allows one to exercise complex control over multiple servos (32 of them with this board) via simple commands sent over a serial port.

So I had three available servos, a servo controller and an Arduino and I wanted to build a walking robot. Hmmm. I'd need to use one servo for each of the two legs but then I need a way to vary the traction of the legs so one can move forward on a return stroke while the other moves backwards on the power stroke. A moving weight should do it!

I didn't have any small hardware for attaching servos to stuff on hand. Nor did I have any good materials for the chassis. So I made the chassis out of cardboard in which I cut holes for the servos and I used thin steel craft wire to tie the servos in. I also used the wire to strap pencils to the servo horns as legs and as a boom to hold the swinging weight. Add a couple of rubber bands to hold the chassis in the desired shape and the electronics and batteries in place and viola: a humorous hack of a robot!

After a few minutes spent programming the Arduino to send the desired commands to the servo controller, it walked! Sort of.

It may not be pretty, but it's the first robot I've built completely from scratch.

Click the image to see the video.

Resources for Geeky Moms and Dads

A coworker who knows about my geeky parent pursuits asked me to send him some links to get him started. I'm recording what I told him here for posterity. When people ask me in the future I can direct them to this post.

My favorite resource is Make magazine. Is it the most visible publication in the growing "maker" community and always contains great projects of all kinds. Most of the projects are documented online at http://makeprojects.com/.

Another excellent resource is the Geek Dad blog from Wired. The signal to noise ration can be a little low if, like me, you aren't interested in dungeons and dragons or comic books. But there are still many gems per week for the rest of us. The editor, Ken Denmead, has also published several "Geek Dad" books containing projects to do with kids.

LEGO has made two different robotics kits. The first generation Mindstorms kit is not made any more. It was LEGO model 9719 – if search for "LEGO 5719" on eBay you can always find a few kits for sale. I bought one in pretty good condition with all the pieces for $125. The second generation is called LEGO Mindstorms NXT 2.0 and can be bought at many places. Amazon sells it for about $230 (it's "lego 8547").

Mindstorms (LEGO 9719)

Mindstorms NXT (LEGO 8547)

The first generation is compatible with traditional LEGO bricks. The second generation is somewhat compatible with traditional LEGO bricks, but the pieces that come with it are LEGO Technic. The first generation is slightly easier to program, but even the second generation is pretty easy once you get used to it. Both have visual programming environments.

My 7-year-old daughter just attended a LEGO "camp" for three hours at Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO). If you live in the Boston area you can visit that site and sign up for an email list of events. CEEO runs week-long LEGO robotics camps in the summer even for kids as young as 1st grade. They also have classes for adults.

If you want to take a more DIY approach to learning about electronics and robotics, O'Reilly and Make publish several books that can get you started. They have beginner electronics books and books like "Making Things Move" and "Making Things Talk" (meaning make devices communicate with each other). I've read the former and loved it.

Arduino Uno

Finally, anyone getting into electronics and controlling things should also learn about the Arduino "project". Arduino is an open-source hardware platform that incorporates a fairly powerful microcontroller with circuitry, firmware and programming environment on a standard layout, making it very easy for beginners to start controlling things. You can buy all kinds of fascinating Arduino-compatible stuff at places like Maker Shed and Sparkfun.com. There have been three generations of Arduino so far, if you buy one now you want an Arduino Uno.

My Work in the News

Today the New York Times published an article entitled, "DNA Sequencing Caught in Deluge of Data" It describes the explosion of data being generated by DNA and RNA sequencing because the cost of sequencing has fallen dramatically.

When the Human Genome Project sequenced the first human genome in the late 90's, completing in 2001, it cost billions of dollars. But it launched a technological revolution that is driving the costs down rapidly. The current goal is "the $1000 genome" and that will probably be achieved within a year. The current cost is about $3000.

The article starts with BGI in China, an organization with a significant portion of the world's current sequencing capacity. Coincidentally, I will be visiting Sifei He (quoted) in China the week of December 12. My employer is BGI's largest customer, and my team's job for the past year has been figuring out how to get that data from China to our data centers, organize it, "index" it so it can be searched, and support retention policies governing when to get rid of it (it's expensive as hell to store hundreds of terabytes of data - you can't just put it on hard drives you buy at Best Buy).

