Making Mad Props for meltmedia's Interactive Superhero Marketing Launch: The Rest of the Props

This is the 3rd in a series of articles about the props I built for my company's internal marketing launch, which was themed around superheroes. I had to wait to write these three articles because we hadn't launched yet when I had finished the props. This article focusses on the last partner prop and the simplest of the three, plus the capes, boots, masks and toolbelts used as props near the front doors of our office spaces (making it look like the meltmedia Interactive Superheroes had come in and hung up their stuff on coatracks after a long day of saving organizations from mediocre designs). Here is one of the coatracks with the Interactive Superhero uniform:

Before we get to the cape and the boots and whatnot, let's talk really quickly about Dave's BEER Goggles Interactive Superhero tool of choice:

I've always wondered what tangible BEER Goggles would look like. We all know when you hear the term, it usually means a state of drunkenness, not a physical piece of eyewear. I had an old pair of goggles lying around from my skydiving days and a pair of drinking straw glasses I'd gotten as a gift. Add a little copper wire to hold the straw to the goggles and BAM! BEER Goggles you can really wear! Here is what our creative partner Dave looks like in his incredibly fashionable and highly functional BEER Goggles:

The next big project in my quest to be meltmedia's "Mr. Fox," master superhero tool and weapon maker, was the set of five superhero capes, three of which were to be worn by our company's partners. As it turns out, I do indeed know how to sew, so I set out to find patterns for capes. Unfortunately, I had a hard time find good adult sized patterns, so I used my wife as a model to get a roughly OK cape pattern measured out. I ran to JoAnn Fabric and bought a bunch of satin-esque fabric and some heavier grey cotton fabric to use as backing. I laid out the two long pieces of fabric and started cutting the five rough rectangles out for each cape:

I figured out the pattern and cut the first piece from the cotton backing, thinking if I screwed up on that, I still had the intact satin to make capes from:

Next, I started copying the pattern to the other fabric and pieces until I had five of each kind of fabric:

With the extra fabric on the edges for the seams, the pattern looks like this:

To make my hands even steadier than they usually are, I sipped bourbon while using the sewing machine (technically, it was Maker's White, which is Maker's Mark before it goes into the barrel for aging) (irrelevant to this story, but interesting, no?):

Notice in the background that I did actually use pins to hold the two pieces of fabric in place together while I stitched them together.

A trick that took me TWO capes to figure out was the ironing of the seams. I had to flatten the seams and then fold them and iron again to get a nice edge where the cape and its backing met, kinda like on suit vests, I guess. The trick was to wait to stitch up the bottom edge of the cape so that the cape could be pulled over the end of the ironing board, like pant legs:

What this allowed me to do more easily was to push out the seams all of the way to where the stitching was visible so that I could completely flatten the seams, then fold them and iron them nice and clean so they come together at the edges perfectly (or as perfectly as a novice like me can get them):

The neck part just needed a little Velcro® and BOOM! Custom-designed, sturdy, lined, shiny superhero capes! Check it:

Then, here is an action shot of a cape with the meltmedia logo silkscreened onto it:

Now, the boots took a little trial and error. The first pair I found I thought would work really well but turned out to be a horrible idea. They were diving boots made from neoprene. What's the take-away from this? Neoprene soaks up paint like nobody's business. But, here was how I masked one off for painting:

Plan B: Get on Amazon and order actual superhero costume boots, like these (I guess the pointy tops make them not-average-citizen boots):

I put a coat of primer on 'em and then spray-painted them our superhero blue:

The final touch was to get the meltmedia logo on them. To save myself the hassle of cutting all weekend, I just printed the logo in reverse in a circle, but the cutout logo was printed in a color as close to the paint as I could get it on my HP Color LaserJet. That way, I only had to cut out circles. Easy-peasy:

Next item up for making? Superhero utility belts! For these, I took a couple of leather belts from Target, riveted a couple of Home Depot gift card containers and a Tic Tac container and painted it all, masking off the brass buckle, of course:

Next step was the paint:

Finally, add one of them swanky meltmedia logos with the blue knockouts and SHAZAM! meltmedia Interactive Superhero official utility belts matched to official meltmedia Interactive Superhero costumes:

The last piece to complete the costumer is the mask. I didn't spend much time on these. They weren't meant to be worn. I put a sheet of overhead transparency film over my wife's face and drew a superhero-looking mask in Sharpie. I then transfered that into Adobe Illustrator by way of the flatbed scanner and cleaned up the lines. I printed patterns of the mask on regular paper with dashed lines. I then took a razor blade and cut out the masks from blue foam board stuff (er, whatever it's called):

Cut outs and headband pieces, too:

You can't even tell who's behind the superhero mask, they're THAT good!

So, that's the story of how I spent three weekends playing meltmedia's own Mr. Fox, making mad props, playing with electronics, tinkering with foam and making homemade DIY movie magic, even though there isn't a movie featuring the props. ... Or is there? ;)

Making Mad Props for meltmedia's Interactive Superhero Marketing Launch: The HAT

This is the second in a series of three posts that talk about the props I built for my company's internal marketing plan launch for the employees (see previous post for back story). This particular post is about the HAT (Helmet for Accentuating Telepathy) and is our managing partner Justin's Interactive Superhero tool of choice. It allows his Techno Telepathy to reach farther than it would otherwise with the flick of a switch. The blinking LED on the end of the highly tuned antenna tells him his Techno Telepathy is sensing with ludicrous sensitivity. Er, something along those lines. The HAT started life as a simple chrome (plastic that looked like chrome) skateboarding helmet, which means you, too can build a HAT for accentuating your telepathy (if you imagine REALLY hard):

The main purpose of the HAT is to make Justin, one of meltmedia's partners, look like a dingbat (the plunger helps a little, as well):

The next thing to do was to make a blinky LED circuit. The cheap and easy way is to use a 555 timer IC, a couple of resistors and a couple of of capacitors:

I dead-bugged it to save time and to make it nice and compact, as I wanted to hot-glue it into the foam inside the helmet, like so:

I added a toggle switch to the outside of the helmet to allow Justin to turn off the telepathy accentuation feature and return the helmet to its normal state of being a plain old goofy helmet:

