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It’s that time of year again! Retro Game and Computing Night 2016 is upon us. We are allowing all games and systems released pre-2000.

There will be all kinds of systems and games, SNES, SEGA, NES, GameBoy, Atari, as well as Amigas and other computers. We may even have a LAN setup for old school games like Duke Nukem 3D and Starcraft. We will also have the grill going. Feel free to bring your own systems and/or games.

Please come join us, play some games, meet new people and see our space. Also, remember your donations will help us continue to do events like these.

November 12, 2016 4pm-11pm
414 Stevens Ave.
Huntsville, AL 35801
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We (tylercrumpton and hfuller) are on the square downtown at the DayLIT event with the latest LightHSV project. Come see us!

The foam cube wirelessly commands a set of effects when it’s rotated. We used Synapse Wireless’ SNAP Modules, a MPU-6050, an Arduino UNO, and WS2812B LEDs for this project. Check out the code here.

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For the past couple of months I’ve been playing around with a personal project to write images to our shop’s vinyl cutter. Recently Travis discovered that if a very large image is sent to the cutter all at once, it will cause a serial buffer overflow and crash the knife.

The natural reaction is to enable flow control (page 15) on the serial device, such that the vinyl cutter can step back from the brink if the buffer fills up. But that doesn’t seem to work for whatever reason — I suspect that my shoddy USB to serial adapter doesn’t support it.

So I made a feature that will take the movement speed of the vinyl cutter, estimate the duration of each line segment’s execution, and then send the serial as smaller chunks in intervals. This does work, but we noticed that the time calculated doesn’t match up with the time it actually takes the vinyl cutter to route a shape. Sometimes it’s off target by up to half a minute… What’s up with that?

Read More →

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Just a quick update on new stuff.  Juggling projects as always, and progress posts on those are pending, but I figured I’d post another one of my personal pet project which is slow-going.  I have not been keeping tabs on the amount of hours invested into this, but it’s going smooth so far, even with the recent lack of laser-cutter.  I can simply print the pepakura files, trace them onto foam like in the past, and this time, use a bandsaw to cut, rather than a hot knife.  Anyway, on to photos.

The "rim" of the giant shell helps the whole thing keep its' shape, and will soon have a thin, curved pvc pipe frame inside, to attach it to the ALICE backpack frame.
The “rim” of the giant shell helps the whole thing keep its’ shape, and will soon have a thin, curved pvc pipe frame inside, to attach it to the ALICE backpack frame.
Rear view of the shell. The exterior will be covered in spray adhesive, then fiberglass mat, then a few coats of resin, sanded and carved, to simulate the carapace of an ancient, battle-hardened tyrant.
Rear view of the shell. The exterior will be covered in spray adhesive, then fiberglass mat, then a few coats of resin, sanded and carved, to simulate the carapace of an ancient, battle-hardened tyrant.
This here is the result of real teamwork. I was walking upstairs and spied a bowl on the shelf. It fit the openings in the giant shell almost perfectly, and had the proper shape for the base of any of Bowser's massive shell-spikes. Affix a posterboard cone, ModPodge it, and soon to be assisted in silicone moulding and casting this ten times by Mr. Daniel Valdez.
This here is the result of real teamwork. I was walking upstairs and spied a bowl on the shelf. It belonged to Phil, and he okayed it for use.  It fit the openings in the giant shell almost perfectly, and had the proper shape for the base of any of Bowser’s massive shell-spikes. I fashioned and affixed a posterboard cone, ModPodged it, and am soon to be assisted in silicone moulding and casting this ten times over, by Mr. Daniel Valdez.
With assistance from Dominic holding the shell, I test-fitted the body, still with incomplete tail and legs/feet. Since this is constructed using the 3d model directly from the WiiU video games, this is looking VERY on-model, and I'm very pleased.
With assistance from Dominic holding the shell, I test-fitted the body, still with incomplete tail and legs/feet. Since this is constructed using the 3d model directly from the WiiU video games, this is looking VERY on-model, and I’m very pleased.

Internal structure for the body will be needed, to keep the shape.  I’d initially thought foam pillars, but plastic “ribs” would be better, in the torso, arms and leg area.  I’ll be talking with CJ about 1-foot-tall stilt platforms soon.  More to come, thanks for reading!

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After over a month of near daily work on the shop’s hallway bathroom, it’s finally done! The room is re-opened and this time (hopefully) leak free.

Making this project happen took a lot of help from the membership. I’d like to offer a huge thank-you to:
– Travis, who dedicated an incredible amount of time and effort to almost every aspect of this job.
– Michelle and Jeff, who donated the new light fixture.
– Daniel, who helped us out of several jams along the way.
– Hunter, who tackled rewiring the mess of a circuit behind the walls.
– Norm, who donated the new countertop and helped us brainstorm.
– Wes, who lent us tools and advice for the drywall work.
– And several other members who stopped by to lend a hand.

Rather than try to create a massive listing of everything we did, you can peruse an image album of the highlights.