Cutaway drawings of planes, trains, automobiles and ships

I am doing research for an article about the Internet of things. A NASA Tech Brief article led me to a blog post with 20 different cutaway drawings. Yeah, it’s a year old and maybe all you hotshots read Gizmodo, but us analog dinosaurs aren’t as hip. I have always loved cutaways ever since I was an auto engineer. Some might dismiss it as simple technical illustration, but I see them as fine art.

The Gee Bee Model R Super Sportster made by Granville Brothers Aircraft of Springfield, Massachusetts in 1932.

Looking up one of the cutaway drawings to get permission to print it, I came across the mother lode of airplane cutaway drawings. Flightglobal is a trade paper like EDN or Machine Design. It is owned by Reed Business Information, the outfit that used to own EDN magazine. I had a wistful feeling seeing this magazine still at Reed Business. They got the whole Internet thing a decade before most companies. And they sure understood SEO (search engineer optimization). I could mention a buddy’s name in an EDN blog, and by that night he was getting calls from old High School buddies that saw his name in the post.

Oh, and in the hopes the fine folks over at Reed Business are longer on Marketing than on lawyers, this is cutaway of the Global Hawk (aka un-weaponized Predator drone).

The Global Hawk is cutaway by FlightGlobal magazine.

Car-to-car communication

There are a lot of great things on the horizon for MCU makers like Atmel. The Internet of Things (IoT) is going to be a huge boon for companies like us that make both microcontrollers and radio chips. Just last week I read that you can consider an automobile just another “thing” in the IoT. So it was with great interest that I read an article about how the American National Traffic Safety Board (NTSB) is encouraging manufacturers to design cars that communicate with each other to make them safer.

The car-to-x system warns of road works, congestion, obstacles and dangerous weather (courtesy Daimler).

This is based on observations and research of accidents that could have been avoided if vehicles can communicate without driver intervention. Needless to say, the US automakers are not pushing it. “Mitch Bainwol, the [Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers] president and chief executive, raised doubts that such systems could be feasible in the near term.” I sent this article to Susanne, a co-worker that works with Atmel’s automotive group. She notes: “…not that long way off as you may think: Daimler will launch this year the first car ever with intelligent drive function including car-to-car communication.” The Daimler Car-to-X system is the wireless exchange of information between vehicles and between vehicles and transport infrastructure. Daimler has been testing a system since the Spring of 2012.

In the Daimler Car-to-X system, obstacles are shown on the vehicle’s display (courtesy Daimler).

A little research shows that the European automakers are out ahead of this technology. There is a consortium of Mercedes Benz/ Daimler, BMW, Audi, Volkswagen, Ford, and Opel involved with testing real world systems. They call it Sim TD (Safe intelligent mobility Testfield). Volkswagen and BMW independently came up with smart intersection technology back in 2011.

When you look at the tragic train accident in Spain, most likely caused by operator negligence, you can see how smart transportation can offer immense benefits to the public. If rail corners had wireless transmitters, the curve could override the irresponsible or incompetent throttle input of the human driving the train. That is independent of the internet of things, where a car can look up real-time road conditions. At the SAE Convergence show a few years back, I saw one automaker talk about how the car can connect to the Internet to see the grade of a highway is it on. That will help it plan the shift-points of the transmission for best safety and fuel economy.

It won’t take many instances of showing we can save the lives of innocent passengers, or children on school busses, before the public will demand car-to-X communication. An added benefit will be the fuel economy and convenience benefits. When the auto industry is ready, Atmel will be there to enable the technology.

Francis Lau and Wayne Yamaguchi on ADC tips

My buddies Francis Lau and Wayne Yamaguchi read my recent article about the 12-bit ADCs in the new Atmel SAM D20 ARM chip.

Wayne Yamaguchi (left) and Francis Lau admire the CNC milling machine in Wayne’s garage.