The antenna was a thick piece of electrical wire I had left over from my pool computer upgrade last summer. I wrapped a section of it around a pen, soldered one of the LED leads to it, then wrapped another thinner gauge wire up the thicker wire to provide ground to the LED (it's possible I had the polarity the other way, but you get the idea). I put a little heat-shrink tubing on it to better fixate the LED onto the end of the antenna:

The antenna and most every other thing attached to the helmet was held in place with crap-tonnes (the European measure of a crap-load) of hot glue (sorry for the blurry photo, BTW):

And, finally, a video to show it in action:

Making Mad Props for meltmedia's Interactive Superhero Marketing Launch: Techno HAMMER

I believe I've mentioned it before: I work at an amazing web and software development shop called, "meltmedia." We have a gaggle of highly talented software engineers, web developers and designers. Sometime back in 2011, meltmedia was in search of  a new tag line to kick off a for-real live marketing campaign. Marketing was something melt hadn't worried about before then. While in San Francisco at the 2011 Apple World Wide Developer Conference, in a bourbon-fueled barrage of submissions to the company's on-line suggestion box for new company tag lines, I came up with, "We are Interactive Superheroes." It stuck and I won a $90 bottle of bourbon. Woohoo! To be clear, I am fueled by many things: Caffeine, sugar, soda, etc., not just bourbon. I like chocolate milk. I happen to be a major bourbon geek and had been sampling fine bourbons at a speakeasy in San Francisco called, "Bourbon & Branch" before I went back to the hotel and started submitting dozens of mostly silly ideas for meltmedia's new tag line.

For the short attention span version of this, here is a photo of the three partners of meltmedia in their full costumes with their props:

We'll start with the biggest prop: Mike's Techno HAMMER (Highly Active Mike Moulton Energy Repeater). I needed this thing to be big. I didn't have much time for any of these props, especially the HAMMER. To sturdy up the thing and to keep it as lightweight as possible, I started with green foam from Michael's:

The handle is a piece of PVC pipe from my pool equipment upgrade last year. I knew I'd eventually find a use for the pipe!

At first, I wasn't going to get all electronicky on this thing, but it just didn't seem right to have a TECHNO HAMMER without random blinking LEDs on recycled circuit boards, so, this thing needed a circuit to make random LEDs blink. It also needed a way for Mike to turn on and off the LEDs at will. I did this by embedding a standard pushbutton in the handle:

I cut a hole for the button, then cut a BIG hole behind it to allow me access for glueing. To be sure the button would be at least somewhat difficult to push through the handle, I jammed a piece of leftover green foam into the handle and behind the button before I closed up the back of the handle:

To crappily simulate leather wrapping on the handle, you can see in the image above that I took strips of Gorilla® tape and folded one edge, then wrapped up the handle at an angle. It kinda did the trick. Ya do what ya can in the time ya have, ya know?

The button was in between the batteries and the LED blinking circuit. A simple momentary power-on functionality. The circuit was an Atmel® ATmega328 AVR® microcontroller (same one used in certain models of the Arduino). It was programmed to strobe the LEDs (rifle through each of them and turn them on or off many times per second, like a TV scanline). To keep the current draw to a minimum (to prevent the AVR from cooking), I had all of the LEDs cathodes return to ground through a dinky little constant current devices (CCD) from ON Semiconductor (part number NSI45020T1G). There are 12 LEDs. 12 pins on the AVR are randomly set to be on during their time slice or off. The little CCD kept the current to 20 mA for each LED. This allowed me to use red, green, yellow, and orange LEDs, regardless of their required forward voltage, since the current was always 20 mA, which they all liked. The other reason for doing it this way instead of a resistor was power consumption: The CCD is way more efficient that a resistor that dissipates heat to get the current to where it should be. The circuit was powered by two little AAA cells, so the voltage was about 3 volts DC. Since the microcontroller drew very little power and the LEDs were only on one-at-a-time, the batteries should last for days and days if left on continuously. I did run a test and they stayed lit for about 4 days before I had to assemble the HAMMER circuit. Here's the circuit and batteries:

And here is the ugly underbelly of the circuit (again, time was not on my side, therefore beauty was not on the HAMMER's side):

The next part of the LED circuit is the 12 LEDs that poked through the recycled circuit boards (I'll get to the boards shortly). I drilled holes in old boards pulled from an old (and quite large) oscilloscope that was given to me but that did not function. Each LED was given its own wires and a nice heat-shrink tubing treatment:

Two fairly similar old circuit boards were used for the two sides of the HAMMER. I drilled appropriately sized holes in kinda-random places and poked the LEDs through and grouped the wires together, connecting the grounds together:

Each side's wire bundle would go through little holes in the foam core of the HAMMER and into a secret compartment that held the circuit main board and the batteries:

The compartment was crudely cut (like most of this sad but fun project) into the foam core:

The LEDs looked right at home in the old PCBs:

The shell of the HAMMER was just cardboard faces stuck together hideously and hurriedly with Gorilla® tape. The cardboard was coerced into shape around the foam core:

The entire thing was eventually covered in Gorilla® tape:

Next came the primer and silver metallicish paint for the shell. Turns out, Gorilla® tape doesn't take primer as well as I had hoped. But, it was good enough for the intended limited use:

In the image above, you can see the circuit/battery compartment door and the makeshifty little riveted Velcro® closer... Thing:

Yes, it's cheesy and not at all indicative of a quality or sturdy product, but, again it serves its purpose well enough. Here's what all the crap looked like crammed into the compartment:

Finally, I soldered all 14 of the LED leads to the circuit board and connected the batteries and pushbutton and it was ready to go!

The photo doesn't show it randomly lighting LEDs, of course, so here's a video of the LEDs in action:

And finally, here is Mike actually being an Interactive Superhero with his Techno HAMMER:

Save Buckyballs Rare Earth Magnet Desk Toys!

Consumer Safety Protection Commission FAIL!

