Working on Writing a Program

Alright-- I am going to TRY to do a GOOD blog entry sometime later today (it's 12:20 Am...). Presently, however, I am doing ACTUAL work! Lol. For NOW you can check THIS out to get an idea about the kind of program I am writing!



 See:  http://blog.shop.23b.org/2013/11/wheres-waldo-datasheet.html



Note, however, that the focus of this entry was on the 3D printer project (which I, personally, did NOT participate in) but, it DOES explain the project to some degree. This is a communal project, however. Each of the members of the shop works on different things and/or together.



Also, we are featured in Hack-a-Day: http://hackaday.com/2013/11/03/the-trials-of-printing-mil-spec-connectors/

EAGLE CAD

Alright, so at the last minute I had to change my circuit a bit. Fortunately, I have come to know EAGLE pretty intimately, now! Which, after all, was my primary objective. Some screen shots:

Some of the changes include doubling the size of the circuit (first schematic shown. So, second picture). Other things include changing the type of battery being used, adding a drill hole so the circuit can fit on a key chain, adding my "signature" QUARKy to it, and a bit more)

Also, I did a bit of filming over at 23B. I described how we are going to be updating some of our security systems and talked about various types of locks and how they work. MAYBE I'll post THAT, too!

Sorry I haven't posted much for the past two weeks! I have been learning EAGLE CAD, as I mentioned previously. I have designed the circuit myself and have drafted it independently as well. Also, I attended yet another conference (BSIDES; this time, in Orange County!).


The only interesting thing I can think to say is to describe how the circuit works. This particular set of circuits is perfectly elementary. I have a set of resistors in parallel and series, and the same with capacitors. I have used different values; doing a pattern of 3, 2, then 1 (three of one type, followed by 2 of another, then 1 of a final type). This board is called the SMT Trainer Board. It is not just meant to teach others how to do surface mount soldering, however. The idea is that a student can experimentally determine how resistors and capacitors behave in series and parallel and LATER determine how they behave when in the same circuit. This is not just why I chose to 3-2-1 pattern but, why I am going to write an Open Source Wiki instructions, as well-- to walk them through it!

Lastly, to finally "land the point" there will be a simple blink circuit (described previously) attached to the trainer board as well!

Shortly, I will have personally participated in the full product production cycle!

I also intend on loading pictures, soon-ish. We'll see! :)

Connector Testing and More

Geetings!

This week was quite productive!

Firstly, I had hand built a number of connectors.

Secondly, I soldered those connectors onto a shield so that I could connect that shield to an Arduino to test whether or not the connectors are properly wired (not that I didn't also use the beloved multimeter, in the test phase of the program I will mention shortly).

Next, I wrote the code to actually test the connector, complete with a Serial.available() command so that the testing could be streamlined so that any number of connectors could be tested in a row. How does the code work?
                     Basically, I would set one of the outputs high while the 
                     others were low. Which ever input read HIGH, therefore,
                    was the one that was being activated by that particular
                     input. If the correct input was NOT responding, an error 
                    message would print to the screen and say which pin was 
                    being activated. When successful, I would still mention the 
                     pin number. I did this for each pin.


Presently, I am still working on learning EAGLE CAD and L TSpice!

Till next week, and thanks for stopping by! :D














Side note: Arduino code is based heavily off of C but, with some differences including:  some libraries and header files are not shared between the two, the Arduino includes two functions which must be used, the print function is disimilar, and more.

FYI: I will be posting pictures but, only when I no longer get an error on my computer when I try to download the files from it!

A picture of the army men who, mysteriously, change locations while I'm away. Presently, they seem to have stumbled into a worm hole and time traveled. Alternatively, they are in an alternate universe where dinosaurs still exist!!!!!!! :O 

Sorry, readers! I don't have much at all to post! I went to the B Sides conference and didn't do anything of note (that is pertinent to this blog) besides that!

Till next week!

:D

Programming Project: Text Analysis

Hello readers :)

Anyone who knows anything about me knows I read addictively. Aside from the countless articles I read daily, I also read a large number of books (sometimes a few at a time, depending on what type of book). All the books I read are non-fiction, by-the-way (I REALLY don't like reading fiction-- sci-fi excluded).

