retrointerfacing

Audiophiles, please navigate away from this page. It might make you cringe, hit random bystanders, etc.

That having said, some time ago I came into the possession of two simple bookshelf speaker cabinets by HECO, the Victa 200. Unfortunately one mysterious destructive force in my house took the life of one of the tweeters. (this mysterious destructive force has of course nothing to do whatsoever with a button-crazy two year old which happens to live in the same house). Anyway..

I couldn’t find an address selling spares, the original speaker cabinets were quite cheap, but only sold in pairs. The only solution: find some tweeter that roughly matches size and specs of the previous one, and do a replacement.

Being somewhat limited in suppliers, I bought a monacor DT75/8 which has the same cone diameter as the original HECO (only power specs and magnet size are very different)

I used a lot of hot-melt glue, jigsaw and file to make the cabinet useable again. Although the process looks bad and ugly, the sound is much better (compared with no tweeter at all) and even optically you can hardly tell the difference…

defective original tweeter

original container plate (plastic!!)

backside of the plate filed and sanded down

New tweeter dome

hole in need of a jigsaw

pizza box as protection

aargh...

a lot of hot-melt glue (good brand stuff)

end result

Use an old iron, set at maximum temperature. Use bake sheets, fold a lot of old plastic bags in between, press hard with the iron.. The idea was also presented at fab6. Now the plastic sheet has been used on a normal sewing machine to make a small wallet. Next up: the big obligatory messenger bag with laptop pouch…

Having recently bought a Babboe cargo bike, my workshop was littered with big cardboard boxes. What to do.. what to do.. A quick look around on the net yielded this designer of cardboard bookshelves. One hour later the babookshelf (babboekenkast) was a fact…

The shelves have been made out of double cardboard, stuffed with rolled strips:

For a public display a beautiful LG HS200G LED beamer has been used which can play from USB data sources. However, no autoplay - autostart function was included. The beamer has been connected to a power source with timer switch. However, somebody still needs to push the on-off button, go trough the menu etc..

The projector is used for back-projection in a window, using standard LEE 216 filters ‘White Diffusion’ as projection foil.

A simple solution has been made using an Arduino Nano (any Arduino or Atmel AVR will do) and the Arduino IRremote library Using the example sketches and one TSOP17xx IR receiver chip, the codes used by the remote for powering on/off, starting USB, left, right, menu, ok etc.. were located. (In this case an NEC protocol). After that a simple Arduino sketch was made using IRsend commands and delay’s (for example a delay of 15 seconds between powering on and going to the USB menu). See wiki for full code and documentation.

#include <IRremote.h>
 int RECV_PIN = 11;
IRrecv irrecv(RECV_PIN);
IRsend irsend;
 decode_results results;
// remote control definitions
#define on 0x20DFB54A
#define usb 0x20DF3EC1
#define ok 0x20DF22DD
#define down 0x20DF827D
#define left 0x20DF609F
// sequence to get the beamer playing:
typedef struct {
 unsigned long time;
  long code;
} remoteAction;

remoteAction beamerShow[17]={
  {5,on},{20,usb},{23,ok},{24,ok},{25,down},
  {26,ok},{27,down},{28,ok},{29,ok},{30,ok},
  {31,down},{32,ok},{33,left},{34,left},{35,left},
  {26,ok},{1000,on}};

int pointer=0;
void setup(){
  Serial.begin(9600);
  irrecv.enableIRIn(); // Start the receiver
  pinMode(BUTTON_PIN, INPUT);
  pinMode(STATUS_PIN, OUTPUT);
 }
// and somewhere as play function:

void loop() {
  unsigned long timer=millis()/1000;
  if (timer>beamerShow[pointer].time  {
     digitalWrite(STATUS_PIN, HIGH);
     irsend.sendNEC(beamerShow[pointer].code, 32); //on-off-left-right-usb
     digitalWrite(STATUS_PIN, LOW);
     pointer++;
  }
}
// rest of IR remote example has been left out - see wiki for full code

The timer switch turns on both the arduino power supply and beamer power supply. On startup the Arduino sends out the required codes to start a slide show from USB disk. After three hours, the arduino sends the power off command.. a little after that the timer switch switches off power completely.

In the category ‘Utterly useless customizations’ the spool-knitted cable sleeve for mac adapter. Why? - the only answer that makes some sense is probably ‘why not’. Besides that, wiring used to have cotton or nylon sleeves with a similar woven pattern, you just don’t get that type of cable anymore these days.. so you could call it retrointerfacing.

Another nice weekend project: a stuffed cat. Using a pattern from this link I made a nice black cat. It has the same silly look in its eyes that young kittens sometimes have It is a very nice A4-design. Just print out, cut fabric, stitch everything together and stuff it…

Another nice DIY weekend project. A baby-cradle that can be fixed to the side of a bed, so both mattresses are flush.