This blog is all about making things, tinkering, DIY, etc. It's not a political site. However, when I heard that the Consumer Safety Protection Commission was filing a lawsuit against Buckyballs, I had to join the fight to keep the Nanny State out and help push personal responsibility. Please join me in joining the fight against the Nanny State and for personal responsibility. Tweet, post on Facebook, email friends, or simply responsibly purchase a set of balls for yourself at GetBuckyBalls.com to help this innocent and excellent little company stay in business.

Lemme 'splain... I'm all for an agency to watch out for shifty products for me using tax money I send to Uncle Sam. However, I am NOT for said agency regulating on behalf of what should be personal responsibility. That smells of horse pucky and, more importantly, I think it's bunk that people aren't taking responsibility for themselves and those for whom they are responsible (minor children, pets, etc.).

If you find ADULT-level toys like, say, little round super-strong magnetic balls to be really fascinating, the first thing YOU should do AS AN ADULT is understand that the little magnetic balls are LITTLE. Repeating: LITTLE. As in, little enough for pets and children and STUPID teenagers to SWALLOW. Repeating: YOU. YOU should understand this AS AN ADULT WITH A BRAIN and YOU, the person responsible for the children and pets and STUPID teenagers, should be smart enough to store them away or NOT PURCHASE THEM AT ALL FOR FEAR YOUR CHILDREN OR PETS OR STUPID TEENAGERS MIGHT SWALLOW THEM.

The concept of YOU understanding that something is wrong or bad is your personal responsibility speaking to you. If you do not hear that little voice or vibe from within, you are NOT a responsible adult and, therefore, you probably should not be purchasing very strong little rare earth magnets for entertainment or relaxation purposes. I wrote, "YOU" to be sure I was NOT writing, say, a government agency like the Consumer Safety Protection Commission or some other Nanny State entity.

OK, back to Buckyballs. They are a tiny company that has done well and that EMPLOYS people. Last time I checked, our country was running a little low on employment. Seems that what they're doing is good for the people they employ. I also firmly believe, having played a plenty with the aforementioned little super-strong rare earth magnetic ball desk toys, that Buckyballs is doing many, many other people a service by providing a calming little pile of stress relieving building balls for their desks or man caves (in my case) or whatever.

What's even dumberer about this story is that the imbeciles at the CSPC APPROVED the safety program in place at Buckyballs in 2011 (per the Buckyballs website). Over 500 million balls sold. Less than two dozen incidents. There are MANY other for-adult toys or toy-like items that produce WAY more "incidents," I'm sure. Hell, hundreds of kids are sent to the ER for swallowing BALLOONS!!! Tens of thousands of stupid people swallow COINS that are minted by... THE U.S. GOVERNMENT!!! The CSPC needs to go after the U.S. Treasury and stop them from minting any more coins NOW!!!

The CSPC appears to be on a rampage against this little company and that's completely unfair, IMHO. Buckyballs have even created a safety website for rare earth magnets. They've done everything they can to make sure that consumers understand how to properly handle their product. They're not an evil corporation. They're a company of about 10 people plus a bunch of sales reps.

OK, I'm finished with that rant. Carry on and BUY BUCKY BALLS!!!

PC Power Supply Repurposed for Bench/Breadboard/Tinker Use

A friend and coworker of mine sent me a text today asking if I had instructions on how I built my benchtop power supply from a computer power supply. I realized that I had not written about that on this blog. That was dumb. Simple oversight. Anyone coulda done it. I've been using that silly thing for a long time and I think it might even be in the background of a couple of videos of photos up here. Funny. Anyhoo... Here's the quick how-to-karate-chop on how to take a PC power supply (ATX) and use it on your electronics bench as a clean source of DC power at 3.3V, 5V and 12V (and even -12V, actually). Let's start with a picture because I have a short attention span if there aren't visuals:

A word of caution: It's electric. Don't be stupid. The Dell power supply pictured above us hooked up to mains power and can supply your circuits with upwards of 14A at 3.3V, so, again, don't be stupid. One cool feature of this Dell (and I'm sure of many ATX supplies) is that it will instantly shut down when you short things out. That might be advice from experience. No sure.

When snipping wires and protecting the ends and whatnot, BE SURE THE POWER SUPPLY IS DISCONNECTED FROM THE WALL OUTLET! As with any of the silly things I build, if you imitate me, you do it at your own risk and I warranty NOTHING on this site, from instructions to ideas to schematics to whatever. Nothing. I've worked around the guts of PC's since the IBM XT days and I'm here to talk about it, so it must not be that scary.

Throughout this article, as with most of my articles, please forgive me for not knowing the nomenclature of connectors and parts. That said, I rigged up a 4-pin Molex connector with banana kinda connectors that slip into the tops of the power connectors on a standard breadboard. This makes it really easy to connect 3.3V, 5V or 12V to my breadboards.

Usually, I wait to worry about the "how" of a power supply for a circuit until I get the core of the circuit working, so a quick supply of the standard voltages is nice. Plus, with an ATX power supply, I can get upwards of 10 amps or so. For instance, I've been working on a circuit that controls a sealed environment's temperature using a thermoelectric cooling device ("TEC") and at upwards of 15VDC, it will want to draw about 3A. My benchtop digital power supply can barely make that. The ATX supply, on the other had, does it handily.

Why did I choose a PC power supply and not just keep using my digital benchtop one (aside from the amp draw on one of my experiments)? I found that I was almost always setting the supply to 3.3V, 5V or 12V. Crazy how the PC supply does all three of those.

To turn on and turn off the power supply easily, I connected a switch between the ATX 20-pin main board connector's pin 14 ("PS_ON") and one of the ground wires:

Any other wires from the 20-pin connector were cut back,taped off and tucked inside the power supply's enclosure for safe keeping. I kept all of the many 3.3V (orange), 5V (red) and 12V (yellow) wires full-length and ready to be connected to my future screw terminal block that will sit conveniently on my bench for quick hookups.

The dark blue wire is -12VDC and is handy to have for amps and stuff, so keeping that one handy, as well.

I'll add more to this post once I get the screw terminals finished.

meltmedia Hack Day July 2012!

I work for an amazing company that has an equally amazing culture: meltmedia, in Tempe, Airzona. Those without a sense of humor need not apply. We do things like company outings in the middle of the business day to the movie theater to watch a cool movie opening, drive-by Nerf® dartings, and amazing company holiday parties.

