March 23rd, 2012 by Xpyd3r
Just took my first set of Amateur Radio Certification Exams this week, and I am now a General Class Licensee. I received 100%s on both the Technician and General Classes, but missed the Amateur Extra by 2 questions, sad. However I’ve already signed up for my Extra Class re-examination, and I’m sure I’ll get it this time. I’m still waiting to hear back about my callsign, but I can’t wait!
General Class!
Also, related to Amateur Radio is a project we made for Digital Systems. My partner and I constructed a performance optimized Morse Code number converter, taking in the Morse code dots and dashes and displaying the correct numeric value on a 7-segment display. Basic, but cool and relevant.
Take note of my lovely wiring technique
Completely unrelated, but also nifty, was a Engineer Week Banner I made and painted for the Bucknell Compsi Department. Took tons of work, but we came in 3rd place, so I’m really proud of it.
Tron-esque Poster
That’s all for now, but I’m talking to my Electrical Engineering Professor about possibly making and experimenting with antennas using Bucknell’s PDL (Project Development Lab), which would be fun and a fantastic learning opportunity to bridge my Theory/Application of Electromagnetism class’s Antenna section, My Amateur radio license, use my PDL badge, and my Individual Research for Theory/Application of Electromagnetism as well.
P.S. Got a Kindle Touch, and first I need to read The Hunger Games before next weekend so I can go see the movie! Should be superb.
73,
Brandon
February 17th, 2012 by Xpyd3r
I apologize that I failed to do any additional updates over the break, but I swear I have good reasons!
First and foremost I establish a flight lessons savings account, and started adding funds, and at this rate I should be able to accomplish my remaining hours this summer and be licensed for next fall, which is extremely exciting!
Second, I also decided I want to get my Ham Radio Operator’s License, so I’ve been studying up on that (in whatever small amounts of free time I find), and will probably take my Exam in March. I think I’m allowed to immediately test for the next rank of operator too if I pass, so I might upgrade to the General Class License. Probably before the semester is out, I’ll test for the Extra Class License (Highest Class of License) too, which gives me access to all Amateur Bands. I’ve been told, since I’m well versed in Electrical Engineering, it won’t be too tough. I also got my PDL Badge (Project Development Lab), so I was looking into ideas to combine amateur radio equipment and my Theory/Application of Electromagnetism class’ term project. So far I’ve come up with a Car Roof mounted Antenna Array for NVIS (Near Vertical Incidence Skywave) radio transmission, or a Slotted-Line Measurement Apparatus, which can be used for measuring and calculation transmission line behavior. Well see how that plays out soon.
Third, I learned how to shave with a Straight Razor. Not only is shaving much more awesome and enjoyable now, but my face is smoother than I ever thought possible. A good analogy that I once read goes something like this, Shaving with a disposable razor and canned foam is like driving a Volkswagen, It can get you from point A to B just fine, but wet-shaving with a Straight Razor is like driving a Lamborghini, while it takes much more skill to drive, you will realize how enjoyable the trip from A to B can be, and you will never go back to the Volkswagen.
Wet Shaving with a Straight Razor
Also, My little brother has started learning about Biodiesel Production, and while I feel terrible I haven’t posted anything yet about all the progress I’ve made, I can guarantee it’ll be done, documented, and uploaded this summer. This summer is basically dedicated to Working, getting my Private Pilot’s license, and finishing up Bio-diesel processor to start producing Bio-diesel for our family’s two diesel vehicles.
I also made a Hangboard stand to do some climbing workouts in my dorm room. It is super cheap (I’m a college student, what can I say?), easy to set up or tear down, and fits perfectly in my room. It essentially required 4 2″x4″x8′, a piece of plywood, scrap wood and screws. While it will sway and move slightly, I have already done extensive “testing” to see how easily it can tip over. By “testing” I mean I have hung on the board and flailed around in probably one of the least graceful displays ever (for science of course), and found that it’s absurdly difficult to tip over. Further, by the time it’s past the tipping point for its center of gravity, I’ll have my feet firmly on the ground anyways. Huge Success.
Cheap Hangboard Stand
One last thing to tack on, Our Paintball club is up and running, we’re currently establishing the budget in sweet anticipation of nicer weather. Fingers crossed on that too.
I think that’s all for now. I’ll try to post more updates as they come, and I’ll make sure to post that term project when I do it.
December 18th, 2011 by Xpyd3r
With another semester complete, it’s time again for some good old fashioned unstructured learning and free time. I started climbing again, adding that soon, and co-founded the Bucknell Paintball Club, so it’s been an eventful semester on top of my usual clubs, and two degrees. More updates soon with projects and such, but first I need to detox a bit with Skyward Sword and Skyrirm.
August 2nd, 2011 by Xpyd3r
I threw this together as a quick tool to help me with cutting threaded rod for shelves I made. The shelves will be posted next, but this box was essentially a way for me to contain the metal dust while cutting threaded rod. The container was an old plastic cage that I simply taped up to seal it. There are two main holes, one small one for the rod to come through, and the slit made with duck tape to allow the rod to pass through as well as the dremel head. As you can see below you’d run the threaded rod through both holes, and use the larger one to put the dremel head into in order to cut the rod. It was extremely useful for the number of rods I had to cut and kept everything extremely clean. The only way to better this is have a negative pressure system to ensure no particles leave the container. Overall – Great Success.
