标签: Visio

A few weeks ago, the Mighty Hamster (a.k.a. Mike Field) graced my humble office with a visit. While he was here, Hamster noticed some of the antique analogue meters scattered around my office, and he shared an idea with me -- to build a clock using this sort of meter as the display. Hamster kindly said that I was free to run with this idea myself, so I added it to my list of hobby projects.   Most of the meters in my possession were already committed to other projects. Fortunately, at the time of Hamster's visit, the annual Huntsville Hamfest was fast approaching. It opened at 9:00 a.m., but I got there at 8:15 a.m., because I wanted to be at the front of the queue.     All I can say is that I made off like a bandit on the antique meter front. When I attended last year's event, I arrived empty handed and ended up staggering around with loads of carrier bags. I soon noticed that the more experienced attendees were sporting backpacks to stash their acquisitions. This year, I wore a backpack, but I wish I'd taken a rolling trolley, because I had to make numerous trips back and forth to my truck. The image below shows the meters I picked up, along with a few other items I couldn't resist.     Yes, I know this is a lot of meters. What can I say? I am a weak man when it comes to antique stuff in general and analogue meters in particular. All I know is that, when you can pick up meters like this for only $2 apiece, you grab them while the grabbing is good. Quite apart from anything else, I promised to pick up some meters for the Mighty Hamster. As soon as I post this column, I'll email him to ask which ones he wants.   I decided to use a large meter to display the hours and two medium-sized meters to display the minutes and seconds. I also plan on using a small meter to flip back and forth like a metronome in time with the "tick-tock" sound I intend to generate.   The image below shows a Visio drawing of my first-pass layout. The great thing about doing this sort of thing in Visio is that you can easily move the elements around to try different scenarios. I don't want to have all the meters in a straight line, because that would be boring. Once I was in Visio, I quickly gravitated to having the big meter on the left, the two medium meters on the upper right, and the small meter between and below the medium meters.     Originally, I'd vaguely thought about arranging things so that the distance from the top of the big meter to top of the two medium meters was the same as the distance from the bottom of the big meter to the bottom of the small meter, if you see what I mean. However, I quite like the arrangement shown above, in which the bottom of the two medium meters and the top of the small meter line up with the horizontal centerline of the big meter. Good grief, it's hard to explain this in words, but I'm sure my Visio drawing will help clear things up.   I have to admit that I'm fighting my natural inclination to overengineer everything. I keep on thinking about adding meters to display things like the seasons and moon phases, but if I did that, I might end up with something huge and ungainly that looks like the cockpit of a Victorian spaceship, so I'm resolved to stick with the four meters as discussed above.   In fact, I've already picked out the meters I intend to use, as shown below. (This explains why the previous image includes actual measurements.) Of course, I'll have to change the graphics and legends on the meter's faceplates, but we can discuss this in a future column.     As fate would have it, I visited my chum Bob the carpenter a few weeks ago. Bob has a workshop in downtown Huntsville, Ala., where he specializes in restoring and recreating antique furniture. I took my four meters down to show him and ask his advice. We decided that a dark walnut case would look rather tasty. I had been thinking of a dark front panel also, but Bob says he has some wood with a very interesting grain and an almost silvery hue. He says he used some of it to replace the dashboard in a sports car, and the result looked almost like aluminum with a wood grain. He says that we can give my clock a real Art Deco look and feel. Ooh, shiny.   As I mentioned earlier, my clock is definitely going to feature a robust "tick-tock" sound. I'll include a small loudspeaker and stream real-world audio recordings. As part of this, I'm also planning on including an optional Vetinari Mode based on Lord Havelock Vetinari from Terry Pratchett's Discworld book series.   Lord Vetinari, the scary dictator of the city-state of Ankh-Morpork, has a strange clock in his waiting room. It does keep completely accurate time overall, but it sometimes ticks and tocks out of sync: "tick, tock, tick, tock… tick-tock-tick… tock…" In fact, it occasionally misses a tick or tock altogether. For anyone sitting in Vetinari's waiting room, the result is somewhat discombobulating. By the time you come to your audience, your nerves are already frazzled. Hey, if it's good enough for a Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, it's certainly good enough for yours truly.   What say you? Do you like the sound of this project (no "tick-tock" pun intended)? Are there any other special modes you would include? And, if this version is successful and I eventually decide to construct a more fulsome model, what other factors -- number of days to the next full moon, for example -- could/should I present?