Last Saturday, I organized a hack day. I emailed the entire company and encouraged them to purchase Arduinos and Arduino kits or to bring whatever projects they might like to spend a Saturday with friends and coworkers working on. It was a ton of fun. I think everyone who attended had a great time, as well. Cool things were tinkered on.

I figured out how to mobilize a good majority of my electronics workbench and tools and brought them along to the office. We have a massive custom-built table in the kitchen that's perfect for a bunch of hacking stations, surge strips, computers, wires, LEGOS®, food, etc. We had two oscilloscopes, a few digital multimeters, quite a few Arduinos, lots of breadboards, tons of wires, many passive components, and great learning experiences.

We blew up one of my 24-outlet surge strips, sadly. When we opened it up, one of the traces on the main PCB inside was completely evaporated. Impressive, since I had NOTHING plugged into it. Other than that, I don't recall smelling or seeing the magic blue smoke at all. Pretty impressive for a bunch of amateur electronics geeks!

So, what was my hack day project, you ask? I built my two Adafruit XBee Adapters:

If you do any work at all with the Digi International XBee radios, these adapters are a must, for sure! They're super easy to put together and both of my work perfectly. I have two different Sparkfun FTDI Basic breakout boards that I use to connect the XBee adapters to my computers to make magical invisible serial cables. You can also use Adafruit's FTDI Friend, which is kinda the same thing. It's fun to chat with CoolTerm (or pick your favorite serial terminal program) using these XBee modules. It's ridiculously easy to set them up. I read and often reference the book, "Building Wireless Sensor Networks" by Robert Faludi for my Zigbee projects. If you haven't had a chance to try them out, order some from Adafruit, Newark, Mouser, Sparkfun or Digi-Key and get one or two of Adafruit's adapters to make talking to them super-easy. The FTDI Basic modules from Sparkfun are a good idea, in general, as well.

Here is one of the Adafruit adapters connected to a Sparkfun FTDI Basic connected to a USB cable connected to my iMac's keyboard USB port:

I've done at least one other article in the past about the XBee stuff, so if you want some starter ideas, you can search the site for XBee or Zigbee. It's fun to go wireless.

If you can, I highly recommend organizing a company hack day. It's a load of fun and a great way to build camaraderie. Plus, at a company like meltmedia, we may even add more interactive hardware to the offices, like a new edition of iPotti!

Backyard Propane Fire Pit, Pavers and Outhouse Project

Citrus trees in our back yard

We HAD three citrus trees in our backyard. They were lined up at the west end of our pool (top right of the photo below).

The middle tree was called, "Frankencitrus." It had lemon-esque fruit on it, but the fruit had absolutely ZERO flavor. Ick. A tree nursery person told us that citrus trees are grafted onto citrus tree stumps. Sometimes they don't take to the stump or something like that and they end up being a Frankencitrus. So, I chopped it down:

Frankencitrus stump

What I wanted to put in place of Frankencitrus was a swanky backyard retreat with pavers, a covering and a really cool gas fire pit with glass beads. I draw this up in Blender 3D to get an idea of the space:

Gas fire pit and paver 3D rendering

Of course, it goes without saying, even though I'm about to say it, that it would be ULTRA-SUPER-COOL if I could get the pavers to float approximately 3 to 5 inches above the dirt, like they do in the rendering. The brown layer below the pavers is ground and the gap is meant to show where the base material will go. The rendering shows extra bricks in the corners and whatnot because building things virtually in 3D environments makes the construction process seem easier than it really is, so I thought I would design in rounded corners all over the place. That was dumb.

I excavated the area the old fashioned way: I used a wheel barrow and a shovel.

Excavation of paver area

Since this thing was to butt up against the edge of our pool decking, I needed the final surface of the pavers to be level with the decking as closely as possible. Since I'd only ever seen pavers installed on DIY Network on TV, I figured that if the surfaces were within an inch of each other, that'd be plenty OK by me.

Frankencitrus's stump was not going to go easily, so at one point I decided to just leave the damn thing in a hole under the fire pit. But, the nagging little perfectionist voice in my head told me that it would haunt me the rest of my life if I didn't at least TRY to fully remove the stupid stump. Eventually, I was able to chop it out of the hole.

The completed excavation looked like this:

Completed excavation, including missing stump

I enlisted (read: fed and provided beer to) my buddy Jake to help with the filling, leveling and compacting of the base material. He and I did it in about a half-day. Not bad. We probably burned a calories each for the 3,000 lbs. of material we moved and smashed.

Base material installation with Jake

Just like on DIY Network, we used steel pipes as a leveling assistant for each one-inch layer we compacted. Three layers got us right to the proper level to make the bricks flush with the surface of the pool decking, believe it or not! Awesome. Lucky amateurs.

Pavers, drainage and gas line conduit

The base was really solid. I was very pleased with it. The plan for the fire pit was to have a tank of propane off to the side of the pavers hidden in a miniature outhouse. I hadn't thought about the final design of the outhouse, but I knew I at least needed that conduit to carry the gas under the pavers to the big pit bowl. That's what the two periscope-looking things are sticking up in the middle of the base material and the left edge of the photo. The bigger pipe with the holes is for draining water AROUND the area instead of under it. In the photo above, the water in our yard runs from left to right (back of the yard to the street).

The pavers we chose are made here in Arizona by the place we purchased the base material from. They're meant to be randomly placed so that no discernable pattern can be seen. That was fairly tough to pull off, but I managed to get it done with only 12 square pieces left. I did have to chop a few squares into slimmer pieces called, "twinkies." Here's the completed paver job:

Pavers completed with mortar edging

I used Type S mortar around the edges (Type S has everything in it and just needs water) to hold the edges in place. I used polymeric sand between the pavers. The slope is gradual away from the pool and everything turned out great for my first paver job. Now on to the fire pit...

24" steel gas fire ring

The fire ring is actually TWO rings in one. It's 24" diameter on the outer ring and about 12" on the inner ring. The pan in which the ring and the glass beads will sit is designed for the paver stone that will be used in the fire pit. I wanted a big ring to get good flame coverage over the beads. I took the advice of a barbecue/fireplace guy and made a screen that goes below the ring on top of the ring to keep the glass beads from mingling with the pea gravel below the ring. I bought a piece of metal lath (used in stucco work and whatnot), cut it into a circle the proper size of the fire pan and painted it black with black barbecue grill paint. You'll see it in a bit.

