Tag Archives: ELECTRICAL

Ultimate LED Nerd Glasses: Part 3 – Mechanical and PCB Construction

Posted by on January 29, 2012 2 comments

Wnerd glasses with LEDs on it with no tapehen building something like this, the first question I ask myself is “how can I avoid making the wires into a rat’s nest?“  OK, maybe that’s not true if you look back at such projects as the Pegleg Hexapod or Boxie the Creepster.  However, this was a wearable hack and has a very limited space to work with, so wires going everywhere on one’s forehead wasn’t really what I had in mind.

Instead of wires running everywhere, I decided to make my own CNC-routed PCB.  What it amounts to is three separate lines of copper cut to approximately fit the bridge section of the glases in question.  I measured everything and used Draftsight (see my Windows DS review) to draw the approximate shape with lines separating it into three isolated sections.  The middle will act as ground and the top and bottom section act as the positive for each set of LEDs.  It turned out better than I expected, and is mostly covered by the glasses.

From Amazon: Nerd Glasses Buddy Wayfarer Black Frame Clear Lens

I have no idea what brand or make the glasses that I used were, but I’ve listed a link above to some that are similarly styled from Amazon.  I’ve also listed Read more »

Ultimate LED Nerd Glasses: Part 2 – Electrical Circuit and Hookup

Posted by on January 27, 2012 1 comment

LED nerd glasses circuitTo the right is the schematic used to construct the LED nerd glasses (see the results here).  The rectangular square piece in the middle of the LEDs represents the PCB.  The middle acts as a neutral, and the sides each provide 3 volts when connected.

The 3 volt coin cell battery (Energizer 2032) that I used should really have a 33 Ohm resistor connected (see LEDcalc.com to easily calculate this) before going into each 3 volt bus.  I’ve neglected this in my design, so the LEDs will be overpowered and will most likely burn out prematurely.  Also an actual switch and battery holder would be a nice touch.  As it stands now, the neutral is held onto the battery with electrical tape and the positive or signal wires are tapped onto positive by hand.

From Amazon: Energizer Lithium Coin Watch Battery 2032, 2-Count

The circuit itself is very simple, but Read more »

Ultimate Nerd Glasses: Part 1 – Introduction

Posted by on January 25, 2012 1 comment

When someone thinks of “nerd glasses”, a certain image is generally conjured up.  Probably thick black glasses with possibly some duct tape holding them together at the bridge or other structurally-important point.  A true nerd, in my opinion, should probably integrate some sort of electronics, and possibly a CNC-cut circuit board to really show off their nerd credentials.

With that in mind, let me present the “ultimate nerd glasses”, which contain several nerd-friendly elements.  These include: the glasses themselves, LED lights and a CNC cut circuit board behind the bridge of the glasses.  There’s an animated .gif of the glasses in action by themselves after the break, but as for how to make one, Read more »

Capacitor Safety for Cameras

Posted by on March 21, 2011 1 comment

Capacitors are fairly common components when it comes to modifying/breaking electrical components.  However, they can be quite dangerous.  According to “repairfaq.org“,

“While accidental contact with capacitors on a 3.3 V logic board isn’t going to result in a shocking experience, this is not true of many common types of equipment including TVs, computer and other monitors, microwave ovens; the switchmode power supplies in some VCRs, laptop computers, camcorder battery chargers; electronic flash and other xenon strobes; laser power supplies, and many other consumer and industrial devices.”

camera partially disassmebled

Disassembled ==> Could be bad...

Most people familiar with electronics should know to be careful around TVs, but what many people wouldn’t think about is the smaller things, especially electronic flash devices.  Quite a bit of power is required to use a flash, and as such, quite a bit is stored in a camera’s capacitor.

I did an article about triggering your camera with an air freshener, which should be Read more »

The Angular Momentum Roller

Posted by on March 7, 2011 17 comments

angular momentum rollerI had a thought a while ago that a device could be built with no external moving parts controlled by conservation of angular momentum.  Angular momentum is the tendency of an object to stay at rest in a circular direction if no other forces act on it.  It’s why a large spinning wheel is hard to stop and why a skater can spin much faster by pulling her arms in.  It’s also why you don’t start spontaneously spinning for no reason.  However, if, say for instance, you had a large wheel that started to spin very fast because of a motor or other reason, your body would have the tendency to rotate in the other direction.  This is the whole premise behind this “vehicle”.

My first experiment with this was a strange and fairly crude object that I called the “angular momentum device”.  Although the science behind it was rather dubious, I had hoped to induce a spin about the center axis by spinning the two wheels on the sides.  In the video, it seems to work, but Read more »