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Buzzzzz

Buzz is the sound of my first noise synth.

Just tonight, I finally broke out my new multimeter and tried a few things out.  I can’t control the beat or freq, but I will do so soon.

New multimeter

As a grad student, there are always too many seminars to go to. There are ones that are near to my research in semiconductor electronics, usually something about carbon nanotubes, then there are computer engineering type things that have to do with “code” and then there are ones like “Rapid Generation of High Affinity Aptamers via Microfulidic Speration”, which just make my head hurt.

There are also a lot of seminars by companies that trying to sell you things. They especially try to sell you on the idea that working in El Sugundo or Thousand Oaks isn’t that bad. However, the trying to sell you products kind of events can be kind of fun. About a month ago, our building manager poached a few of us from a free ice cream event with the promise of free cake at a showcase. The showcase was sparsely attended and there seemed to be a panic in the air. Such panic could only come from the very real possibility that food would go to waste, so I had to step up my game, if you will, and eat more cake. On the way out filled out a raffle form and a week later, I got word that I had been victorious.  And so, after my department losing the package for three weeks and it being delivered to one Mr Burke, I am the proud owner of a new, pretty expensive, very nice multimeter:

I am filled with glee.

The microcontrollers are calling to me…

…and they are saying: “You are a huge nerd.”

Microcontrollers are really simplified CPUs, so they can be used by guys like me to make LEDs blink or to take data from sensors without having to program another version of windows and buy a $500 PC. The cost per chip can be $5-10 and the rest of the stuff plus boards can be $10-20 more. They are used for everything that isn’t a full computer from portable devices like cellphones to the Wii remotes and random other things. However, the learning curve is steep because you have to wire everything up and deal with low level stuff.

Regardless, I am coming back to this after a disappointing experience in undergrad that, I now realize, can be traced to trying to do my thing with the completely wrong controller. It’s really silly to think about how frustrated I got trying new things to control three LEDs to combine into different colors. Looking around now though, things have gotten much simpler.

Arduino seems like the answer to all my prayers. I have heard about it before, like in the MAKE Magazine blog but it never registered. They use a standard microcontroller and have built and entire ecosystem around it. The programmers are inexpensive, customizable and supported and the sensors are literally plug and play.

This fills me with incredible glee.

Anyways, I’m going to be plunging back into this again and I can’t wait to start playing with it all.

I also have to figure out how to aim this blog. Things are going to get scary fast for non engineers, but I want there to be things for everyone here. We’ll see.

Hello!

This is a new blog for me that will focus on the fun cruft that I do while a graduate student in Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Such cruft shall include my DIY electronics projects and tutorials, writing about basic electrical engineering topics aimed at the lower level undergraduates, commentary from a rational, physical scientist about things that claim to be rational and physical, but are not, plus some other stuff that I like.

To answer the inevitable questions:

• Isn’t it lovely in Santa Barbara?
  • Yes. It is beautiful here. It is ~70F almost everyday and the skies are clear 95% of the time.
• How can you work in a lab/cleanroom and get things done while it is so beautiful outside?
  • I have discovered that I love inventing, tinkering with and building things a lot. Like a lot, a lot. Like, lying in bed awake at night while state diagrams, LED controller plans and post-22nm FET ideas for my thesis float through my head. I also very much enjoy reading and keeping up on the seething mass of the internets as well as hacking my life in the constant pursuit of a better way to do things. Being outside is a great, but I remember the things I build more than I remember the mountains I have climbed.

That is it for now! On to customizing the hell out of this page.