Next, I ran yellow flexible gas line through my under-paver conduit and got it read for the emergency shut-off valve and the fire pan at the pit end of the conduit.

Fire pit build started

I measured and centered the first layer of the fire pit body. There are four rings of pavers total. Each ring is rotated half of a trapezoid paver and all layers are secured to each other with Liquid Nails®. Stuff is amazing. The final fire pit brick build looks like this:

Fire pit bricking completed

UPDATE (May 2015): Several readers have asked about how many pavers are in the completed fire pit. I used 48 each of the RumbleStone "Mini" and "Trapezoid" pavers for mine. RumbleStone has a brochure with tons of great ideas in it and their recipe for a fire pit calls for only three layers of paver rings, or 36 each of the Minis and Traps. I added a ring to raise up the ledge so it was more conducive to use as a coffee table. :)

Law requires that there is a shut-off valve within something like three feet of the burning thing, so I notched out a space in one of the trapezoid pavers to hold the valve assembly:

Shut-off valve in paver block

Here's what it looks like installed:

Shut-off valve installed

The pan for the pit is about 35" in diameter, give or take. I put a hole in it, as it was intended to be used for wood. I fitted half-inch steel pipe through the hole and into the bottom of the ring and added a 90-degree elbow to it and then connected all of the stuff together under the pan:

Under the fire pit pan

The yellow line comes up from the under-paver conduit, connects to one side of the shut-off valve, then a short piece of yellow line goes from the shut-off valve to the steel elbow. All of the connections between the gas pieces have yellow tape on them to seal them nicely.

UPDATE: That yellow line blows goats! Actually, it whistles horribly, like the whine from a jet engine, kinda. The whistling comes from resonance inside the line caused by the gas flying over the ridges in the line. You can totally blow into a piece of the line and it will whistle. It's like an instrument. You could add a new section to the orchestra: The GAS section. After a few minutes of research, I found out they make a super-cool type of flexible line that prevents the whistling. Check out this page for an example. If you live in the southeast valley in the metro Phoenix area, I HIGHLY recommend you visit Brooksies Propane on Alma School Rd. in Chandler, AZ. They sell all manner of gas accessories and they fill tanks for cheap. I found the quiet lines at Brooksies cheaper than I found it on-line, FYI. They also steered my to the high-pressure regulator for the size of ring we have. The low-pressure regulator does not provide enough flow to make the fire worth a darn. The BBQ store people knew not of what they spoke.

The pan was then filled with pea gravel (yes, I know the photo has larger rocks in it, but those were there for testing purposes and I forgot to take a picture of the pea gravel before I poured all of the beads into it).

Screen, steel fire ring and pea gravel in fire pit pan

Then I put 40 lbs. of fire glass beads (30 lbs. of clear and 10 lbs. of dark red) and spread them onto the screen:

Beads on screen over ring and gravel

Here is a shot of the beads fully spread onto the pit:

Glass fire beads in fire pan

Next, the tank side of the gas fire pit needed to be assembled. Originally, I was told by barbecue store guys that I needed this kind of regulator for the tank and for the size of ring (they sold me the ring, as well):

INCORRECT propane tank regulator

When I hooked this regulator up to the system, all I got in my fire pit was sputtering blue flames dancing around under the ring:

Lame fire pit flames

Turns out the barbecue store guys aren't really versed in building big-ass fire pits. The other important piece of information that the guys at the barbecue store got wrong was that propane gas rings are to be holes-up, natural gas rings are holes-down. They got it backwards and this is a very important piece of the fire pit puzzle. When I went to a genuine propane place that also sold parts and grills and whatnot, they corrected me on the holes-up/holes-down rule and then sold me the PROPER high-pressure regulator:

CORRECT high-pressure propane tank regulator

This HP regulator came with a copper tube that had ends that made all of this stuff fit together perfectly:

HP regulator copper tank connector

UPDATE: I've gotten quite a few requests for the make and model of the regulator. Sorry I didn't include it earlier. It's a Marshall Escelsior MEG-6120-100 (http://www.marshallexcelsior.com/product.php?id=2553). I recall I paid about $30 to $40 for it in Arizona. On-line, that seems to be reasonable.

The other end fits into the regulator:

Regulator-side of copper connector tube

With this newfound information and hardware and one more trip to ACE Hardware® for a missing coupler, I finally had everything I needed to make FIRE without the need to use sticks!! Behold my FIRE!!!

Gas fire pit operational -- FIRE!!

By the by... That's with the regulator turned nearly all the way DOWN to LOW! When I cranked it up, not only did I get Hollywood-sized special effects flames, I got a nasty-loud whining from the ring. I'm guessing the tank was playing that ring like a flute. Not sure, though. Clearly I'm the LAST guy you ask for propane answers.

The sad but temporary end to the FIRE!! part of this fun DIY story is that the Phoenix region is experiencing its usual summertime 110-degree weather and using a fire pit for the next bunch of months is stupid. But, wait! There's still an outhouse to build!

I drew up some highly technical and serious plans for the covering for the propane tank:

Gas tank outhouse plans

I couldn't get measurements on the army tank, so I built everything based on the dimensions of the LP tank. The outhouse was built to sit on a 16" by 16" walkway tile. I notched a corner out of the tile for the gas line conduit to pop up through. I ran to Lowe's® and searched for rough looking pine planks and found the perfect matches to build a mini outhouse. If there is any interest, I can take more photos of the structure and write up how I built it, but it's pretty straightforward. Here's the outhouse without the decorative hinges, lock and handles:

Gas tank outhouse without decorative hardware

The roof of the outhouse lifts open to give us access to the regulator and the tank. The tank sits perfectly inside so that it and the regulator are protected from the elements well enough. The outer planks of the outhouse sit around the walkway tile base. One of the supporting rings inside the outhouse sits on top of the tile.