 

They both had some good tips. Francis has worked for a famous Silicon Valley brain-wave sensor company. He writes:

I was trying to squeeze out more resolution out of a 10-bit adc on an Atmel AVR in the brainwave sensing module. Along with power synchronization you can do couple other firmware level tricks. One thing is to over sample and then do a simple average. You could do curve fitting but then that’ll take more computing power rather than just drop some bits. If the signal is repeating, you can also just sample it multiple times over different cycles and average those.

The Atmel datasheet also tell you that in order to get those 10-bits rather than the 7.5bits ENOB (effective number of bits) you typically get, you really need to turn off the other digital clocks in the chip and let it rest a bit before doing the acquisition. I tried this and it does make these little 2 bits of noise quiet down.

My buddy Wayne, who I met at HP years ago before they split off Agilent, has worked on all kinds of analog signal chains. He designs LED lighting that is controlled by Atmel AVR parts. Wayne writes:

For the ATtiny series the A/D resolution is not that bad and noise in general should not be an issue.  I have several boards that the uP is on the bottom side or adjacent to the DC/DC driver that drives up to 3A to the LED off a battery pack.

Of special note is the bit resolution.  If you use the internal 1.1V reference, then the resolution is 1.1V/1024 or approximately 1mV.  By using a precision voltage reference for VCC of the MCU you can use the supply as the A/D reference instead of the internal reference.  A 2.5V reference changes the bit resolution to 2.5mV and is less noise sensitive.  I have tested the single reading under these conditions and have found that the voltage read back is very stable with just one reading with the DC-DC converter running.  On my GDuP board the uP is directly under the converter and switching inductor.  The converter is on the top side of the board (components) and the bottom side components are for the uP.  The board is 0.55″ round and can drive up to 1.5A constant current to the LED.  The GDuP is a 2 layer board with standard 1 oz copper foil.  Of course the final code does not rely on a single reading. Personally, I typically average 4 readings. For one customer I was consulting for, I had to increase the resolution to monitor the battery drain more accurately. There I averaged more readings to extend the range to 12 bits.

So there you have some good examples from experienced engineers who battle such analog issues every day. The important thing to remember is that if you really want 10 or 12 bits, you have to do the system design to remove noise, and maybe oversample or average or dither or a bunch of tricks to get the nominal bit depth of the ADC. Please understand, Atmel and our competitors are not lying when we say we have 10 bit ADCs yet they only give 7.5 ENOB. You really do get 10 bits at low sample rates under noise-free conditions. We cannot estimate how fast you are sampling in your particular system nor how much noise you have in your environment. All a chip manufacturer can do is measure the performance under ideal conditions, both at DC and at a sample rate where we can tell you the ENOB. It is up to you to make sure you design has the margins and error budget to deliver the accuracy you need. Remember, the rated ADC bit are a resolution, not an accuracy. It is not trivial to insure a measurement accuracy, just read the Keithley low-level measurement handbook.

The June 2013 Silicon Valley eFlea electronics flea market

I wrote about the Silicon Valley electronic flea market my pals and I go to, as well as our breakfast. I also wanted to showcase the one I attended in June, so you can see all the cool gizmos that were there. This was a quite a well-attended eFlea, as my buddy Dave Ruigh calls it.

Attendance was good. The eFlea is now under the solar cell arrays at the DeAnza College parking lot. Do pay the 3-dollar parking or you will get a $35 ticket. Just ask audio guru Joe Curcio.

I got excited when I saw this original Zenith radio……

…..Until I saw all these other radios…..

…And then I came across this crystal unit from 1916.

I came across Google’s Eric Schlaepfer checking out a memory board from an old computer. Eric has been playing with home-made core memory so he has an inherent interest in memory these days.

Don’t think the eFlea is all about old stuff—there is always a nice selection of things for your lab.

How about this crate full of gold? You can get SMA connectors for a dime, and they are not the cheap ones that don’t have consistent 50-ohm impedance, these tend to be mil-spec units.