The Mighty Hamster (a.k.a. Mike Field) graced my humble office with a visit a couple of weeks ago.While he was here, Hamster noticed some of the antique analogue meters scattered around my office, and he shared an idea with me -- to build a clock using this sort of meter as the display. Hamster kindly said that I was free to run with this idea myself, so I added it to my list of hobby projects.   Most of the meters in my possession were already committed to other projects. Fortunately, at the time of Hamster's visit, the annual Huntsville Hamfest was fast approaching. It opened at 9:00 a.m., but I got there at 8:15 a.m., because I wanted to be at the front of the queue.     All I can say is that I made off like a bandit on the antique meter front. When I attended last year's event, I arrived empty handed and ended up staggering around with loads of carrier bags. I soon noticed that the more experienced attendees were sporting backpacks to stash their acquisitions. This year, I wore a backpack, but I wish I'd taken a rolling trolley, because I had to make numerous trips back and forth to my truck. The image below shows the meters I picked up, along with a few other items I couldn't resist.     Yes, I know this is a lot of meters. What can I say? I am a weak man when it comes to antique stuff in general and analogue meters in particular. All I know is that, when you can pick up meters like this for only $2 apiece, you grab them while the grabbing is good. Quite apart from anything else, I promised to pick up some meters for the Mighty Hamster. As soon as I post this column, I'll email him to ask which ones he wants.   I decided to use a large meter to display the hours and two medium-sized meters to display the minutes and seconds. I also plan on using a small meter to flip back and forth like a metronome in time with the "tick-tock" sound I intend to generate.   The image below shows a Visio drawing of my first-pass layout. The great thing about doing this sort of thing in Visio is that you can easily move the elements around to try different scenarios. I don't want to have all the meters in a straight line, because that would be boring. Once I was in Visio, I quickly gravitated to having the big meter on the left, the two medium meters on the upper right, and the small meter between and below the medium meters.     Originally, I'd vaguely thought about arranging things so that the distance from the top of the big meter to top of the two medium meters was the same as the distance from the bottom of the big meter to the bottom of the small meter, if you see what I mean. However, I quite like the arrangement shown above, in which the bottom of the two medium meters and the top of the small meter line up with the horizontal centerline of the big meter. Good grief, it's hard to explain this in words, but I'm sure my Visio drawing will help clear things up.   I have to admit that I'm fighting my natural inclination to overengineer everything. I keep on thinking about adding meters to display things like the seasons and moon phases, but if I did that, I might end up with something huge and ungainly that looks like the cockpit of a Victorian spaceship, so I'm resolved to stick with the four meters as discussed above.   In fact, I've already picked out the meters I intend to use, as shown below. (This explains why the previous image includes actual measurements.) Of course, I'll have to change the graphics and legends on the meter's faceplates, but we can discuss this in a future column.     As fate would have it, I visited my chum Bob the carpenter a few weeks ago. Bob has a workshop in downtown Huntsville, Ala., where he specializes in restoring and recreating antique furniture. I took my four meters down to show him and ask his advice. We decided that a dark walnut case would look rather tasty. I had been thinking of a dark front panel also, but Bob says he has some wood with a very interesting grain and an almost silvery hue. He says he used some of it to replace the dashboard in a sports car, and the result looked almost like aluminum with a wood grain. He says that we can give my clock a real Art Deco look and feel. Ooh, shiny.   As I mentioned earlier, my clock is definitely going to feature a robust "tick-tock" sound. I'll include a small loudspeaker and stream real-world audio recordings. As part of this, I'm also planning on including an optional Vetinari Mode based on Lord Havelock Vetinari from Terry Pratchett's Discworld book series.   Lord Vetinari, the scary dictator of the city-state of Ankh-Morpork, has a strange clock in his waiting room. It does keep completely accurate time overall, but it sometimes ticks and tocks out of sync: "tick, tock, tick, tock… tick-tock-tick… tock…" In fact, it occasionally misses a tick or tock altogether. For anyone sitting in Vetinari's waiting room, the result is somewhat discombobulating. By the time you come to your audience, your nerves are already frazzled. Hey, if it's good enough for a Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, it's certainly good enough for yours truly.   What say you? Do you like the sound of this project (no "tick-tock" pun intended)? Are there any other special modes you would include? And, if this version is successful and I eventually decide to construct a more fulsome model, what other factors -- number of days to the next full moon, for example -- could/should I present?