Inside gas tank outhouse

To make the outhouse extra nifty, I added black hinges to the front door that does not actually open. To keep people from trying to open the door, I also put a decorative lock on the door. However, we have enough drunk people visit that someone will probably pull off the front door handle trying to get into pee in our outhouse. Here's the outhouse with the fake hardware (well, the handles are real because they make it easier to lift up the outhouse to switch out the tanke and the silver hinges under the front of the roof are for opening the roof). Stop nitpicking.

Completed gas tank outhouse with decorative hardware

Here's the final set up:

Pavers, fire pit and outhouse

Can't wait for winter!!!

What's the takeaway on this project? Doing pavers in June in Phoenix sucks donkee buttcheeks. I'm thinking that doing pavers in an wonderfully air conditioned gymnasium would still suck just as bad. Building a fire pit isn't so bad, especially since the pavers for that are like super-heavy, non-plastic, non-interlocking LEGO® blocks. The outhouse was really fun to build because the closer to finished it got, the hard I laughed at it. Once we get the pergola up on the pavers (http://low.es/NqLyb9), this will be the bestest place ever [in our back yard] to hang out when it's chilly and drink wine and stare at flames like bugs drawn to a bug zapper.

UPDATE: Here are a couple of pictures of actual usage of the fire pit in colder weather:

DIY Gas Fire Pit In Action

DIY Gas Fire Pit Close Up

Electronics and Hack Workbench

I've had a number of requests from readers to see my workbench in its entirety, as most photos of it are just backgrounds to projects. So, I thought I'd post some photos and explanations in an article. Maybe someone will get some helpful hints or perhaps someone will lend me some helpful advice. First off, here are some wide shots of the mess:

I made the table. The top is made out of three 10"-ish wide pine boards glued together side to side using biscuits. I had a custom piece of 3/16" glass to fit the top. Half of the top of the table is covered with conductive foam to keep static at bay. I ordered a couple big pieces of that from somewhere on-line, can't remember where. It's super convenient for stabbing parts into to hold them neatly. It's also great for discharging static. The legs I've had a while. They were part of a giant desk I built years ago. I got them on-line many moons ago. They have bases that are screwed to the bottom of the tabletop. They then screw into the bases. They're made of steel or aluminum or something strong like that. Under the tabletop, I put a big "X" of 3" wide interlocked pine planks for rigidity. I can stand right on the center of that table and it barely flexes.

Down below the desktop is a six-cubbyhole shelf on little rubber footies leftover from my table saw stand (that is now attached to a rolling platform I made). In each of those cubbies, I put plastic lock-top containers full of various larger items, like wall warts, scavenged PCBs from VCS and such, and cords. This is a great use of space that would otherwise be cluttered up with piles of things.

The blue cabinets came with the house. As with most of the light fixtures and some other miscellaneous pieces left behind by the previous owners, I'm guessing they're from Ikea. They're really handy. I added the little white shelves between the two cabinets. I have a benchtop digital power supply on the lowest shelf for easy access, but that's not my main power source. I'll get to that shortly.

I taped up a bunch of my most-referenced cheatsheets for things like pinouts on ATmega328's, ATtiny13's, common capacitor markings, resistor bands, ISP cables, etc. I also keep my DMM hanging right there and made a little wire hook for the leads.

The parts drawer cabinets on the right of the bench are typical types from Home Depot or Lowes. The more the merrier, as you can see. I keep groups of similar things close together. Eventually, there will be more of these. However, I have to get more creative with my space. To the right of the cabinets is a big painting that I commissioned for my Man Cave™ that I'd prefer not to move.

In some of the larger drawers, I use the conductive foam to hold my many ICs in layers to save space and for organization. I label each group with my handy Brother P-Touch labeler, like so:

Here's another angle on how I stack the ICs in the larger drawers:

I then put an index label on the front of the drawers so I can easily find families of ICs. I haven't yet found a really cool method for storing the 8 zillion resistors I have, but I do sort them by sub-1,000Ω, 1KΩm and 1MΩ drawers. Miscellaneous electrolytic caps are in one big drawer, common caps that are still in their tape from the manufacturer are generally sorted into smaller drawers.

I label the fronts of the drawers sometimes, especially when the drawer is clearly something that will always contain what it currently contains. In the case of my stacks of DIPs and whatnot, they very well organized.

I have so many parts, now, that I have built a spreadsheet to track them. A majority of the parts I have I've thrown on the end of orders because the parts looked cool or handy. When a grab bag of common transistors will only add a couple of dollars to an order, why not? AVRs are my favorite microcontroller, so I have a drawer dedicated to various renditions of that family of chip, as you can see on the middle left drawer above.

I don't know if people notice this in the background or in screenshots, but I use a 15" MacBook Pro for my benchtop computer. The battery failed, so it's always plugged into AC, now. It's now a flip-open desktop workstation, pretty much. I use this MacBook Pro to program microcontrollers and to have convenient access to the web and what not.

Our house is all Mac all the time. I have a Dell box used as a network storage server, but that's it. My regular desktop is a big-arse 27" 3.4 GHz iMac with a second 27" Cinema Display. Both are on wall-mount arms which are supposed to make my desk cleaner. However, as you can see in the photo below, all that's done is make more room for me to pile parts.

Of course, what desk area would be complete with a jackalope and an oil painting of a monkey in a fez?

About my primary power supply... I took apart a my wife's old computer that she had when we met. It was a sad, sad old computer I'd given her to get her by that I think I salvaged from my uncle's office. The power supply makes for a fantastic DC power supply. It provides very clean and reliable 3.3VDC/14A, 5VDC/22A, and 12VDC/10A power. This was crucial when I was working with peltier devices, which drew more amperage at their ideal voltages than the digital power supply could give them. This Dell power supply doesn't even break a sweat when a peltier device asks for 3.5A. The max on my digital PS is only a little shy of 3A.

I turn the supply on or off using this little toggle switch I rigged into the main jumper for the power supply.When I become ambitious about really finishing organizing my bench, I will snip all the extra wires and connectors and clean up the power supply. I'm also going to extend the voltage and ground leads and put nice ends on them to make it easier to connect and disconnect them from my many breadboards. Speaking of...