You can get great books dirt cheap. Then send them to that place in San Jose that scans them for 1 dollar (http://1dollarscan.com/). Now they all fit inside your tablet.

OK, I have a weakness for old stuff- two phones that would be really cool on your wall.

And here is an old phonograph that would look good on a table next to your phones.

The eFlea always has a nice selection of tools. There are dealers, but you want to be on the lookout for someone clearing out his garage.

My buddy Richard King has a dozen tube testers. Then again, he is the guy that buys eFlea books on thoriated tungsten. Don’t think high-tech was invented by the semiconductor industry. Vacuum tubes have every bit as much physics and material science going on. And they glow in the dark.

Analog Aficionado and San Jose State graduate student Felipe Jimenez was the eFlea and scored a nice meter.

These folks had bought a Pac-Man arcade game and were strategizing how to get it into their truck.

The General Electric Tungar battery charger. Every engineer needs one of these on her desk.

Ever since I was a kid I have loved air-core variable capacitors. Also note the coil-winders. Phil Sittner picked up one of these for his antenna matching experiments.

Speaking of Phil, a guy that manages an electrical distribution business can appreciate this box full of circuit breakers and contactors.

And audio guru Steve Williams was sure to check out this Sears 8mm projector. We had to do an on-the-spot intervention to keep him from buying it; he loves old projectors and old phonographs.

I love old equipment. The Wikipedia on Stratagene says: “It has been involved with the fields of cellular analysis, cloning, cytogenomics, DNA Methylation and DNA Sizing and Quantification and food testing.” They must have done something right, Agilent bought them in 2007. Buy this a RoboCycler and start your own Frankenstein project.

Wayne Yamaguchi talks burning fuses and setting lock bits in source

I had lunch with my pal Wayne Yamaguchi last week, who has several products he makes based on Atmel AVR parts. Wayne mentioned that he has found products where someone has forgotten to burn the fuse and lock bits, and he could read the code inside the part. He admits that it is easy to get confused if you are switching between developing some code for one project and then burning some chips for products that are shipping. You have to click down a few menus to insure the bits get set. Instead he says that he puts the instructions to set the fuse and lock bits in his source code, and then he can program the parts with the .ELF file which will set the bits in the parts.

Here is Wayne Yamaguchi (left) and my crack protégé Francis Lau exchanging numbers. Frances was showing Wayne his FreedomPop piggyback phone that lets him make free calls. We all worked together in a startup 12 years ago.

So Wayne dropped me a note and said:

 Here’s some info on embedding fuse settings in the source code.

 #include <avr/fuse.h>

#include <avr/lock.h>

/*

FUSES =

{

//    .low = (unsigned char)(FUSE_CKDIV8 & FUSE_SUT0 & FUSE_CKSEL3 &

FUSE_CKSEL2 & FUSE_CKSEL0),

//    .low = (unsigned char)(FUSE_CKDIV8 & FUSE_SUT0 & FUSE_SUT1  &

FUSE_CKSEL3 & FUSE_CKSEL2 & FUSE_CKSEL0),

     .low = LFUSE_DEFAULT,

     .high = HFUSE_DEFAULT,

//    .high = (unsigned char)(FUSE_BODLEVEL0 & FUSE_SPIEN),

     .extended = EFUSE_DEFAULT,

};

*/

LOCKBITS = (LB_MODE_3 );

/*

To extract the fuse/lock bits from the elf file.  From the command prompt type the following.

avr-objdump -s -j .fuse <ELF file>

avr-objdump -s -j .lock <ELF file>

*/

You should be able to find more info from winavr documentation.  It took me forever to find it.  Like I mentioned I use the .ELF file to program the part which includes the fuse and lock bit settings.

If you are like Wayne and in a mixed design and manufacturing small business environment, you too might prefer to put the fuse and lock bit instructions in your source code. Give it try and let us know what you think.

