Time!

Time marches on! I've been bad about updating my blog but hope to get into a weekly habit..

What's happened in the last few months? Well after months of prep, Vancouver had it's Maker Faire. Above are the rock stars responsible. (though two excellent people and a whole slew of volunteers are in fact missing form this photo)

I was lucky enough to be involved in the 2011 Illuminares festival. This fantastic yearly event has puppet makers and performance artists gather together for a night of incredible sights and live music. My small contribution was the lighting and sound systems for a giant heron puppet as well as some RGB LED controllers for a number of glowing columns. Lessons learned included;

-always buy about %15 more stock then needed when making wiring harnesses, especially if you're getting volunteer help

-lead acid batteries aren't happy discharging at even 1/2 their amp-hour rating (ie; a 5 Ahr will see a serious voltage drop if 2.5A is drawn) and this gets worse in cold weather

-don't let feature creep carry you away to the lala land of unachievable goals...

Pneuman works!

Control system changed to a PLC, optical encoder changed to a sealed industrial unit from Omron. Still plenty of work to do but it's running!

Downtown Eastside Illuminations

Working in cooperation with Still Moon Arts Society a series of illuminated halos were placed in trees to decorate Vancouver's streets. Local community centers ran art workshops to create the images mounted around the halo. The structure was made of fiberglass rod and lit with USLED modules and a small switched power supply hidden inside. The halos can be seen at Victory Square Park, Pigeon Park, the Strathcona Community Center grounds and inside the Oppenheimer Park clubhouse for six weeks starting December 16th.