I whipped together this little adapter so that I could quickly connect and disconnect the various voltage leads from the power supply to my breadboards. I quickly got tired of screwing and unscrewing the thumbscrews on the breadboards when I wanted to switch them out. Eventually, these connectors will be on-the-ready toward the back of the benchtop and the switch for the power supply will be mounted more conveniently. The power supply will be relocated up and out of the way. Right now, sadly, it sits on two pieces of wood on the ESD foam.

When I work with my favorite microcontrollers, the AVR series from Atmel, I don't usually use a proper Arduino board, even though I tend to use the Arduino IDE. Instead, I whip together a quick circuit with either a 16 MHz or 20 MHz quartz crystal on a breadboard. I usually have three or so of these setup and ready to tinker with. I do actually have a few different types of Arduinos I've purchased with gift cards, recently. Here's an example of a typical setup for me:

I followed the recommendations from the ATmega328 datasheet for what components to put around it. There's a 10µH inductor on the analog voltage reference pin (in the photo above, it's on the Vcc pin, so ignore that). There's a 20 MHz quartz crystal on the XTAL1 and XTAL2 pins. Each of those pins is also connected to ground with 20 pF capacitors. Often times, I put a 7805 5V linear regulator on the + rails of ones side of the board and the other has either a 7812 12V regulator or LM10863V3 3.3V regulator on it. Of course, the proper capacitors near the regulators to clean up power are usually on there, as well. Don't forget the polarity diode so that you don't accidentally hook up the power supply leads backwards and cook something or popcorn an electrolytic capacitor.

As you can see from some of the above pictures and the one below, the edge closer to where I work on the glass surface gets cluttered with the parts I reuse the most.

About once every few months, I will clean up the area and put things back where they belong.

I keep my notes and diagrams and doodles in these awesome little Field Notes® brand notebooks with graph paper inside. They're about $10 for a 3-pack and each notebook has 48 pages in it. They're the perfect size to sit on the bench next to a project. Not so big that they require a lot of open space. Not so small that they're just not useful.

Last, but not least, I present my bourbon cabinet, complete with my hand-dipped (by me at the distillery) Maker's Mark® bottles. I have in my collection about 20 different bourbons. My goto at when we're out and about, of course, is Maker's Mark®. :)

That's it for the tour. If any of you have suggestions or comments, please, please leave them below in the comments section. I'd especially love to hear how you guys are storing your resistors. The ultimate trick still eludes me. I don't want to waste a little drawer for a single value, of course. Dividing up the drawers makes it too time-consuming to get one. I'm thinking along the lines of a Rol-O-Dex of resistors or something. I dunno. Comment away.

Focus, Dammit! Or, How I've Learned to Control A.D.D.

My favorite shirt reads, “They say I have A.D.D., but they just don’t understand. Oh, look! A chicken!” My sister holds a Master’s degree in child counseling and she is absolutely certain that I would have been diagnosed with A.D.D. when I was a child. Maybe one reason I was not diagnosed can be summed up in this sentence from an article on the PsychCentral.com website: “[A.D.D.] also may go unnoticed because the ‘inattentive daydreamer’ may be overlooked...” Yep. That’s me summed up in two words: Inattentive daydreamer. Focus is something I’ve struggled with all of my life. I remember when I was in the 2nd grade, working through questions in a workbook one minute, then the next minute I’m taking apart a ballpoint pen and fiddling with the parts and NOT getting my workbook work finished. If I wasn’t taking apart things I found in my desk, I was doodling between small bouts of actual work. To my point, I’m supposed to be gathering my notes and thoughts for a meeting in about 8 minutes as I write this, yet I sit here writing an article about focus. Is this multitasking? No, this is not keeping focus on what is needed right now.

[Insert long pause while I scramble to gather my notes and thoughts and attend a meeting...]

According to an article on the ADDA website, “4.4% of adults in the United States meet the criteria for having Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.” OK, that's not a tremendous number. Though, it IS the number of ADULTS that could be considered to be afflicted. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2010 there are over 30 million adults in the U.S. (those 18 or older). Roughly 1.3 million (more than 1 in 30) adults could qualify as having A.D.D. You probably know one. That means there are at least two of us here at Meltmedia (and maybe half of one more person, somewhere here)!

Obviously, whether it’s A.D.D. or just a simple lack of interest in the task at hand, if you’re not fully engaged in what you’re supposed to be doing, you’re not being as productive as you could be. I have met people who are simply task-oriented and will do something from start to finish like a robot, engaged or not. They don't count in this conversation. I know it seems completely obvious when you read it, but it’s very difficult to complete any task effectively if you’re not engaged in the subject. If you’re not engaged in the subject, you’re not as productive as you could be.

Where Does the Focus Go?

One of my biggest problems seems to be that when a project or task is no longer challenging to me, I’m done with it, completed or not. Historical case in point: When I was a kiddo, I had a Teddy bear with a wind-up music box. I was fascinated by the lump inside of Teddy that appeared to make the music. Once I tore apart poor Teddy and figured out how the music box made music, I lost interest in my Teddy bear. I did carry around the music box for a while, likely because it was shiny and mechanical. Sure, Teddy wasn't a project, but I think it shows that the challenge or magic needs to be there for me to focus on something.

A more modern case for me: I took on a fairly large project for a client when I was doing the freelance development thing years ago. It was a brand new hospital way north of where I lived in Michigan. I was writing a Java application that gathered time card data from a number of punch clocks around the hospital and translated it into something the hospital accounting software could consume. This was not a small task by any stretch. It involved building a Linux server, writing a user-friendly client-side Java application, and writing a server-side Java application. For a one-man development group, it was a lot to do. Being the master of focusness that I was, of course, I found other more interesting things to do much of the time that I was supposed to be doing Java programming for the hospital project. About 5 days prior to the due date for initial testing of the entire system, I realized that my unfocusness had gotten in the way and caused me to have to work on 3 hours of sleep each night to get it working in time. Bitten for the 5,622nd time in my life, at that point. Really?! How many more times will it take???