Dave Mathis with more on FCC certification

My buddy Dave Mathis learned a lot about FCC certification of products when he consulted for Aerielle, a Silicon Valley company that makes wireless audio devices. He shared with me some of his hard-learned knowledge this week.

His strongest point is that when the FCC tells you a section of spectrum is unlicensed, it does not mean it is unregulated. What unlicensed means is that the end-user of your product does not have to fill in forms and send it to the FCC in order to use the product. Things like wireless microphones and radio stations do need a license from the FCC. But realize that your unlicensed wireless gizmo still requires certification. That is where you or a lab measures the RF coming off your product and gives you results to the FCC showing the product does not exceed radiated power limits and does not have excessive harmonic spurs in the broadcast signal. You are supposed to measure out to the tenth harmonic. For a 2.4GHz product, that is quite an expensive spectrum analyzer you need.

Most labs charge about $10,000 to certify a device. But if you cheat and the FCC decides to prosecute you, the penalty is $10,000 per device that you have sold. You are supposed to get a conditional license that lets you have 5 devices to test and prototype. When you pass your lab test or give the FCC your test results, they assign you a certification number. What infuriates Dave is that many cheap imports just copy a number off a different product or invent a number. There are some open-source and kit vendors who don’t even bother to do that, they just invent a number or leave it off.

This RF digital module on the Open Source RF board is FCC Certified as evident by the ID number printed on the case.

Now there is an interesting wrinkle in the FCC rules. The RF portion of your device is an intentional radiator. If that radiator is certified by the maker, then the microprocessor you add to it is considered an incidental non-intentional radiator, so you don’t have to do testing and certify the module-MCU combination. If you start with an Atmel ZigBit 802.15.4/ZigBee module, the micro is included. An Anaren AIR module is just a radio, but you can connect it to an MCU and still be covered by the FCC ID on the module. Same goes for the RF Digital module. And best yet, Dave thinks you might even be covered for a switching power supply in your product (check with your test lab, don’t trust us) as long as you have a certified RF module.

Also be aware that the FCC has slightly different rules for RF kits that plug in. One important principle is that the modules are certified with a known antenna. You are not allowed to lengthen or change the antenna in any way. So don’t think you can cheap-out and just plop a wireless chip on a board and guess at an antenna. You might get away with it, but one day there will be some ISM (industrial medical scientific) band interference that will inconvenience a politician, and then the FCC will come down on us like a ton of bricks. So you may be far better off paying more for a pre-certified RF module that going through the hassle of having it tested or testing it yourself. If your design budget allows for $10k to do testing great, but any little change to the PCB or antenna will require a re-test, if you play by the rules.

Silicon Valley Maker Faire 2013 wrap up

After telling you about all the cool things at Maker Faire that were powered by Atmel chips, I thought I would balance things out showing some Maker things that don’t have chips at all.

A Steampunk styled land-based submarine at the 2013 Maker Faire.

It does not take long hanging around Maker to see that there is this whole Steampunk esthetic. In fact I would describe Maker as a science fair crossed with Burning Man. Out in the parking lot, there were big motorized cupcakes, just big enough to hold a driver, that were scooting around to the delight of the kids. Also a huge Rube Goldberg style installation where a bowling ball rolled through all kinds of obstructions to trigger a huge weight that would fall on a car, crushing it a little further towards flat each demonstration. There was a stylized dragon that sped around, avoiding the cupcakes, and propane spewing art sculpture the size of a tree. There were also Maker projects and food booths outside. The outside part of Maker Faire is why you should bring a hat and some sunscreen.

Speaking of kids, one of the greatest things about Maker is that it is a family-friendly event.

A cadre of young Makers gets intoxicated on LEGO® blocks.

There is a Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group for the adults doing giant projects.

Some budding Makers getting ready to craft a stuffed octopus that doubles as a glove, a Glovetopus.

Here a whole gaggle of Maker Fair attendees has a blast expressing their artistic side.

I think one thing fundamentally different about Maker compared to a science fair is that Maker promotes and encourages the artistic side of technologists.

