Personal Projects and Hacks

Over the years I've worked on projects too numerous to keep track of. Looking back on them, some seem more interesting or relevant to mention than others, and I've included either more notable or more recent ones here. Some have accompanying articles with more details, schematics, code and so on. None of this information comes with any warranty, and readers should use this information as inspiration and not step-by-step instructions.

	ElmGen DSP Development Tool for Spin FV-1 ElmGen is an open source DSP development tool for creating audio effect algorithms for the FV-1 DSP chip from Spin Semiconductors. The tool completely replaces the vendor-supplied tools and adds many features including a hardware simulator. Read the full story.
	CR-68 MIDI Input In late 2009 I bought a CR-68 analog drum machine. (circa 1979) The sounds are great but built-in patterns are rather limiting. I made a MIDI input circuit that would allow the internal functions to operate unchanged while also offering simultaneous MIDI control of all eleven internal voices. The accent part is also supported. The entire unit is programmed through a simple MIDI learning function. Read the full story.
	Modular Synthesizer As an introduction to what is now a large part of my professional product design work I built a self-designed modular analog synthesizer from scratch. It consists of a variety of modules including oscillators, envelope generators, VCAs, a filter, MIDI to CV converter, mixer, headphone amplifier and digital effects. Read the full story.
	Information Superkitty Listening to so much music at work it's nice to know what you're hearing, especially with online streams. The Information Superkitty interfaces with iTunes to provide a real-time data display conveniently mounted above my workbench. A small Java program I wrote uses an open source iTunes COM API adapter to pull song metadata from iTunes in realtime and format it for the LCD screen. A rotary potentiometer offers remote volume and play/pause control of iTunes.
	Line Amplifier It's nice to be able to easily boost or cut the level of audio signals without introducing much noise, or having to run them through complex equipment like mixers and things. My dual line amp provides a simple method of changing audio levels and impedances of unbalanced signals for use on the bench. My line amp serves as the front end for audio circuit testing and recording and protects the rest of my audio system from circuits under development.
	Laser Cutter In 2009 my local geek club (Hacklab Toronto) acquired a broken laser cutting machine. The machine contained stepper motors and a working CO2 25W laser. My friends and I brought it back to life. Read the full story.
	Moving Sign 2 Back in 2003 I worked on bringing a small LED sign back to life. Now, with the help of several friends we have done it again, this time with a much larger display. Read the full story.
	Blinkenlights Stereoscope During 2008 I had the opportunity to work on the Stereoscope project at Nuit Blanche in Toronto. After the project was over I wrote a full account of my experience and some of what went into making Blinkenlights the most incredible art installation in Toronto's history. Read the full story.
	ChickenPhoto ChickenPhoto was my answer to wanting a simple photo gallery that exports automatically from iPhoto. ChickenPhoto can read the iPhoto XML file and generate lightweight index files, scale all the images and prepare a web directory ready to be uploaded or synced with a webserver. A simple Perl script displays the images to the user.
	MIDI Conductor A few years ago I was working on recording a song that I really enjoyed learning in university. It was a modern choir piece with many time signature changes, rits., accels. and so on. I wanted to sing all the parts myself but it just wasn't possible to stay with the computer by only hearing a beat. So I built an LED conductor to follow the MIDI clock signal and show more information than a click track alone.
	IR Controlled Mixer When I first moved to Toronto I lived in a Geekhaus. It was a place filled with computers and network cable, and we did our best to make sure that we always had more cool technology than the average household. Before iTunes we made our own music distribution system. Part of this system was my IR-controller audio mixer. You might still find a use for this device, or parts of it.
	Kite Aerial Photography I've always dreamed of flying. I have studied flying and hope to get a pilot license one of these days. But before all that, I decided to make a kite with a camera on it. Here is my project to put a small camera on a kite. I built two different camera rigs. The smaller one used a low-end digital camera with a home-made time-lapse timer. The entire rig weighed only 50 grams and was able to snap some interesting pictures.
	Moving Sign When I used to live in a house with a bunch of geeks, one of them came home with a small moving sign that had been tossed away. With a bit of new circuitry and code, we had it connected to a computer and displaying all kinds of useful information like news, weather and the currently playing song title.
	Door Chimes Dismayed with the poor sound quality of most artificial sounding door bells, I made my own from scratch. They randomly choose one of two songs and sound loud and clear. The bells are constructed out of steel electrical conduit. Small surplus 12V solenoids are used to strike the bells.
	Theremin As an electronic music fan and someone that likes playing around with synthesizers, I needed to pay homage to one of the first electronic music pioneers: Leon Theremin. I built a Theremin from a design by Robert Moog, who is another one of my heroes.
	Laser Harp My very first microcontroller project from way back in 1998, my laser harp project became the first ever laser harp to be featured on the internet. Since then many others have made similar and also much improved harps based on these designs. Read the full story.