castleseven – Page 4

Sylfex Aux Input for ’04 Mazda6

March 3, 2013castlesevenElectronics6 Comments

At the time of this writing I drive an ’04 Mazda 6 (automatic, with lowest-level stereo and temperature control). I was tired of either lugging around a book of CDs or using hacked up FM transmitters to listen to my music. My Mazda didn’t come with anything in the Mini Disc/Tape Deck port, and I had briefly considered purchasing a tape deck from Mazda in order to use one of those Aux In Tape Adapters to fit my needs. However, at $200 for a piece of antiquated technology, I had my eyes out for a more cost efficient alternative. Enter the Sylfex AuxMod.

DIY Bedroom Bench

December 28, 2012castlesevenWoodworking

Popular Author of the Month

December 19, 2012castlesevenBlog

So apparently I’m a trending author on the Digital Commons for Electrical and Computer Engineering for my graduate thesis on unmanned quadrotor control. Over 5100 total downloads and over 500 in the last month. Maybe I should dig up my notes and get the useless hunk of parts in my garage flying 🙂

DSO Nano Graph Tool Featured!

November 13, 2012castlesevenBlogdso nano, utility

In Sept 2011 I put together a quick online utility to convert the XML file output from one of Seeed Studio’s DSO Nano pocket oscilloscope’s into a browser generated plot. The tool is rather bare bones at the moment, but I just discovered that Dangerous Prototypes (advocates and sellers of open source hardware) made a

RC Phantom Boat (UK Opera Theater)

October 3, 2012castlesevenRobotics23 Comments

SchmidtCDS was contracted by the University of Kentucky Opera Theater department to develop an RC boat for their upcoming production of Phantom of the Opera. Our requirements for the build were

Capable of carrying 600lbs
Quiet
Safe

While searching for an out-of-the-box solution for this build, I discovered that not many professional level RC platforms exist on a rental/purchase basis. Most of the projects I found revolved around making lawnmowers or giant battle bots remote controllable. So I added an unofficial requirement to the build – It must be generic enough to be used for whatever RC needs future productions might need. At this point, the idea of the Turtle RC Theater Platform was born!

WWI Image Gallery (Frazier)

September 16, 2012castlesevenExhibits, Softwareactionscript, exhibit1 Comment

The Fraizer Museum of Loiusville came to us with a request for a touchscreen image viewer. The museum had a collection of rare color photographs from WWI, but no means to display them. I wrote a user interface (in Actionscript) that displays each of the images as a thumbnail. When displayed on a touchscreen enabled HD

Interactive Visual Experience (IVE) Exhibit

August 29, 2012castlesevenExhibits, Softwarearduino, art, processing

IVE is the union of a Processing sketch with several “sensor boxes” controlled by an Arduino microcontroller.
As users interact with the buttons and ultrasonic sensors mounted to these boxes, the display of the Processing sketch projected on a wall changes. Users can interact with what type of objects are drawn on the screen, where the objects are located, object colors, object velocities, and more. The point of this installation is to encourage cooperation between users in creating a dynamic piece of art.

Jet Fighter Flight Simulator

July 21, 2012castlesevenElectronics, Exhibits, Softwareblender, exhibit

This exhibit was another contract through the Explorium of Lexington. The Explorium had acquired an out-of-date trainer cockpit in which museum patrons could sit and marvel at the number of controls available to pilots, and use their imagination to take to the skies. They approached us (myself and Enomalies (Bill Gregory)) with a request to liven up the simulator with lights, a joystick and sound effects. We did them one better. We installed a gaming joystick in the cockpit and developed two games to engage the users in the wonders of flight. Check out the video below to view the flight simulator in action:

Whack-A-Snack

July 21, 2012castlesevenExhibits, Software

Developed and released in September of 2008, Whack-A-Snack is a children’s museum exhibit installed at the Explorium of Lexington in Lexington, KY. The Explorium approached us asking for an interactive exhibit that got kids moving and thinking about smart eating choices. Developed in partnership with Enomalies (Bill Gregory), Whack-A-Snack has been a tremendous hit with museum patrons.

SCRIBE Entertainment, LLC

July 21, 2012castlesevenVentures

While I was an employee at the University of Kentucky Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments, I had the opportunity to work with bleeding edge display and visualization research. One such research area involved using structured light to make huge, immersive environments by blending the output of multiple projectors into a single, unified display. In these High Def and low footprint displays, we had a solution to a number of problems not yet known to us. SCRIBE Entertainment was later formed as a means to explore those problems and turn the displays into a product/service to be used by others.