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that part of my challenge/interest problem is that I also lose vision of the goal of the task. In many cases, I lose track of the reward for completing a task, whether the reward is a pat on the back or money or knowing that I’ve made the world a better place for someone. Figuring out how to solve the problem has typically been more important to me than the result that comes from solving it. For instance, around my middle school years, I used to be excited about the idea of building games for my Atari 400 computer. However, once I figured out how to program the little ships to move, how to generate laser sounds, and how to read the position of the joystick, I lost interest because the magic went away. An even more important fact wash that I completely forgot about the result I was originally looking for: I wanted a cool game that I wrote myself that others would enjoy playing. Maybe I wanted a little fame, as well, but this article is about focus, not visions of grandeur. Wait. That sentence would be funnier if I changed out, “grandeur” with a word from the Thesaurus. How about this? Maybe I wanted a little fame, as well, but this article is about focus, not visions of resplendence. No! Even better: Pomp! That word is funny to me. Pomp. Focus, dammit!

How Do I Focus Today?

Nowadays, to combat my lack of focus, I try to remember all the issues I had in the past with not following through on plans. I always keep in mind that people are counting on me and that when I produce completed results for them, I am rewarded. Not only does it feel great to complete a project, but it’s highly unlikely that I will be fired for being reliable and thorough! Winner, winner! Chicken dinner! Toothpicks are thinner! Hat with a spinner! FOCUS!!!

Fear

I believe that in some ways you can tie the drive to be focused, effective, and thorough to fear. Sometimes, nothing drives me to the finish line like a crazed guy with a shotgun chasing me. No, that never happens. Wrong kind of fear... Fear of disappointment drives me to the finish line. I believe that, to me, the fear of disappointment is greater than the fear of failure. I have failed plenty. Big deal. Get up, dust yourself off, go at it again. However, the fear of disappointment is quite a powerful motivator because we generally want to help one another.

Fuel

Another thing that helps me stay focused is food. Oh! Caffeine. OK, mostly food, but large doses of caffeine in the form of a large 4-shot latte certainly helps, too. The energy from breakfast goes a long way to keep your brain sharp. I am most creative in the morning after I’ve eaten or WAY late at night, after my brain has had all day to get loosened up. If I continue to fuel myself smartly, I can be creative all day. Your mileage may vary.

Clean Environment

I’ve learned that my train of thought only needs the slightest distraction to jump the track. A shiny object, a sound that shouldn’t be there, or even a random idea about some other project I’m working on are all ways to be distracted from the task at hand. Keeping my environment quiet and clear of distraction is key. HOWEVER (very important), I DO recommend keeping a Rubik’s Cube® or a doodle pad or Playdoh® nearby. When my brain does wander, having a familiar distraction lets it vent, then get back on track.

Deadlines

Deadlines. I work very well under pressure, but that’s not a very healthy way to work. Dr. Oz says that adrenaline and stress cause spikes in cortisol which leads to belly fat. Hmmm... Are the creators of deadlines causing the surge in obesity in the U.S.? Focus. Sadly, deadlines are a fact of life, especially in this information-overloaded society we live in today. Everyone wants something yesterday. Have you noticed that everyone tends to want something BIG yesterday? So, it’s not just me? Anyhoo... Focus is enhanced in me by deadlines. I’m not necessarily recommending procrastination as a means to create artificial deadlines, of course. If you do a little Googling, you’ll see that they do tend to help with focus. They work for me, as much as I hate them.

Technology

Technology is a great way to help focus. To-do list applications and calendars are lifesavers for me, and I’m not talking about the delicious roll candy, either, although I sure do love me some sweets, especially the cherry-flavored ones.... FOCUS. My brain is firing on 10-1/2 cylinders most of the time. 78.4% of the time, it’s firing because of useless thoughts. But, for the 21.6% of the time that it’s doing something meaningful, only about 1.6% of that time is spent trying to remember things. If you’ve been following at home, you realize that the math above shows that my brain sucks at remembering things. That leads us back around to the reason I started this paragraph: To-do lists and calendars. Use them. I also make heavy use of Trello.com, an on-line (and iPhone app) kanban board. Slick. Easy. Effective.

Clear Your Mind

To expand on the cube and dough idea above, I recommend simply getting up from your chair and wandering around occasionally to clear your mind. I’m a firm believer in the whole “forest for the trees” mantra: If you stare at the forest too long, you will start to lose vision of the trees. Clearing your head inevitably leads to freshening your vision. You may see something after you return from your break that you missed prior to departure.

At this point, we’re beyond the 1,500-word mark, FYI. You’re still with me, yes? If not, put down the Rubik’s Cube®. We’re almost finished.

Oxygen Is Good

Breathe. It goes great with food and caffeine and is arguably one of the most important things you’ll do all day. Seriously, taking a few deep breaths once in a while really does help you to stay focused. It feels great, too! I like the way a deep breath sometimes makes my chest plate crackle. It’s like cracking your knuckles without using your hands. Did you know that the cracking sound in your knuckles is caused by popping gas bubbles? Crazy. Focus.

Review, Review, Review

Review your to-do list (or lists) regularly. The more you see things, the more they stick at the front of your mind. I keep my Trello board open on my laptop monitor, which sits to the left of my big-honing main monitor. I see my ideas and items to be done all day long and it really does help me to stay on top of things. They all stare at me all... Day... Long... Staring. Poking. Taunting. They’re like little blinky LEDs, flashing in the corner of my eye, grabbing my attention. What was that about keeping my environment clear? Focus.

I realize after looking at the little word counter thing in the status bar down there in Pages over here that I’ve crossed the border into 1,700 Words Land (it’s north of 1,600 Words Land, if you’re looking for it on a map). I think I’ve given you some good starting points on how to enhance your focusness. Yes, it’s a word. To me. If you Google a little, there are zillions of blog entries and articles on ways to keep your focus. There are many silly tips, as well, but you’ll see patterns repeating. When you distill them down to a handful that you find useful, practice them. Really start to use them in earnest. Or, if you prefer, in Bert.

Addendum: I'm reading, "Imagine: How Creativity Works" by Jonah Lehrer. It's a fantastic read and addresses in places the affect of ADHD and ADD on creativity and accomplishment. In summary, studies are finding that overly focusing can inhibit creativity and innovation. Read the book. Embrace your lack of focus!