indiboi.com

I never thought I’d find myself saying this, but I really think the LEDs I bought are too bright, lol. At least for the portato LED display thing I made for this computer. To actually look at them causes spotty vision, d’oh! I do have these neat half round ‘buttons’ I can place in front of them though which diffuses the light enough to not be blinding. Another option is to use the acrylic ‘tubing’ that I also bought from US Plastics, it creates an interesting tube of light. I’ll figure it out, regardless though it does look very ‘cool’ in a geek chic sort of way.

I finally managed to drill the holes in the sides of the glowpads, whoo! I just went super slow and very carefully. When I finally got to the third one, mine btw, I did accidently melt through a little bit, but thankfully it was on the ‘back’ side and only a minor melt through, so it’s okay ultimately. I’m hoping the 3mm blue LEDs arrive soon, considering how quickly they were shipped originally I’m sure they’ll be here either today or tomorrow… err, well, not sure, but wishful thinking at least.

Finding a way to drill holes in the side of the 1/4″ plexi is proving to be more difficult than I ever imagined. If I had some sort of jig and a drill press it might be easier, though that would remain to be seen. The biggest problems are making sure the hole is centered properly and, related to that, making sure it doesn’t deviate too far upward or downward; otherwise it will puncture or melt through to the surface.

Using the much lower speed drill seems to be the better option, the dremel is simply too fast and subsequently too hot. I’ve been using a ’scrap’ piece of plexi for practice, poor thing has so many holes in it, haha.

The other option I have is to totally avoid the drilling idea and basically create a channel on the bottom of the piece of plexi. This idea seems like it would work better; however, I’m not as happy with that option because I don’t think it would look as good. Since this is something that sits on the desktop and is seen constantly — and draws attention by being illuminated — it really needs to look nice. Doing a channel also means that I need to go and purchase a “straight routing” bit… so another seven bucks into the enourmous money hole this project has become, lol.

The biggest brightside for today has been creating a ‘plate’ for the glowpad that is nearly perfect. The imperfections are such that most wouldn’t notice them anyway, being a perfectionist I do of course, but I have ONE more try to get it 100%. I don’t really think getting it 100% will be possible, but I’m satisfied enough with the one I made today, so if I can at least get it to that same level of machining I’ll be satisfied.

I’m probably going to purchase some more plastic so that I can work on some less conventional designs… working with curves and whatnot. Thus far they’re basic rectangles with rounded edges, but if I had some sort of jig/pattern I could, in theory, create more rounded and flowing designs.

I gave the fading LED circuit another try, this time avoiding the use of the perfboard. It still doesn’t work and I’m sure that I’ve wired it correctly.

The rest of my ‘geek project’ supplies arrived yesterday thus I needed to immediately start into the projects. ;)

Firstly I started on the fader circuit project… it’s one of those things that looks complicated, is actually quite simple, but is a bitch to build… unfortunately even though I seemingly created it exactly as it should be done… it doesn’t work! The LED lights up, but it doesn’t fade on and off like it should. I’m thinking that either I used the wrong transistor (most likely) or there’s some sort of problem with my soldering joints (less likely). This is definitely a lesson in the fact I should just get myself a breadboard so I can test out stuff before having to solder, unsolder, and resolder over and over again. The components were relatively cheap so it isn’t a big loss that it doesn’t work.

The Dremel “Advantage” ‘gold ferrous oxide general purpose bits’ work extremely well to cut the plexi. I was satisfied with using it at low speed (to avoid melting the plastic), but I gave it a whirl last night at full speed (35,000 RPM) and it works wonderfully! The ’saw’ is moving so fast that even though the heat generated is enough to melt the plastic, it doesn’t stay in contact with any one area long enough to melt it, but it really does go through it like a ‘hot knife’ so yay!

To recap, the very first try was horrid, totally uneven and just awful period. The second one was pretty good, but this third one is nearly perfect. The only exception is a chip here and there of about 1mm size, but thankfully they are all on the same ’side’ which means I’ll be able to get rid of the chips through the rounding process. Of course I’m nervous about doing the rounding now because the result is rather nice as it is. The bonus is that I have only one left to do… so if I screw up, erghh… bad bad bad.

The big problem is getting a 3mm hole in the side to insert the LEDs… so far all the dremel bits just melt the plastic… ick. Much more practice will be needed.

I really like that LED network information display that I made, so much that I want to make a couple more of them, mwahaha. As there is a wealth of software in the linux world to control LEDs via the printer port it is easy enough to have them do pretty much anything. I *finally* found a source for high-intensity LEDs that won’t burn a giant hole in the wallet, thus I have ordered 32 assorted LEDs and my brother wanted an additional 10 blue ones; with shipping the cost was ONLY $25. That’s comparable to buying only *five* (white) LEDs at Radioshack! :) The cool bonus is that if you order between 30 and 49 LEDs you get two blue and two UV ones for free, so score there too.

I’m not exactly completely satisfied with the installation, but I did my best so that’s that. Getting those little circular holes exactly lined up is very difficult!

Anyway, here’s an image of the front with the LEDs installed, you can see that there are slight alignment problems, bleh. And here’s an image with the light’s off, ooooh, blinky lights!.