Good heavens! In Max's World (where the colors are brighter, the butterflies are bigger, the birds sing sweeter, and the beer is plentiful and cold), things are positively racing along. In my previous post on the Bodacious Acoustic Diagnostic Astoundingly Superior Spectromatic (BADASS) display, I described how I was starting out by creating a paper and cardboard prototype.     Well, I'm happy to report that the front panel is coming along in leaps and bounds. I've routed out the plywood (which will be stained to look like old wood) to accommodate the hardboard display and control panels (which will be painted to look like antique brass). In fact, I've been beavering away doing a whole bunch of things, all of which will be revealed in future columns. For the moment, however, I have a bit of a poser to ponder.   In order to give the whole thing more visual interest, the inner hardboard panels will be attached to the main plywood panel using brass acorn nuts. Also, each of the 256 tri-color NeoPixel LEDs in the main display area are going to have an associated brass surround.   Originally, I'd simply planned to use regular, flat brass washers, but then I started to think that these might be a tad boring and let the rest of the presentation down. Then, much to my surprise, I ran across some gorgeous countersunk brass washers as illustrated below:     Oooh! These look so tasty. I couldn’t resist them. But now I have a problem -- how am I going to attach them to the front panel? In order to understand the issues involved, let's first consider the cross-section shown below:     This is just a quick sketch I threw together in Visio, so it's not to scale. I've shown things as having sharp corners and suchlike. In reality, everything is sumptuously smooth and curvy. However, there are two problems (sad face). First, I have some thin sheets of translucent white plastic -- about the same thickness as a piece of paper -- which were kindly donated by my chum, Rick Curl. The image below shows a piece of white paper at the top overlaid by a sheet of this translucent white plastic film at the bottom.     Although it looks like you can see right through these sheets in the above image, they appear to be opaque when whatever is behind them is dark. My plan is to cut discs out of these sheets and stick them behind the central holes in the washers. The thing is, I don’t want to see any glue from the outside of the assembly as illustrated below:     The next problem will present itself when I attempt to glue the washer-film combo to the hardboard panel. Once again, I don’t want any glue to be visible from the outside of the assembly as illustrated below:     My concern is that -- although the wall of the brass washer is reasonably substantial with regard to its structural strength -- it's really rather thin when it comes to sticking it onto a flat surface. When we are talking about having 256 of these little rascals, we obviously want to have really solid bonds. The last thing I need is for them to be dropping off all of the time.   So, the bottom line is that I need some method for attaching disks of the translucent film to the inside of the washers, and for attaching the washers themselves to the main panel, all without seeing any glue, which would totally ruin the effect.   It probably won’t surprise you to hear that I already have a cunning plan. Indeed, it's a plan of such awe-inspiring cunning that we could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel (as the Black Adder would say in the UK television sitcom). However, it may well be that you have a plan that is even more cunning. If so, now would be an excellent opportunity for you to share it with the rest of us.

I am so pleased to report that things are positively racing along here in Max's World (where the colors are brighter, the butterflies are bigger, the birds sing sweeter, and the beer is plentiful and cold). In my previous post on the Bodacious Acoustic Diagnostic Astoundingly Superior Spectromatic (BADASS) display, I described how I was starting out by creating a paper and cardboard prototype.     Well, I'm happy to report that the front panel is coming along in leaps and bounds. I've routed out the plywood (which will be stained to look like old wood) to accommodate the hardboard display and control panels (which will be painted to look like antique brass). In fact, I've been beavering away doing a whole bunch of things, all of which will be revealed in future columns. For the moment, however, I have a bit of a poser to ponder.   In order to give the whole thing more visual interest, the inner hardboard panels will be attached to the main plywood panel using brass acorn nuts. Also, each of the 256 tri-color NeoPixel LEDs in the main display area are going to have an associated brass surround.   Originally, I'd simply planned to use regular, flat brass washers, but then I started to think that these might be a tad boring and let the rest of the presentation down. Then, much to my surprise, I ran across some gorgeous countersunk brass washers as illustrated below:     Oooh! These look so tasty. I couldn’t resist them. But now I have a problem -- how am I going to attach them to the front panel? In order to understand the issues involved, let's first consider the cross-section shown below:     This is just a quick sketch I threw together in Visio, so it's not to scale. I've shown things as having sharp corners and suchlike. In reality, everything is sumptuously smooth and curvy. However, there are two problems (sad face). First, I have some thin sheets of translucent white plastic -- about the same thickness as a piece of paper -- which were kindly donated by my chum, Rick Curl. The image below shows a piece of white paper at the top overlaid by a sheet of this translucent white plastic film at the bottom.     Although it looks like you can see right through these sheets in the above image, they appear to be opaque when whatever is behind them is dark. My plan is to cut discs out of these sheets and stick them behind the central holes in the washers. The thing is, I don’t want to see any glue from the outside of the assembly as illustrated below:     The next problem will present itself when I attempt to glue the washer-film combo to the hardboard panel. Once again, I don’t want any glue to be visible from the outside of the assembly as illustrated below:     My concern is that -- although the wall of the brass washer is reasonably substantial with regard to its structural strength -- it's really rather thin when it comes to sticking it onto a flat surface. When we are talking about having 256 of these little rascals, we obviously want to have really solid bonds. The last thing I need is for them to be dropping off all of the time.   So, the bottom line is that I need some method for attaching disks of the translucent film to the inside of the washers, and for attaching the washers themselves to the main panel, all without seeing any glue, which would totally ruin the effect.   It probably won’t surprise you to hear that I already have a cunning plan. Indeed, it's a plan of such awe-inspiring cunning that we could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel (as the Black Adder would say in the UK television sitcom). However, it may well be that you have a plan that is even more cunning. If so, now would be an excellent opportunity for you to share it with the rest of us.