If you wonder what I do for a living, this article does a pretty good job of describing it. The best part of my job is witnessing the bleeding edge of (biological) science.

By the way, the caption on the photo in the Times article is incorrect. The professor is not looking at "cells", he is looking at a "flow cell". The flow cell has eight tiny channels running through it that you can think of as test tubes. To perform a sequencing run an operator loads them with DNA or RNA that has been extracted from biological cells.

Melrose STEM Expo

Melrose STEM Expo

This past summer a group of parents in Melrose formed the Melrose Education Coalition, which aims to encourage improved STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education in the Melrose schools. Our neighbor Jen is active in the MEC; she let us know about the Melrose STEM Expo to be held on November 19 and asked if I would like to volunteer to present an activity. Of course I agreed immediately.

I originally hoped to present something that is related to biology, but after much searching I couldn't find an activity I could do that would be hands on and fast enough for people just stopping by a table at an expo. Most of the biology experiments I could find consist of growing plants or other similarly long-timescale things.

My fallback was an activity the girls liked at Maker Faire in September: Squishy Circuits. The web site provides easy recipes for homemade play-doh of two types: conductive and insulating. Then kids can just take wire leads attached to batteries, LEDs, buzzers and motors and stick them in the play-doh to build circuits.

I used the project as an opportunity to check out a local electronics store I recently discovered: You Do It Electronics in Needham. You Do It is like Radio Shack used to be before they shifted to consumer gadgets, but four times as big. It was perfect for getting materials for squishy circuits.

The weekend before we made a test batch of the conductive play-doh and it worked great. I played around to find the right type of wire leads to attach to the various components to make them easy for kids to use and also as durable as possible. In the end I also packed tools and materials to make on-the-spot repairs which turned out to be a good idea.

The girls practiced with me a little and seemed to have it down. They were very excited that they would get to be behind the table with me. Carol was excited to help, too, so it turned into a family affair.

The expo was held at the Middle School. The high school robotics team I mentor was scheduled to be there as well as the middle school robotics team and the LEGO robotics program that I'll volunteer at this week at Audrey's and Charlotte's school. But I had no idea how many attendees to expect.

Well, I was blown away. There were probably at least 200 attendees and a pretty large collection of fellow exhibitors with lots of great activities for kids. Squishy Circuits was a huge hit! We had six "stations" at our table and they were all full almost all of the three hours that the event ran. We had kids from pre-school to 5th or 6th grade. Parents seemed equally excited about it and many of them worked hard to keep their kids focused on what we were teaching them.

Carol and the girls were really into it. Audrey was a wonderful teacher. We also had two parent volunteers with us: Amy and Chris. Chris happens to be the girls' art teacher in after-school art classes they are taking. They were fantastic.

Walking around the event almost brought tears to my eyes. I was inspired by both the volunteer energy that was apparent and by the interest of so many parents. It bodes very well for what MEC is trying to do.

I also had a conversation with James Horne who is the overall head of the robotics programs about starting a Junior LEGO League team at Roosevelt School. I'm very excited to do that.

Mister Bones

Click to go to video

"Mr. Bones" is a plastic skeleton my mom gave the girls a long time ago. We like to dance with him, dress him up and put him in weird poses. His arms often fall off.

For the past month I've been thinking about using Mr. Bones in a porch display for Halloween. This morning I woke up designing it so I surrendered and just built the damn thing. I used an Arduino to control LEDs for the eyes and heart. The biggest challenge was designing code to generate independent waveforms in a single loop (for the geeks out there, I ended up doing it by populating two lookup tables and the main loop just steps through them in parallel). I assembled the soundtrack from free sound effects found on the web and edited them together in Garage Band; it will play on an iPod with speakers.

This is the first time I've built an "animatronic" Halloween display. I think they're just going to have to get better every year, now. Next year's will include motion.

New Blog Template

I've been using the same blog template for years. When I logged in today Blogger offered me some updated templates and I figured the time had come to give them a try. Let me know if they don't display well for you, or if you have any other comments on the blog layout.

