Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Spotted on Facebook…

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

Comic by Mandor. Thanks to Bryan Currey for bringing this one to my attention.

New podcasting setup for The Amp Hour

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

New Podcasting Setup

After being hassled by Chris about my audio quality on The Amp Hour for the past year, I finally broke down and upgraded my podcasting microphone setup.  Here are some photos of the new setup and some notes about my approach.

Here are most of the big (expensive) parts.  Clockwise from the upper left:

New Podcasting Setup

A few more miscellaneous bits:

Cables and Pop Filter

I got the idea to convert a swing-arm desk lamp (often called an Architect’s Lamp) into a mic boom from the awesome site IKEA Hackers.  (Today I discovered that ham radio guys have been doing this for years.)

The closest IKEA is 40 minutes away, so instead I went to Harbor Freight Tools and bought the cheapest swing arm lamp I could find.  I removed the lamp portion (after you remove the adjusting knob, the shoulder-bolt can be removed and the lamp pulls out).  Then I cut the power cord and unthreaded it from the lamp.

Swing arm lamp disassembly

The swivel mount on the Samson SP01 comes apart easily, exposing a handy flat mounting tab that could be used to bolt the spider mount to all sorts of things…

Shock mount swivel adapter disassembled

…including the desk lamp.  I used a 1/4″ nylon spacer to fill the gap left by the narrow tab on the shock mount and some lock-washers to keep the mount from rotating when the adjustment is tightened.  The original shoulder-bolt stripped (oops) so I replaced it with a beefier 10-32 bolt and corresponding nut.

Shock mount installed in swing arm

While my initial tests with just the AT2020 mic were promising, I found that the swing-arm sagged under the extra weight of the shock mount.  To solve this problem, I drilled two extra holes at 1″ intervals from the original spring perch on the swing-arm.  This allows me to adjust the spring tension to balance the arm.  Now the mic stays where I put it.

Modifying the swing arm lamp

Here is the finished setup.  I removed the heavy bracket and gooseneck from the pop filter and zip tied it to the front of the shock mount.  The spacing between the pop filter and the mic comes out just about right.

Pop filter installed.

Here’s the mic preamp.  It’s got tubes!  The microphone connects to the preamp through the XLR cable.  The output of the preamp is connected to my PC’s line input through the junkbox 1/4″ to 1/8″ cable.

Preamp

The best part about the swing arm setup is that when I’m not using the microphone, I can just swing it out of the way:Mic stowed away

I’m really happy with the new setup, but you can judge it for yourself on this week’s episode of The Amp Hour (Xenomorphic Xerox Xebec).

 

Wilson joins the Cats of Engineering

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

Wilson napping

I’m proud to announce that my cat Wilson has joined the Cats of Engineering, a corner of Adafruit Industries devoted to the feline companions of engineers.

Wilson is a frequent contributor to the blog (in the form of typos) and involved in most aspects of life here at MightyOhm.

More cuteness! (Flickr photos tagged with ‘wilson’)

 

I was not prepared for this.

Thursday, July 14th, 2011

Still really warm here.

People said that it gets hot here.

I thought that I understood hot. “I’ve lived in hot places before”, I said to myself.

Sure, Sacramento gets pretty warm in the summer. Maybe one or two weeks of 100+ weather in August.

But never have I experienced anything like this.

In January, we had snow one week and 70 degree weather the next. By February it was in the 80s, March and April in the mid-90s. By May, we had our first 100 degree day, and I suspect that it has only dipped below 100 briefly a couple times since.

The house AC has been running constantly, I’m scared to open the power bill every month, the lawn is dead (we’ve had just over 4 inches of rain so far this year), and I pretty much hide indoors anytime before midnight.

I guess the good thing is that unlike last August, when we first moved to Austin, the temps have been dipping down into the 70s at night. I remember when we first moved here, it was 100+ during the day and 95 at night.

That was rough.

Amusingly, when it’s this hot for this long, you do sort of get used to it. Kylie and I have gone out a few times lately and said to each other “wow, it’s nice out tonight”, then checked the weather:

95 degrees.

Lutowanie Jest Proste (Soldering is Easy – Polish Translation)

Saturday, July 9th, 2011

MSP430 enthusiast Mark sent us this Polish translation of the Soldering is Easy comic book.

Thanks, Mark!


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