This locomotive not only looks good, it also burns real coal.

The amazing thing about this model locomotive is that is hand-built, not made from a kit.

There seems to be a linkage between the Maker community and model train enthusiasts. There was a great outdoor display at Maker, with some fantastic model trains.

Maker Faire had a whole hall dedicated to robot wars.

There was some intense work going on the pit next to the robot war pen.

Robot wars. There are a lot of fun things at Maker, but sparring robots has to top my list. Designing  complex electro-mechanical systems is great instruction for these young technologists. They are the innovators and competitors that will keep America’s and the world’s economy humming along.

“Dave X” shows off a home-made firework that you can build. No, that is not real powder in the thing.

Explosives. What could be more fun? The Western Pyrotechnic Association had a booth at Maker Faire 2013. They can make sure you are following all state and federal laws as you make home-made fireworks. For that giant unit in the picture, you have to drive out of California to set it off. The trip to Nevada or Arizona just adds to the anticipation. The Association organizes events where everyone gets together to try out their handiwork. I guess you can think of them as single-use model rockets. Too late for the 2013 Winter Blast, but there is always 2014 to look forward to.

The Drone Dudes came up from Hollywood to Maker 2013.

Drone Dudes had an awesome octo-copter at the Faire. They hang an HD camera on the bottom of the drone and do filming for the movie industry. Now there may be Atmel chips inside it, I just forgot to ask I was so blown away by the hardware. Over the next few years you will start to see directors and cinematographers take advantage of this new technology, like when they saw how Google Earth zooms can make a great establishing shot, or how Bullet cams for the Matrix movie can do slow motion with perspective changes. I don’t think this gorgeous South Dakota night sky video uses bullet cams—but it is interesting to speculate how he did the dolly shots while time-lapsing. I suspect a really smooth robotic setup.

The Epilog laser can cut and engrave objects as well as cut them out of thin stock.

The Epilog Laser people were at the Maker Shed. The unit they showed won’t cut a razor blade yet, but that is some crazy power you probably would not want in your garage anyway.

The G&M Honey folks had a nice display at Maker.

G&M Honey is all about local production of food. So they can set you up to keep honey bees, and I think they can even sell the honey to local restaurants. They will even come get that bee hive out of the trunk of your car or the wall in your house.

This camera booth can feed images to Autodesk’s 123D photo-to-3D model software.

Autodesk had this camera booth that provides images to their 123D 3-D model creation software. My ME pal Dave Ruigh tried the software a few months ago and could not get good results. He said it would be easier to just build the thing in Solidworks. I suspect he did not feed the software the kind of images it needed. This booth would be the perfect test bed to see how well the software performs. Next time I will bring a Sportster engine case and see how it does with that.

Here were some weird 3D shapes at Maker Faire 2013.

I don’t know if this strange shape was made from a model or is just some type of Styrofoam bubbles. The wooden models are interesting too. I did not have time to get the story; it was a drive-by snap, so there you have it.

Jeri Ellsworth was at the Faire with her new company Technical Illusions.

Occasional eFlea attendee Jeri Ellsworth was at the Maker Faire this year with a demo of her new company Technical Illusions. They project a 3-D game image out of a headset, but get this– the headset also has a camera so the 3-D is projected properly on to tables, walls and other surfaces. Too cool, no wonder Jeri has not been down to the eFlea breakfast for a while.

Maker Faire is really getting some traction all over the world. It looks like people have a real hunger to get their hands on technology and warp and weave it into whatever strikes their fancy. If you have never been to a Maker Faire, you should give it a try. The 120,000 people who came to San Mateo all had a great time. There is another big Faire in New York Sept 21&22, as well as franchised Faires in Detroit July 27&28 and Kansas City June 29&30. There is even a Faire coming to Rome Oct 3-6.