Bristlebots

I get a lot of ideas from the Geekdad blog. They recently ran a mention of a project from Evil Mad Scientist Labs called Bristlebots. It's dead simple: get some pager vibrators (tiny motors with unbalanced weights on their shafts that cost about a buck each) and fasten one with a battery to a toothbrush head.

It just so happens that the girls went to the dentist yesterday and got new toothbrushes. So today I repurposed their old brushes.

If you build them, be aware that the leads on the pager vibrators are very fragile. I broke three of them. In particular they can't take any strain when you're bending the attached wired around. Isolate them from that strain with your finger grip.

Click on the image to go to the video.

Science Day/Maker Faire

Science Day/Maker Faire

This past weekend was a STEM weekend.

Saturday morning we attended the Family Science Day at my office. It's an annual event presented by the Merck Institute for Science Education and volunteers from among my coworkers.The girls really enjoyed it. When we arrived there were a bunch of walk-around stations where kids could experiment with different scientific facts. Then a representative from Mass Audubon gave an auditorium presentation with a live kestrel and a barred owl. That was followed by an interactive session where we learned a lot about sponges and also about making observations and performing experiments. Then we had pizza.

That was the warm-up for our weekend. After the science fair we hopped in the car and drove to New York to attend Maker Faire on Sunday. This was the second annual fair held in New York; there have been fairs for several years in the Bay Area. Last year Audrey and I attended the inaugural NYC fair.

Boy, where to start on what we saw and did there?

• In the center of the grounds was a huge metal fire-breathing dinosaur/lizard machine - and they were letting kids climb on it! Audrey climbed up onto a sofa built into the rump, but then she decided that was a little too high for her. Charlotte sat in the driver's seat. Audrey also waited for a while to climb up into the belly of the beast. At one point the builder of the thing told one kid not to climb on a particular part because "it's dangerous." All of the parents looked at each other and said to each other, "The whole thing is dangerous!" But that's part of the point of Maker Faire: don't just passively consume stuff - take risks and explore! Like this. I loved the skin on the lizard that was made from old truck tires cut into long strips.
• The Life Size Mousetrap, of course. See last year's video to see it in action.
• The girls always love the Science Playground at the New York Hall of Science, the site where Maker Faire is held.
• Played with Oobleck. We were really looking forward to the big vat of it that they had last year, but even without the big vat the girls enjoyed playing with a smaller tub of it.
• We learned about electricity and circuits with Squishy Circuits. They have recipes that make playdoh either conductive (more salt) or insulative (more sugar), and then use it to illustrate those concepts with simple circuits.
• Revisited one of my favorites from last year: the Brooklyn Aerodrome. They show you how to build a cheap remote controlled airplane out of recycled foam board.
• The girls made paper bag puppets.
• In the craft-related shopping area the girls had a good time at the Thumbooks booth.
• Carol and the girls rode the Carousolar: a carousel powered by nearby solar panels.
• We ate overpriced gyros. They weren't as spectacularly good as last year.
• We *really* enjoyed the Sashima Tabernacle Choir (video).
• I got to wander through a whole bunch of robotics and 3D printing projects and products. If you ever feel the need to buy me a $1300 gift, get me a Maker Bot. Make magazine, the sponsors of the fair, have a huge Maker Shed store tent there. I could spend a lot of money in that tent.

We wrapped up the day with a shaved ice and then got on the road home. We were pleasantly surprised to not encounter much traffic through Connecticut. We all had a great time and we'll definitely go again next year. I might even organize it as a field trip for the robotics team I mentor.

Now I just need to find the time to get back to those robot projects...

First Arduino Robot, with Wii Nunchuck Control

I received some generous cash gifts for my birthday and I knew just what to use them for: to buy some parts to build a robot I've had in mind since December. The parts came Friday so I spent my free time this weekend getting the basics up and running. Click the image at left for a short video of the results.

The robot chassis is this kit from Maker Shed: a nice, simple base to build on. The brain of the robot is an Arduino microcontroller. And I also used the Motor Shield from Adafruit.com which is a very flexible and convenient way to control motors from an Arduino. A "shield" is another circuit board with pins that line up with the Arduino's pins so you can just put the shield right on top of the Arduino. You can even stack multiple shields. My ultimate goal is to use my iPhone as a remote control for the robot so it will also have a wi-fi shield soon for wireless communications.