Presently, one of the books I am reading is called The Secret Life of Pronouns. Now, because I have a project page, because I love programming (particularly in C), because I am hyperanalytical and because positively LOVE deducing and/or inferring things people are saying by how they speak, I decided to use this text as a launching point for a program that I will make to analyze medium/large text fragments.

I might add that when only going over in my own mind as to how EXACTLY I would write the program based SOLELY upon the aforementioned book, there REALLY isn't enough to go on! For instance, much is written on the over/under use of the words like: I/me/my v. we/our's. However, no specific fraction is mentioned. This specific instance ALONE makes it clear that I have a lot of googling/research ahead of me to perfectly clarify this point! If I fail to clarify this, I will simply output ratios of each "cluster." So that, if I should EVER come across this in a future I can add a simple if/then/else loop which goes off of those ratios.

My plan of attack is to go about this in passes:

 First, I will do simple things like pronoun use (I say that now-- referring to my using the word "simple"!  : /  ). 
            Pronoun use can relay information about whether or not you are depressed, 
            emotionally distant, authoritative, and your gender.

Then, I am thinking I will have to create emotive clusters (which incorporate synonyms, for instance).
           I WILL say on this that using words like sad, frustrated, etc. does NOT 
           have to mean that you are an unhappy person.

Perhaps, my third pass will incorporate proper participle of speech.
         This can predict gender, age, and education.


I consider this to be a project which takes an infinite amount of time. For, one can ALWAYS refine such a program. However, I would expect my proposed schedule to run something like this:

Stage 1: one month (I have to do some-one line research to do, for one thing).
Stage 2: two months (I can go to thesuarus.com to look up synonyms but, programming all of them will take time. There are non-synonymous words which belong in these clusters, also).
Stage 3: one month (I have to do some-one line research to do, for one thing).

There are --POSSIBLY-- insurmountable problems. For instance, how does one code for the program to acknowledge sarcasm.

I do plan on offering to give people updates of the program if they ask for it (after I state that it is available, of course).

Wish me luck! I might need it... : /     :D
_______________________________


So, I had thought of deleting this entry. For, it has been shelved till further notice. Why, though? Did I give up?! Pssshh! I would NEVER!

What happened is that, upon going back over the book which inspired me, I realized that nothing concrete was given: All findings were written too "generally" and I had no base line to go off of. Sounds about righ,t considering the author is a psychologist. So, till THEN, my friends, this project will be nothing more than a fantasy ;-) Unless, someone would like to send me some information?!
 ;-)

Hello :)

Alright, so I have no pictures for you guys this week! Sorry.

What I worked on this week was finishing up a fair number of circuit boards AND I started work on the RFID project. Specifically, a pro-type was formulated and parts were tracked down. Next up will be to see how well the pro-type fares! :)

Till next week!

The Train Project

Sorry it's been a while since my last post but, Def Con and Black Hat were last week!

This week, I have been inordinately productive which is why this post is likely to be short and is a bit late! Here, I have been working on what I refer to as only the "Train Project" which amounts to increasing the efficiency of trains by 20% or so. The entire idea was inspired by this paper:  http://web.ing.puc.cl/~power/paperspdf/dixon/60a.pdf . Thus, I have been spending much of my time pouring over it and going through both the diagrams and the calculations! Also, I got to build two circuits (each of the same circuit design). Lastly, I have been doing a number of calculations. I'd post my work but, it is not very attractive looking. Sorry :(  My notes are pretty good looking though...

Some of the guys (random, indeed):

Some of my note pages  ;)    :

At least, I think they are pretty nice looking. If you disagree, surely you can imagine what my calculations looked like...   : /

I will also be doing some inventory and ordering new parts as well as finishing (hopefully) the V4 wikki documentation.

Lastly, I will be engaging in figuring out how to build an RF-ID cloner  (unless I forgot something ELSE I will be doing!) in order to help companies improve their security.

V4

Frankly, I had been too busy working to remember to take more than a measly three photos.

Here is one of the boreds baking:

Secondly:

This is one of the "finished" products. I wrote "finished" in quotes as the circuit is complete but, we still needed to attach a few things to the header. I am SO pleased that it worked BEAUTIFULLY the first time! To be fair, I had two very experienced professionals look it over before we checked its functionality and, as a result, I did clean up some of the surface solders. When the second guy grabbed it from me and said that he was "going to take it under the microscope," I didn't know he was being LITERAL! Lol  : /

Lastly:

Interesting fact: as the boards bake, they get redder; they go from a bright red to a deep red!

