Author: Peter Jones

I for realsy food everything I had on my to-do from yesterday last night. I even almost bailed at the two of three mark, but realized I still had another task. I’m sure a lot of people would be wondering about why that’s so amazing, but for me it is. I am a very lazy individual. I anchor doing work that doesn’t need doing.
Back to work. The variable LED glowing was easy, with a caveat. On the Arduino Uno there are only (six?) PWM-able pins. This means I’m either limited to six bottles, or I need to look for other options. I’ve now stated to look at multiplexing the LEDs, as six bottles doesn’t feel cool enough. I want a whole bundle. Multiplexing itself isn’t an issue, but I think I’ll get back into an issue of how to have multiple bottles, each with their own level of brightness. Probably the best way off doing that would be a giant while loop, just flicking on and off the individual pins as fast as it’s like logic could, having the variations in brightness being the function of the number of occurrences for an individual bottle.
Gonna have to look at this, try doing some multiplexing…

So I keep on thinking of making an umbrella that
– has no pointy parts
– has sensors that trigger LEDs for where rain drops hit. It didn’t have to be precise, just pretty.

But I just not thought, what if I double down on the idea.
If I made an artificial tree, all mini make it something, added in some piezo elements and what not, and turned it into a glowing weather report. It’d be kinda cool to look outside and, rather than having to look for the telltale splashes of water drops, just see soft little flashes where the drops hit the tree. And a flexing motion causing a flow on part of the trunk, to show the force of the wind. Of course, adding on some networking would be dope.
I think this might be happening after I’m happy with LightBeer.

This was the first actual work I’ve done, beyond cleaning labels off of beer bottles, in forever. Found breadboard, some good test LEDs, arduino, resistors and number wires. And by found I mean I dig through boxes scattered all over the Den of Inequity. Slapped some stuff together, and following  ladyada’s old tutorial, plus or minus, made the different LEDs light up in sequence. Tonight the goals are to use pwm as a gradual lighting and dimming, test the ultrabright LEDs in beer bottles, and add a randomization factor to which one is lit.

Of course I haven’t built LightBeer v1, but hell. We all know the sophomore album is always better. The ordinal idea was bites with the LEDs dropped in. Note I’m thinking single LEDs, with multiple bottles stacked pyramid style. Each “Bottle cap” will be provided protoboard with a transistor and LED mounted to it. Using the arduino to drive individual LEDs is kinda a waste but it’s not that many to begin with and a later time I can always make it better.
Still working on the doing, bit this current iteration makes me happy. I still need to see hour bright my LEDs really are…

I really thought about it though. I have now if an idea of what I well be doing. I’ve decided o won’t try nanowrimo this year. I’m thinking about what positive changes I can make in my life to increase my productivity.
I’m thinking pretty soon here I’ll deconstruct a pair of trousers or two. Then I’ll just need the fabric to start sewing on. After I change the design of course. I want back pockets that function, don’t ball up in the laundry, and aren’t slapped on the butt. Deep front pockets for sure. I’m not sure what else.

So I didn’t actually finish it. I know; I’m really surprised too. I did find a 20v 200mA wall wart though. Originally being a drills battery pack charger, now that the battery is dead anyway, well, you know.
Using these I can hook up 6 and still have room for slop. I figure the beer bottle itself will act as a decent diffuser.
I am slightly concerned about the possibility of great build up. I mean they are relatively low power LEDs, but I’m still looking at close to 500mW of heat while operating, in a glass bottle. This makes me think it’ll be fine, based on the minimal heat sinking built into the 3W LEDs that all the kids are using today. I figure one I breadboard the basic circuit and do the LEDs in the bottle, I’ll just let it go for awhile and watch to make sure I’m not getting too hot. Makes me wish I had a temperature probe did my arduino so I could set it up as the controller pushing the transistor and logging the temperature data and killing the circuit before hell came to town. Even to make a ghetto fuse if need to know the normal opposing temperatures first.
I also need heat shrink tubing or electrical tape.

My phone is working phone the Wif’s battery. Well except I have to go all silent running at a couple points during the commute. And today I forgot my headphones so I’m not adding on the joy of music, more the sound of silence. But other than that, I’m doing just fine.
Tonight I get to building my LightBeer. I think I’m just going to find a decent sized wall wart, cut down some perf board add a resistor and let it till with add many LEDs as I can also on there. I still have my bag of support bright 3v ones, so that should probably do the trick. If I get all crazy, I’ll add a photoresistor and a transistor so that it turns itself on. I should probably go that route, just so I get over my fear of the transistor, I’ve only killed three or four so far.
That’s what I’m doing tonight. I’ve got this.

The Wif had been complaining about her phone battery during super fast and I’ve mostly figured it out now. Obviously the problem is the battery is munched and needs to be replaced, but the symptoms, now that was weird.
Friday night I met her downtown to commute home together. I traded her batteries right then and there to continue my previous troubleshooting which consisted of turning down the pete around and stuff. Day-to-day morning I started of just trying to discharge the damnable thing, and it wouldn’t. I left it watching video after video with gps, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth all on. Nothing. Yep hours later and I still was closer to 70% than it should have been based on her tales of rapid discharge. It seemed to dance around a little, but not just dying. Sunday, it was just another day. Thing never died. Then this morning on my commute to work, within 20 minutes of leaving the house, just listening to music and reading the news it died hard. 90 something to 15% after rebooting. I put my phone back in my pocket and didn’t touch it again full I plugged it in at work. Work, yet again no issues though I usually stay plugged in for most the day, but even wanting the warehouse, I still had no rapid discharge. This evening though, within 20 minutes of being on the bus I tanked again. I didn’t think a thing about it other than now I needed a new battery. I got downtown and was about to hit the second leg, and I decided to check if it was heat related. This entire time I hadn’t noticed any untoward heat levels, but I always like to know if I have a lithium ion fireball in my pocket before I dress as Johnny Torch for Halloween. 75%. Dick. No heat. No pushing apps. No Wi-Fi. No Bluetooth. No gps.
Then I realized. It died in a tunnel. It died in a deadzone of coverage coming down the hill this morning. Any time the phone has to stretch a bit to get signal, it’s killing the phone. Now then, if this was a case of the phone overdrawing, then I should be feeling some heat. Since I’m not, my official guess is the bulging of the battery might involve some shielding out grounding issues, meaning that as the phone puts out more em, it his a point where the battery just freaks out. To test this, I’m running in airplane mode right now. We’ll see his this works. So far so good.

No solar. At least at this time, with a panel putting me back $25, not being as aesthetically pleasing as I’d like, and 8″wide, I’m not seeing the upside. Solar charging only is viable in my opinion of it didn’t change the entire focus of a project.

Lookup flexible solar cells