I've had the LEGO Mindstorms NXT set for a few years and have enjoyed it. I'll keep using it and in fact will learn how to interface it to the Arduino. But the Arduino is a much more open and flexible controller. If you google Arduino you'll see that it gets used for an amazing number of creative projects.

I needed a way to control the robot until I get the iPhone remote control figured out. One of the easiest ways to provide directional input is with a nunchuck controller from a Wii. The communication protocol that the nunchuck uses (I2C) is supported directly by the standard Arduino libraries, and the Arduino community is broad, so it was easy to find the code I needed to make that work.

I'm very excited to finally be working with the Arduino. If I can find the time, I'd love to demonstrate a project at Maker Faire in September. And I'd really love to take a robot to the Robot Block Party at the Boston Museum of Science next April. I have a concept in mind for a great demonstration robot that kids would love - it will make souvenirs for them.

In the Arduino open source spirit, you can find the source code here:


Arduino Nunchuck 2-Wheel Control is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

What the heck are all those different units of radiation?

If you've been reading very much press about the ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan, then you have likely been confused by the wide variety of units in which radiation measurements are reported. I was. Yesterday I spent some time reading various Wikipedia articles (see links in text below) and organized the information into a guide that I hope is useful for someone with moderate scientific knowledge.


There are three aspects of radiation that are measured by various units: what is happening in the radioactive material; what exposure does a nearby object experience; and if that object is a living organism what biological effects does that exposure produce.

The material is undergoing radioactive decay. Unstable isotopes are decaying and emitting alpha particles, beta particles and gamma rays (there are other forms of ionizing radiation but these are the ones of concern with regard to nuclear fuels and their by-products).

The most basic measurement is the total number of disintegrations occurring per unit time in the material:

1 becquerel (SI unit) = 1 disintegration/second
1 curie (traditional unit) = 37 billion disintegrations/second

The emissions are in all directions. At a detector the most basic measurement is Counts Per Minute (CPM): the total number of disintegrations (alpha particles, beta particles and gamma rays) arriving at the detector. Keep in mind that the detector does not typically completely surround the source, so CPM is only the emissions  that reach the detector.

Emissions encountering an object accumulate in that object and add up to "exposure". Exposure units have a complicated history and taxonomy.

A roentgen (traditional unit) is "the amount of radiation required to liberate positive and negative charges of one electrostatic unit of charge (esu) in 1 cm³ of dry air at standard temperature and pressure (STP). This corresponds to the generation of approximately 2.08×10⁹ ion pairs." Use of roentgen units is now discouraged.

A rad (traditional unit) is "the dose causing 0.01 joule of energy to be absorbed per kilogram of matter"

1 roentgen = 1 rad, approximately.

A gray (SI unit) is "the absorption of 1 joule of radiation energy per kilogram of absorbing material". 1 Gy is approximately equal to 115 roentgens.

The effect of the radiation exposure on the object depends on the composition of the radiation (the proportion of alpha, beta and gamma radiation) and the object's material. So subsequent units use a conversion factor ("quality factor", Q) that reflects the biological effects on humans. Q ranges from 1 for x-rays, gamma rays and beta particles to 10 for neutrons to 20 for alpha particles.

A rem ("roentgen equivalent in man", traditional unit) is a measure of "radiation dose equivalent" and is the product of the quality factor times rads (or roentgens).

rems = Q x rads

The SI unit of radiation dose equivalent is the sievert. 1 sievert (SI unit) = 100 rems.

But that's just a measurement of energy absorbed adjusted for biological effect on human tissue without regard to duration of exposure. One could absorb a given amount of energy in a minute or in a lifetime. The Wikipedia sievert article lists doses for single events like dental x-rays as well as dose/time examples such as average background radiation exposure for an American resident per year.

In most countries the current maximum permissible dose to radiation workers is 20 mSv per year averaged over five years, with a maximum of 50 mSv in any one year. This is over and above background exposure, and excludes medical exposure.