Now, to Wiki the instructions so that others may build their own version (which will not get finished by today-- I'm exhausted)!

Stay tuned for next week when I learn use Solid Works to print something out using the 3D printer! Any ideas as to what I should design?

Some of The Equipment and Other Related Things

The soldering paste and applicator:

The soldering iron I have yet to name. Any suggestions?

The only soldering tip which makes one enthusiastic about soldering-- in my experience-- as compared with "lesser" tips  ;)   :

The soldering iron I so fondly refer to as: the "blow dryer":

A Geiger counter which may be used on a future project (the indeterminate factor being whether THIS particular radiation detector is going to be used). No, we are not going to be dealing with hazardous materials.  ;)

Whether you call it a SUPER capacitor or an ULTRA capacitor-- it IS EXTRAordianry!

Whereas TYPICAL capacitors are of the order micro- (10^-6) or pico- (10^-12) THIS capacitor is of the order kilo- (10^3). That is QUITE the difference! This fella' is being used in a design to substantially increase the efficiency of trains.

More Prototyping

First, I built the circuit on a bread board using "macroscopic" parts ("macroscopic" is my personal colloquialism). See below: 

What the circuit was designed for: 

This is a simple blink circuit. Suppose the LED on the right blinks first, for x 

amount of time. The LED on the left will blink for x amount of time once the 

right LED ceases to blink. This pattern repeats. 

The purpose of it's creation was two-fold. Firstly, there was a surplus of LEDs, 

resistor, and capacitors. Secondly, this particular circuit is very forgiving for 

the novice; It's pretty tough to blow out the LEDS, you can interchange 

resistors and capacitors and get the same circuit behavior (so long as:

 tau = R*C = constant), and you can experiment to come to understand

RC-circuit behavior by changing out resistors and/or capacitors, in a 

thoughtful and mindful way. Thus, the learner's kit was born and will be 

on sale in a matter of time.

To ensure that the prototype circuit was identical to my bread board circuit, I mapped out what I had (i.e. prototype) against what I wanted (i.e. bread board circuit):

The prototype (incomplete at this point in time): 

To get a "feel" for the contrast between the "macroscopic" and "infinitesimal" parts I deal with, here is a photo comparing both sizes of transistors:

Needless to say, it is a good thing that the "microscope" pieces are so inexpensive, seeing as how easy it is to loose one of them!    : /

This is a picture of the Red Bull I was consuming while working:

( I felt obligated to show my respect to such a precious thing, as one of my sacred source of caffeine!)

It is interesting to note that the transistors were SO small I had to manually cut two of the the stripes of medal backings with an exacto-knife (remember: this is the PROTOTYPE. The official kits are made using machines)! Good thing I am endowed with patience-- not that it wasn't tried! 

More on THIS to come (the circuit, not the Red Bull-- well, maybe that too  ;)   ! ).

Prototyping

Early on, when I began my internship at ACCX Products, inc.(which you can access HERE: http://www.accxproducts.com/content/ )  not only did I learn how to do surface soldering but, I got to build the prototype board. Here is a picture of me working on it:

Shortly thereafter, I "baked" the circuit board. I had never heard of such a thing, previously! But, when you have a high quality fiber glass circuit board, you are doing surface mount soldering (complete with soldering paste), and the parts you are using are something like infinitesimal in size, it is the optimal choice! Here is a picture of the board baking to completion:

As this is my first blog EVER, I hadn't the foresight to take a picture of the soldering paste. Consequently, I will post a picture of the soldering paste sometime next week ( July 18th-July 19th). The board worked beautifully, by-the-way ;)

Prior to all of this I had practiced surface mount soldering with a never-before-used (by ME, that is) hot air soldering iron (which I lovingly refer to as: the "blow dryer"). In preparation of the above prototyping, I should mention.

Also, because I love it so much, I will post pictures of the soldering iron which I love very dearly. Not just because of its NASA-level quality but, also because of the soldering head I use on it. I think I may name him, I love him so much!  : /