Wayne Yamaguchi on file storage and project management

I had lunch with my buddy Wayne Yamaguchi last week. He showed me the latest upgrades on an Atmel-powered nightlight he has designed. I met Wayne when I was consulting at HP in the late ‘90s. He took an interest in LEDs and left Agilent when he started making more money selling kits to convert your Maglite into an LED flashlight. Wayne was the guy that got me on OrCAD 7, and I still use OrCAD 9.2. Love those free vias.

Wayne Yamaguchi holds his prototype LED nightlight at the Pho Kim Long restaurant in San Jose.

Anyway, Wayne wrote me an email about how he stores files and manages all his projects. He was the guy that told me about 1Password as well. Wayne writes:

I stick with Microsoft Windows PCs and laptops.  I find most engineering-related tools run under this environment. Other people seem to know every word of every datasheet they read.  But I need a way to handle large volume of data, notes, documents, images, PDFs, and everything else related to a project or task.

I use Dropbox for key data storage and sharing.  I have access to all my design files from any system or laptop I use.  In conjunction with Dropbox I use Evernote and my primary note/task/organizational tool.  There are many cloud storage solutions like box.com, Google Drive, and others.  But, Dropbox and Evernote work together. With Evernote configured correctly I have all my projects documentation, notes and current status in Evernote.  I can easily start or stop a project, and I can resume a project with the minimal effort.

I can access Dropbox files or Evernote from any pc, notebook, cellphone or tablet that I have.  I rarely use a USB stick to carry data or project info from one PC to another. That goes for my Orcad schematic and layout files, Solidworks design files, spreadsheet, pdfs and everything else related to a project. I keep them either in Dropbox (schematic, PCB, Solidworks) or in Evernote (notes, status, links, web site clips).

Once you have one or two tablets and a desktop you should have a central location for data. If you don’t do hardware or software development this is still important.  It makes sense to store files of extreme importance it so they are accessible on more than computer.

This has helped my writing Atmel code in the house while simulating and testing it in the garage.  When I am ready I can walk out to the garage, fire up the laptop, and burn and debug with the same files without having to transfer them in any way.  By the time I re-compile inside the house and walk into the garage the new files are already synced and ready to burn by the time I get to the garage laptop.

The same is true for my CNC mill.  I can edit my 3D file and generate new G-code and then have direct access to them on the PC that drives the CNC mill.  No transferring of files manually.  It’s all automatically synced.

Now as for me, I am a lot more scared of keeping my stuff in the cloud. I tend to side with GNU founder Richard Stallman, who says cloud computing is a trap. With the recent relations about PRISM, and the fact that the next world war will be a cyberwar, with foreign countries stealing our data and files, well, have a slightly more paranoid data storage method. I keep everything on a mirrored NAS (network-attached storage). I use Synchromagic to duplicate the data on my CAD machine, my audio-video production machine, and my home-theater laptop.

I also duplicate the one terabyte of my life’s work on a little USB hard drive. I keep one hidden at home and one in my safety deposit box in case the house burns down. I update them once a month. I don’t try to synchronize the files; I just use the program to make sure all the copies are coherent with the NAS. I keep my Thunderbird email profile on the NAS, so that I can read email from any of my home computers. I tried to do that with my Firefox profile, but it is a pain since the upgrade status can be different and then you break the profile. So I just keep a “master” Firefox on the NAS and copy the latest bookmarks and such to it.

And back to passwords, I asked one pal what he does, and he advises to just make an encrypted USB stick. He makes different 15-digit passwords for everything he has, and keeps them all on the USB stick. He then plugs it in and does a cut-and-paste into the applications, with another cut and paste of anything handy to push the password out of the buffer.

I really like the YubiKey, a 2-factor hardware system that my FastMail email service supports. With this type of system, the user needs to be in physical possession of the USB key, and he has to go to the bank website or application that supports it. Then when you press the button on the YubiKey, it sends a one-time password, that changes every time, to the website taking your password. Even if someone is key-logging you, they can’t get in using the same password.