I've spent evenings of the last week looking at the moon while walking around our neighbourhood with my wife ( Gina The Gorgeous ). The more you look at the moon, the more there is to see, and the more your mind turns to philosophical musings and meditations. There are, of course, a humongous number of moon-related quotes. Two of my favourites are as follows (I'd love to hear the ones that stir you): "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind." – Neil Armstrong "There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls." – George Carlin Both of these quotes send shivers down my spine, but that's not what I wanted to tell you about. I've convinced myself that you've been "champing at the bit," desperate to hear about the status of my ongoing hobby project to create a massive mosaic of Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night .   Well, one significant element to this piece is the moon in the upper-right-hand corner. Since this picture was largely a study in blue and yellow, Vincent decided to paint the moon as a yellow crescent (it's the crescent shape that tells us it's the moon ... that and the fact we're looking at a night sky, of course). In my case, however, I've decided to go for something different. First of all, I'm not going to have the village in the foreground at the lower-right-hand side. I'm envisaging my piece as reflecting the night sky as seen by early humans say 10,000 years ago. Also, one of the things I always associate with the moon is the "man in the moon" – the face my dear old dad guided me to see when I was a little lad. So I've decided that my mosaic will feature a full moon. I've also decided that I'm actually going to create this element as a single piece, because – the thing is – I want to have a face in the moon. Nothing brazen, you understand. I may not be an artist, but even I know that a great big smiley phiz boasting a cheesy grin would not achieve quite the effect I'm hoping for. I want something much more subtle. This is why I've been spending so much time looking at the real moon, observing the delicate differences between the various grey hues.   The problem is that, as I say, I'm not an artist ("I R an engineer"), so this was something of a poser for me. What would you do if you were faced (pun intended) with this problem? Well, I was chatting with my graphic artist chum Bruce, who hangs out in the office next to mine, explaining what I was trying to do. I was thinking of taking a photograph of someone and somehow manipulating it in Paint.net to give me the effect I was looking for. In turn, Bruce noted that Winston Churchill had a round moon-like visage and a commanding presence. As soon as Bruce said this, I could see it in my "mind's eye." I immediately bounced back into my office and had a quick Google (it's OK, no one was looking). There are, of course, myriad pictures of the great man, but my eyes immediately honed in on one where his face is partially shadowed and he's looking slightly down and to the left (from my perspective).   I copied this picture into Paint.net and set the contrast to 100%, which serves to divide the picture into black and white as illustrated below (there are probably a lot better ways to do this, but I'm not an expert here).   The next step was to zoom in on the face, and to set a circular cropping region as shown below. As you can see, this is a low-resolution image I'm working with, but it will more than serve my purposes. The real trick at this point in the game was to restrain myself from making the crop area too big. Once again, I don't want my "man in the moon" face to look like a photograph – I want it to be much more subtle than that. I want people to be looking at my mosaic and sort of squinting their eyes and saying "You know, that almost looks like a face..."   Even at this stage, I found it hard (as a non-artist) to really visualise how this was going to turn out, but the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing has never stopped me before, so I pressed on regardless. Once I'd implemented the crop, I pasted the resulting image into Visio:   You must admit that just the act of cutting away the surrounding parts of the image make it a lot easier to see where we're going. Finally, for the moment, I placed a white layer over the image and set the transparency of this layer to only 10%, resulting in the following:   Now, imagine this as a 5-inch (convert to mm except for displays) diameter moon in the upper-right-hand corner of my mosaic. What you can make out of the face is stern, and it's looking down on the scene in just the right way. The next step is to replicate the light and dark areas using two glazes on my ceramic tile (I'm sure this will "fuzzify" the image even further). I'm going to be experimenting with glazes and my kiln this coming weekend – after which I will take a stab at creating my "man in the moon." Generating the final product might take a few attempts and a couple of weeks' work (just for the moon, the entire mosaic is going to take months). Am I boring you with all of this, or would you be interested in seeing photographs of my moon when it's finished?