Insert Dremel here
Hole for the Rod
August 2nd, 2011 by Xpyd3r
So towards the beginning of the summer I had an old tower, and an even older tower that was repurposed into my home server. This summer I needed to upgrade, not speed wise but size wise. I compiled all my data from the old server on one drive, added another, and reformatted the OS drive. Now I have (a little less than) a 3 TB home server. Here you can see the 3 drives and the pretty blue fans I added for fun.
1 TB + 1.5 TB + 500 GB
I’m keeping redundant copies of important files and such on all drives in the case of a downed drive. And the rest is free storage for all my stuff. It was a short project, but extremely necessary and I even made it look nicer.
I like Blue
July 19th, 2011 by Xpyd3r
So this is just a little puzzle for recognizing shapes only using line segments and intersection points.
First things first, let’s notice some basic things about line segments and intersections of them. First I provided a few cases, where ‘n’ represents the number of segments attached to a point. We can clearly see that n also may represent the number of areas around a given intersection point. So a “Curved Road” segment will have 2 segments coming from the intersection point, and two areas, one on each side of this. (This is the same case as a straight road without a middle intersection point). And as ‘n’ increases, so do the number of areas in a directly proportional way.
Basic Theory
Next we must understand how to identify and keep track of these things. Below I have given each point an ID, an ‘n’ variable, and a ‘u’ variable. The ‘u’ variable I arbitrarily named to keep record of how many times it was used (hence ‘u’). As you can see, the max number of areas/shapes around a point corresponds to the ‘n’ for that point. So a point with ‘n’ = 3, will have 3 shapes around it, incrementing ‘u’ as each shape is found, eventually meeting the condition of ‘u’ = ‘n’. Similarly, each line segment would have an ID and a ‘u’ which would keep track of how many shapes are adjacent to it. This of course is simply an ‘n’ = 2 case, so all line segments must have 2 shapes, one on each side of the line.
Keeping track of data
Knowing these general principles, we can start to look at how we would go about finding a shape. Really, you can start with any point anywhere, and follow a line segment a second point. Now, we can start shape hunting with this line segement, which I’d give an ID of 1. So from this, an easy method would be to simulate a “left hand maze solving solution”, except in this case, we wouldn’t be solving a maze. This method of “folloing” would eventually yield a loop since everything will be closed in by line segments. Once you return to the origin, you will have a known starting point and now know all intermediate points of the shortest path, giving you this shape’s exact area, bounds, coordinates, etc. (In this case I’d store each shape as list of points for on the fly calculations of aforementioned properties if needed)
Method to find a shape
Now to break this down. How do we program a function to traverse these line segments and points? Like I said above, I’m just using a left hand line following algorithm (it would work just as well to use a right hand line following algorithm, producing counter-clockwise loops). So we started at a point (whose ‘u’ != ‘n’), followed a segment (whose ‘u’ != 2) to another point (which cannot possibly have a ‘u’ = ‘n’), where do we go from here? We can use a little math to find the angle difference in each line segment’s angle, which would make it simple to find the most acute angle to the line segment on either side. (Depending on which direction you’re looping will determine which angle you will pick) After it follows that second line segment, it will reach a third point, do the same process and then in this case return to the origin. (Three sides, 3 points, triangle)
How to turn a corner
Cool! One shape down! I not only have the shape, but I now have three lines, (ID of 1, 2, and 3, respectively) and three points (‘u’ != ‘n’) and from there I can pick a point whose ‘u’ does not meet the condition of ‘u’ = ‘n’, and pick an adjacent line segment whose ‘u’ != 2 . So if we pick any point where ‘u’ != ‘n’, and as stated above there has to exist a line segment whose ‘u’ does not equal 2, and from there another point whose ‘u’ != ‘n’. So we follow this method continuously to pick out more shapes, in the case below some triangles. Rinse and repeat until all points meet the condition where ‘u’ = ‘n’, and then by definition all the line segments will have to also have their ‘u’ = 2 as well.
Finding more shapes
The tricky part would be when additional line segments (roads), and points (intersections) would be generated, but this would not cause issue with this method either. If we add an additional property to line segments, say ‘b’, which stands for boundary line, and would equal 1 if it is a boundary line, and 0 if it is not, then this is reduced to a simple problem. Since at the additional area’s generation, we would remove these boundary lines and generate more points and segments, all points that previously included the boundaries in shapes would be updated to an ‘n’ for its new set of adjacent lines. This is confusing to describe so I drew it out. This new case would be exactly the same as above. Once again, there would be points that would have a ‘u’ that did not equal ‘n’, and thus the shape finding function would be run until all points returned to a state of ‘u’ = ‘n’. At such a point, the boundary line segments would have ‘b’ set to 1, and ready for expansion once again.
Extending boundaries
I can’t think of any cases where this wouldn’t work.
If you have any comments or corrections, I’d love to hear them. Thanks!
May 24th, 2011 by Xpyd3r
Recently finished my College semester, but extremely busy. I’m migrating a ton of data to a new home server, finishing the integration of “College Stuff” with “Home Stuff”, and working 8 hours a day. Soon I’ll be doing research and continuing my biodiesel processor development. Sporadic updates as usual.
