John Edgar Park, one pixel at a time
Usman and I will be demonstrating the Rail-O-Graph in the mornings at the Make: magazine booth. We’ll do a talk at 2pm on Saturday and 12:45 on Sunday on the project. On Sunday at 2pm, Mark Frauenfelder and I will talk about coffee hacks. We’ll have some fun stuff on hand, including Mark’s modified espresso machine, the Florence Siphon brewer I built, a new, miniature version of my hydraulic espresso tamper, and more. Can’t wait to see you there!
The Railographic Apparatus uses a train to deliver messages between terminal stations. My first tests were with HO scale trains. These were very helpful in testing the Arduino + Adafruit MotorShield, but proved to be a bit to small and unstable to lug around all the gear we wanted to use.
Usman Muzaffar and I are working on a telecommunications project called The Rail-O-Graph. It’s a re-imagined Pony Express that passes messages between nodes using a microcontroller on a train. (Initial tests conducted with snakes on a plane did NOT go well.) I’m posting progress videos here as we race the clock to finish by Maker Faire. I previously posted a video of the simple switch > relay > solenoid > switch system here.
Here’s my exploration of solenoids and switches tapping at a constant rate:
The rate wasn’t so constant, until I put a protection diode across the solenoid leads. This was Tod Kurt’s suggestion. Once again, Tod as saved me from putting the project into a little pile and setting it on fire.
(Photo: Anders Krusberg/The Martha Stewart Show)
My friend Mark Frauenfelder, Editor of Make: magazine and co-founder of Boing Boing, filmed a segment for The Martha Stewart Show which airs on Monday, May 18th, 2009. He brought on a number of MAKE projects to demo, including my bright red hydraulic espresso tamper. I can’t wait to watch - way to go, Mark!
I so covet this hoodie we just got for my son at Gymboree!
My favorite Evil Mad Scientists Lenore and Windell made this beautiful, static, analog Kindle. http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/kindling
The first winner of the Twitter contest has been randomly selected.
Congratulations to @barrymcw for being so, well, randomly selected!!
Would you like a chance to win an earbud owl cut on the Epilog Zing laser cutter? Of course you would! Each week in May another winner will be selected, so be sure to follow me, @johnedgarpark on Twitter.
Follow me on Twitter for a chance to win a wooden, laser cut earbud owl! I’m @johnedgarpark , and if you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, hit that link to sign up and then remember to follow me. I’ll be selecting one random follower per week during the month of May to have their own super awesome earbud owl sent to them. Applies to US shipping addresses, unless you can otherwise convince me that it won’t cost too much to get it there! Or, meet me in person at Maker Faire to have it hand delivered!!
I’ll be reviewing this more officially in the future, but for the curious, this is the device that I used to create the earbud owl. It’s a 40Watt laser cutter. With a frickin’ shark on its head.