Atmel is everywhere at the 2013 Maker Faire, episode 6

So after seeing Atmel in the parking lot, and a hexapod 3-D printer, a Geiger counter, a bike lite, and an art installation powered by Atmel, I should mention some of the cool Atmel technology that we had at the booth.

The Internet of Things will create a network effect of gizmos making our life better.

Michael Koster brought a whole slew of Atmel devices all supporting the coming wave of connected gizmos that will comprise the Internet of things (IoT) [here, here, and here].

Michael Koster (right) helps a curious visitor at the Atmel Booth at Maker Faire 2013.

Atmel also had some commercial hardware you can buy, including a Kickstarter project that got fully funded and a gorgeous electric bicycle.

Steve from Puzzlebox shows how you can control a helicopter with your brain waves.

Another cool company at the Atmel booth was Puzzlebox. They brought their brain-controlled helicopter. Using an available Nerosky headset, Faire-goers were amazed to see that they could concentrate and make it fly. In the foreground is a nerf crossbow, where you can just think about it—and it will launch. The ever-playful Puzzlebox folks had you put on a safely face shield and pointed the launcher at you, and you could think about it and it would fire the nerf bullet into your face shield.

The Faraday is an ebike that uses Atmel chips.

The back of the Faraday eBike has a charging port and tail tight.

When I saw the Faraday bike, I was impressed by its quality and retro design. I thought the only cool thing was the LED tail light. It took a while, but I finally grokked that Faraday is a complete electric bycicle. The two frame tubes are stuffed with those same good-ol’ 18650 Li-ion batteries used in laptops and Teslas.

Clever Atmel employees hacked this HEXBUG Spider toy so it would follow an IR (infrared) source.

We also has a stack of HEXBUG Spider toys which we were giving away. The really cool thing was a hack one of Atmel’s FAEs (field application engineers) did so that it would follow the heat from your hand.

Andy Turudic at the Atmel Booth, Maker Faire 2013.

And here is a picture of fellow Croatian Andy Turudic at the Atmel booth. We were right next to the Arduino booth and we had some Arduino hardware to show off, as well as our own, and an Atmel powered 3-D printer by MakerBot.

Dan, an Atmel FAE, shows off the MakerBot 3-D printer powered by an Atmel chip.

Maker was a great time. I encourage all of you to attend. There is another big one in New York, and franchised ones in Detroit and Kansas City.  And for you continental engineers— there is even a Maker Faire in Rome.

Atmel is everywhere at the 2013 Maker Faire, episode 5

So after seeing Atmel in the parking lot, and a hexapod 3-D printer, a Geiger counter and a bike lite powered by Atmel, I looked at some of the fine-art installations over in the corner of the pavilion. There I spotted Ghostmatrix, a robot that dragged flashing optical pipes over glow-in-the-dark plastic to make a spooky ephemeral message.

The Ghostmatrix at Maker Faire 2013 had a smaller platen to better install on the wall. Turns out Ghostmatrix is by Jonathan Foote, a well known Maker from San Francisco. My friend Windell, a co-founder of Evil Mad Science, had introduced me to Jonathan earlier in the day, but I never made the connection, simply because Jonathan is not the kind of fellow to brag about his installation.

Windell Oskey and Jonathan Foote talk tech in front of the Evil Mad Science booth at Maker Faire 2013.

I poked around the internet and was delighted to see that Ghostmatrix is based on the AdaFruit MiniPOV (persistence of vision) kit which uses the Atmel ATtiny2313V-10PU microcontroller.  And I was also happy to see Windell’s pal Super Awesome Sylvia has built the basic miniPOV kit. If a 12-year-old can build it and get it working, you can build it and get it working. If anything, write Sylvia and ask for help.

And here is another art installation that just tickled me. It’s basically an endless loop of 16mm film that displays specific frames in the holes in the wooden strip on the front. I guess you can use it to come up with your lotto numbers, as it’s called Your Lucky Numbers by Christopher Palmer.