After having an extremely productive day on January 18th, I had a thought: What if every day were January 18th? Well, at the push of a button, now it can!

The button, switch, and display are wired to an Arduino.  The Arduino communicates with a python script running on the router, which controls a Squid3 proxy blacklist.  In SOPA mode, the whole of the internet is my oyster.  In NOPA mode, however, distracting websites like reddit, hacker news, and hackaday are blocked.  This isn’t very useful without a great deal of self control, however.  In weaker instances, nuclear mode must be employed.  Turn the key switch and press the button and all distracting sites are blocked for one hour.  The only recourse is to restart the router, but the router requires 15 minutes to restart, blocking the entirety of the web for the duration.  Overriding nuclear mode is not appealing.

All code is posted online at https://github.com/Zuph/SOPA-Box

A video demonstration and more pictures of construction lie below the break.

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This Saturday, January 21st, there will be a KiCad Workshop from 1pm to 5pm.  Sign up here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2696636713.

KiCad is a free utility for designing and laying out printed circuit boards.  Printed circuit boards connect your circuits together without the need for breadboards and jumper wires.  With circuit prototyping services cheaper than ever, it’s simple to turn your design into a real, working board.

This workshop will cover the basics of KiCad, from Schematic Capture, to Board Layout, you’ll walk out of the workshop with the knowledge necessary to take your circuit ideas from dream to reality.

If you’re already familiary with Eagle, KiCad has a number of advantages, including unlimited board size, up to 16 copper layers on your board, multiple sheets of schematic, and more.

Please install KiCad before coming to this workshop.  If you have any problems, or questions, don’t hesitate to let us know.  If you need help installing KiCad, show up early and we’ll try to help you out.

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SIGN UP HERE http://digitalarduino.eventbrite.com

We will build and program an electronic game and in the process learn LED’s, tri-color LED’s, pushbutton switches, speakers and Arduino programming.

More info here: http://wiki.lvl1.org/Digital_for_Arduino

I am teaching.  I hope you can come.  Put your Arduinos and Freeduinos to good use!

Brian

LVL1′s New Year’s Resolution is to “make more makers!” We are offering not one, but TWO new Makerships to start off 2012! Through private donations from LVL1 membership, we have raised funds to award $100 of project financing and 3 months of LVL1 membership to TWO worthy makers!

The Makership recipient gets $100 for project materials like arduinos, sensors, electronic components, laser cutter materials, conductive fabric, EL wire, software, books, 3D printer filament, tools, bits, odds, ends or whatever else you might need.

The LVL1 membership gives you access to our 40W laser cutter, Makerbot 3D printer, woodworking tools, electronics tools, metal mill, computers, electronic surplus and much more.

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS IS JANUARY 31, 2012

A Makership is a $100 project stipend and 3 months worth of LVL1 membership dues awarded to an individual in the Louisville area. We recognize that potential makers with limited financial resources often are unable to afford any membership rates- no matter what the discount might be. Similarly, the cost of materials to develop a cool project can be just out of reach to those strapped for cash. Our makership program seeks to eliminate these financial hurdles and get makers making!

We award our makerships to applicants who can put together the best pitch for (1) what they want to make and (2) how they plan to do it. Your project could be anything from an electronic gadget, to an open source software project, to a citizen science project, to a fire-breathing robotic pony, or (hopefully) a project we haven’t imagined. We want LVL1 to be the place where these things are made! LVL1 makerships are open to anyone whom could benefit from our community and resources to make something great.

For more information on applying for a LVL1 Makership click here.

Do you want to see this Makership program succeed? You can help LVL1 provide more Makerships with a small donation of $5/mo. We will announce a new Makership as soon as the donation funds make a new one available! Click the Paypal donate button below to contribute to a Makership:

The controller for the lightshow is from solsticewerks.com.  It is a 16 channel controller, but I blew out a couple of channels so they stay lit all the time.  Here is a pic.

The light controller is in the center and it feeds all the light plugs.  The sockets are just screwed onto a 2X8 board and is set into a rubbermaid tub.  This worked pretty well in the rain.  I cut slits in the side of the tub to run the wires.  No water got into the tub whatsoever.

I also built a FM transmitter to play the song to car radios.  I made a sign.

The transmitter I used was a ramsey FM 10C http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.exe?preadd=action&key=FM10C

It is a nice kit.  I would recommend it for this application.

 The software I used is Vixen.  http://www.vixenlights.com/

Now I need to get more songs to play.

Signup at EventBrite http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2562787366

Looking up in flight at balloon, vent valve and cutdown device

Hi All, the flight of the SuperPressure Initiated Termination Balloon Flight 1 was successful as far as we can tell so far.  We don’t know for sure because we haven’t gotten the SD cards that hold the video and science data on them.  Technical results as they come in over the next week will be posted on our wiki site, here.

With just skeleton assembly, launch and mission control crews preparations for this flight had to be less organized than we’ve done in the past for SpeedBall flight attempts.  We allowed for that by targeting an early launch time, with plenty of daylight left for schedule slip.

The massive zero pressure balloon was launched from SpacePort Indiana around 3:30 PM EST, by having the payload support crew run with the wind as soon as they released the balloon, allowing the balloon to rise straight up as it lifted each payload.

The balloon landed about 1.5 hours later on a family’s home in Miamisburg OH and was recovered shortly after.  The family made a youtube video of the balloon on the house!

Thanks to all who helped!   Some science observations follow.  The three pics above were emailed to us by the recovery crew in Ohio.   More pics available on Flickr here.

Science objectives and observations thus far (not final yet):

Rotation rate of balloon envelope: Observed a rate of ~10 revolutions per minute in the first 30 seconds of flight before cloud entry.  This may not be solely due to the asymmetric balloon shape, as the inversion rope was seen to have been bearing a part of the load in the flight videos.  It should have been loose and not bearing load.  Bearing the load would cause it to tip the balloon over slightly, and may exaggerate the aerodynamic asymmetry.  This unplanned rope tension may have invalidated the experiment.  Likely caused by simple miscalculation of required length.

Cutdown inversion method performance: The cutdown was set to a 61 minute timer.  All that is really known about the performance is that the cutdown did fire as designed, as seen in the recovery video.  It also did not simply rip the top off the balloon, which was one theorized possibility.  The action of the balloon inversion is unknown until we get the onboard video.

Vent valve performance: The performance of the vent can’t be determined until we see how the balloon inverted from the video.  The helium did not completely empty from the balloon, as seen in the recovery videro but that may not be because of vent failure.

Burst pressure measurement: Unknown until we get the data cards back.  Burst appeared to occur just a few minutes before cutdown, based on radio telemetry of altitude, but that was not clear.

Altitude vs. Time Chart Small with Climb Rate Color