The sievert article also gives symptom benchmarks:

Symptoms of acute radiation (dose received within one day):^[20]

• 0 – 0.25 Sv (0 – 250 mSv): None
• 0.25 – 1 Sv (250 – 1000 mSv): Some people feel nausea and loss of appetite; bone marrow, lymph nodes, spleendamaged.
• 1 – 3 Sv (1000 – 3000 mSv): Mild to severe nausea, loss of appetite, infection; more severe bone marrow, lymph node, spleen damage; recovery probable, not assured.
• 3 – 6 Sv (3000 – 6000 mSv): Severe nausea, loss of appetite; hemorrhaging, infection, diarrhea, peeling of skin,sterility; death if untreated.
• 6 – 10 Sv (6000 – 10000 mSv): Above symptoms plus central nervous system impairment; death expected.
• Above 10 Sv (10000 mSv): Incapacitation and death.

Helium Balloon Aerial Photography

Go to video

Go to photo album

I've subscribed to Make: magazine since the first issue and I'd love to try almost all of the projects they publish! I haven't had time for very many but when I saw the Helium Balloon Imaging Satellite project in Issue 24 I knew I had to do it.

I've wanted to learn more about electronics for a long time but so far have only dabbled. Also I'm determined that my two young daughters not succumb to the idea that girls cannot be good at science, engineering and math so I plan to expose them to as much of those as I can by exploring projects with (or at least in front of) them.

The balloon photography project uses a PICAXE microcontroller as a camera timer. It cost about $3. The camera is a “drugstore” digital camera that cost less than $10. I hacked the camera to install wires that allow the shutter to be operated by a relay that's activated by the microcontroller. It's programmed to take a picture every few seconds.

It took me four attempts to get everything right.

On our first attempt it felt at ground level like there was no wind, but soon after we launched the wind caught the balloons. They almost got tangled in our phone wire, which should have been my first clue to stop and try later. But I persevered and a minute later the balloons were hopelessly tangled about 40' up in a large tree. Big disappointment. At least with all my jerking the string to try to free the balloons the camera rig fell off and dropped into the snow so it wasn't also lost in the tree.

A few days later I bought more balloons to try again. Unfortunately I had a bad connection in my controller circuit and the camera only took two photos. We were losing daylight and I didn't have time to fix the circuit for another attempt that day. We took the balloons in the house overnight.

The next day we were excited to try again. Unfortunately attempt number 3 was an immediate failure because the balloons had lost lift overnight and would no longer lift the payload. Off to the store I went to buy more balloons.

Finally, attempt number 4 went off without a hitch. There was only a very slight breeze aloft and we didn't have any close encounters with trees. The camera took all 60 photos it can hold. Success!

We still had balloons and daylight so we decided to go for one more mission before rewarding the kids with the balloons. We had a near disaster when the breeze kicked up and took the balloons over the house and they became briefly entangled on the roof. We got a free roof inspection! (Roof looks good)

Fortunately when the breeze died the balloons freed themselves and we got a few more minutes of flight. The balloons were losing lift, though, and were barely overcoming the weight of the payload by that point. I had to carefully maneuver the craft past more trees but managed a successful recovery.

This project was fun and I learned a lot about microcontrollers and basic electronics. The kids loved seeing the balloons so high in the sky and they especially loved having a lot of balloons to play with when I was finished with them.

I plan to reuse the camera rig from a kite in the spring and summer.

Oh, you might ask why I didn't fly the contraption in a more open area. That would have defeated the purpose of getting pictures of our own house!

LEGO Race Stop Motion

I received the LEGO Race 3000 game for Christmas. Once I built the game board it was just asking to be animated with stop motion. In the process I learned how to add layered sound tracks in iMovie. I think I'll keep my day job for a little while longer, though.

More Phone Microscopy

More iPhone Microscopy

The little cheap microscope I had glued to an iPhone case (see previous photos) had come unglued a while back. I finally had a chance to fix it, so today we were on another microscopy quest. We started around the house, but then Audrey and I went out for a winter walk in the woods and shot some interesting things. The images aren't all that great, but it gets a lot of oohs and ahhs from the girls and that's the whole point.

Maker Faire NYC 2010

In September Audrey and I attended Maker Faire in New York. You can read the original blog post for the details. I'm on a roll today and got the video I shot there edited into a movie.

Click on the image to go to the video.