New Raspberry Pi A+ and Raspberry Pi B+ Cases Now Live

November 30th, 2014

Just wanted to let our users know that we've got ten new cases for all of your Raspberry Pi needs at our Storenvy site.

Mmm, Pi.  (Raspberry Pi A+ Camera Case)

Mmm, Pi.
(Raspberry Pi A+ Camera Case)

 

We've made easier to assemble cases just in time for Cyber Monday - and they're cheaper, too. 🙂 All with accompanying designs for your perusal. Questions? Don't hesitate to post a message or send an email.

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Still Alive

August 18th, 2014

We've been busy these past few months.

BUT

We've been doing stuff. Lots of stuff.

We have a few more cases designed such as the Olimex A13 OLinuXino, pcDuino3 and the Raspberry Pi B+.

 

IMG_3251 readyIMG_4239IMG_4356

Over the summer, we had a couple of interns. One of them was working on programming for the flame glove. She is now off at MIT. The other we had doing graphic design projects for Hammerspace. He is now off at Missouri S&T.

We have also been running the laser cutters almost non stop doing various commercial jobs. One that we are currently working on is doing some fulfillment work for Astroprint!

More awesome to come! (Hopefully sooner than 3 months)

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WTNV Glow Badge!

May 28th, 2014

close-glowing

I had the honor of helping my friend Hannah make a badge for Lauren, the  Welcome to Night Vale tour manager.  She made the kick ass art for the badge and it was up to me to actually make it work. I've made a number of glow badges before but for this one I had to incorporate some multi-colored artwork, make it glow purple and have an on/off switch. All of which I had not tackled yet, but I like a challenge from time to time.

The switch was straight forward, but making it purple is a little more difficult. Purple LEDs are available, but they're actually UV, and they're not super bright.  Using a red and a blue LED on the same power source isn"t possible like I've done with previous glow badges without current limiting resistors since the red LED has a much lower forward voltage. I overcame this limitation by adding a couple optional current limiting resistors to two independent LEDs on a custom PCB:

board-back

board-front

In the pics I have two zero ohm resistors in place. This is because this particular board was a test board that has two white LEDs on it. I tried two different strategies for getting a bright purple, two white LEDs with a filter, ane one red LED and one blue LED with different current limiting resistors to mix them appropriately. The red/blue combo turned out to be the winner (430 ohm resistor on the red LED, zero ohm on the blue). It was brighter than the two white LEDs with filter and more vibrant overall.

For the graphics, I etched the outlines of each color on to a sheet of 1/16" acrylic and used spray paint and selective masking to get the color fills I wanted. Here's a pic of the color plane after applying black and removing the masking for the gray areas  before painting them in:

paint-black

If I had more time I would have gotten the graphic layer printed rather than painted it on myself (I've used some local printers to do some awesome stuff with acrylic on UV cured inkjet printers). After the graphic layer, PCB, and laser etched glow layer where completed, I attached everything with expanding push rivets. Here's a pick of the white LED and filter setup:

badge-parts

badge-assembled

And here's another pic of the final red/blue badge in all it's glowy glory:

badge-lit

 

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This is sooo pasteldritch…

April 20th, 2014

Skull deer wreath with bunny ears

Well, another holiday has come upon us and the wreath has undergone another transformation. At this point a number of delivery drivers know our house by name, one of which pointed out that we now have a jackalope. I was going to correct that assertion, but then realized that he was effectively correct. It's just weird thinking about making a mythical creature by adding bunny ears...

Anyways, the variations I've made thus far haven't been super elaborate but I've kept the budget for all the costume changes under $15 each. I'm guessing this trend will continue until Halloween rolls around again, at which point I may be able to convince myself to splurge a bit.

In the mean time, here are some additional pictures of the wreath:

Skull deer wreath with bunny ears

Skull deer wreath with bunny ears

Skull deer wreath with bunny ears

We also added some eggs to the tree to keep with the Easter theme:

Holiday tree with skulls and Easter eggs

Happy Easter everybody!

 

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Happy Dia de los Mardi Gras!

March 4th, 2014

skull wreath

At this point I'm just making wreath updates. I am OK with this. Happy Mardi Gras!

skull wreath

Also, I haven't finished redecorating the tree yet, but here's an in progress shot:

skull tree

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