Tuesday, December 3, 2013

3D Renderings with Autodesk VRED

I tested out the Autodesk VRED software for students this week and its awesome! I did a few renderings of cars that turned out sorta nice but hey... with 20 minutes of experience, that pretty good!




Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve

A intro I made on how i do my grading in Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve.

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

Monday, October 21, 2013

Nitrous Oxide Production

I am currently designing a device that makes racing nitro. For anybody that plays racing games, this is probably familiar. It is one of the fuels this engine is designed to burn. From the diagram, you can see that it heats ammonium nitrate to create water vapor and N20. I can get ammonium nitrate for about $.15 a gram, which is great compared to $200-300 per bottle of N20. More details to come.

Kickstarter


Yay! Our kickstarter project is going live this week! We have project descriptions, and other information about this project now available to the general public. The link to the project will be posted when the kickstarter goes live!

 ~Clark McCauley

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

A DIY tutorial on custom BNC wires

A DIY tutorial on custom BNC wires 


 Here are the supplies you'll need for this project:








 1/4" ID spring (I found this in my stash of electronics so your going to have to work to find this one!)

 6-8 inch male to male breadboard wire (can be found on ebay or electronic goldmine)
 Standard BNC terminator (can also be found at Home Depot)
 1/4" OD plastic tubing (can be found at Home Depot)
 I'm going to start by cutting my tubing slightly shorter then the breadboard wire.
 I will then cut slits in the tubing about a half inch apart and about half the way through the tubing. This will allow the tube to bend easily.
 Take the breadboard wire and straighten it so it will slip easily into the BNC terminator.
 It will require very little force, and you can feel it slide into the connector. You can get a compression tool to fix it there but I didn't worry about it.
 Slip the plastic tubing over the wire, and into the BNC compression end.

 Now slip the spring over the tubing as seen here.

This provides for a protected from the environment and it is quite awesome! I use this to connect to my digital oscilloscope interface all the time!

Update - Hybrid Rocket Engine: Motor controller and servo mounting

I've designed a mounting plate system (which uses parts available from home depot as usual!) that allows for a cleaner setup and mounting away from the flame output nozzle. It uses Plexiglas main plates that screw right on to the main chassis. If I can get my budget coordinated, I should be able to build this portion in the next 2-3 weeks.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Update - Hybrid Rocket Engine

 Just a few updates have been made to the engine. They mostly enhance the automation of the system.
 I built some custom BNC cables that allow me to transfer custom built sensors to a digital oscilloscope interface.
 The custom cables link down to the main data transfer breadboard, where everything eventually meets and connects.
I bought some BNC connectors from Home Depot and wired a pinnned cable into it and covered it with some acrylic tubing. Very Simple!

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Old Electron Guns

Here are some old designs I made about a year and a half ago. Inside there is a filament, and an accelerator grid. All the wires come out and move to the back to be hooked to a psu.


Hybrid Rocket Engine

I have recently been putting together a semi-autonomous hybrid rocket engine, this is a prototype edition, complete with plexi-glass mounting plates. It is run by an Arduino Mega 2560. It has three sensors, an accelerometer, a gyro, and a vibration sensor, all of which are protected and covered (see pictures). It burns a propane flame, mixed with a pvc solid fuel, and pure oxygen gas that is produced with a chemical reaction on the engine itself (see three silver chambers). Please comment!




Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Peach breader

My current project is a peach breeder. It sounds funny doesn't it! It is! It works by stimulating the growth of the cells in peaches particularly, through laser ray light radiation, or L.R.L.R. I am using a color sensor to determine the current state of growth in the peach by measuring the color, and a light sensor to measure the intensity of the laser at any given time. Both sensors are mounted on computer controlled arms that remove the sensors from the peach after measuring has been completed. The peach rotates and is exposed to light radiation for a given period of time. Accepting comments. Take care!

~Clark McCauley