Image instructions on making cool paperplanes

Images taken from mediadump.com.

Powering an LED- The nuclear way

So uhm, are you still using batteries to power your things? Common, they’re over 200 years old, it’s too mainstream!

Why not build a nuclear reactor at home instead? Did I catch your eye?

Heh, but seriously now, this article about making such a “reactor” at home caught my eye and amazed me by its simplicity. You should at least check it out

It uses some kind of  tritium vials that it seems are safe to handle, they emit weak beta radiation that doesn’t pass the glass. Although somebody should test these out with a Geiger counter .

PC Upgrade!

Long time, no post! Oh well, I now have a good reason to post about something a bit interesting.

I upgraded my CPU from an Intel Pentium D935 3,2 ghz(2007) to an Intel Pentium E6500 2,93ghz(2009). I also bought an Arcting Cooling Accelero Pro for my Gigabyte Ati Radeon HD4850 video card. The results are astonishing.

Let me first talk about the initial configuration:

Intel Pentium D935 3,2 ghz
Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 rev 3.3
4x Kingston Hyper-X 1GB DDR2-800mhz
Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD4850(512 MB)
Sirtec 560W

I believe I have a pretty decent rig for these days, even though it’s still on the good ol’ LGA775 socket. Everything ran smoothly, with the exception of CPU-intensive applications. Such as 3D renderings or mapping for half-life. Well, there were even games that had a significant drop in performance because of the CPU. GTA4 is a good example.

Since the budget is not a bright part when it comes to upgrading, I had to think well my next upgrade. I originally intended to save money for an i7 860 platform. I came to the conclusion this is not a viable option for me at this time, so instead I researched for a modern LGA775 CPU that is compatible with my motherboard. I found the E6500 intel processor, released in 2009. I had to upgrade my BIOS to the latest version, and that was the part that gave me emotions. A simple power fluctuation and I could kiss my mobo goodbye!

Anyway, everything was alright. I was impressed by the size of the stock cooler the E6500 has. I mean, it’s a lot smaller and light-weight than the other one. I was also impressed by how well the new GPU cooler cools it. A drop of 30 degrees celsius is something! So anyway, I’ll cut the story here and show you the results:

• the pc now consumes 83w in idle, as opposed to 120w. It turns out the old CPU was rather inefficient.

• the new CPU has an awesome increase of performance, consumes a lot less and it’s less hot( same temperatures with the other, but remember that its stock cooler isn’t as massive as the D935′s, and it doesn’t have a copper bottom(the old one had))

• SuperPI 1M calculation now takes 19,5 seconds, as opposed to 41 seconds for the old CPU

• overall system performance is increased: from a score of 5688 3Dmark06 now reports 10708 !!

• since I installed the new cooler on the video card, it sits below 40C (~38C). With the original cooler it sat at 79C, which is damn hot for idle! in Full Load it doesn’t exceeds a bit 60C( max 65C). Well, with the old cooler it was ~90C in Full Load. I have to specify that now the cooler is very quiet.

Here’s a general look to my system and the benchmarks. Everything runs at default settings( no OverClocking).

Right click on the image and select "view image" to see it at full res

 

Pictures showing the installation of the Accelero Pro cooler on the Gigabyte Ati Radeon HD4850 card:

 

 

 

Making a LED flasher

Note: The leds are actually very bright

This is a small project I was done with in about one hour(I didn’t found a use for it, but I’ll update the post if I do ). It’s easy to build, especially for beginners like me. And the result is satisfying.

I used 2 blue leds, and I tested the circuit on my pc Power Supply. I found out that, although it’s designed for 5V, if I connect it to a 3,3 V line it will flash quicker.

Parts list:

• 2x 5mm LEDs( I think it works best with blue\white leds)
• 2x 330Ω resistors
• 2x 22kΩ resistors
• 2x 47uF capacitors( I used 16v ones)
• 2x BC547C transistors( ‘universal’ transistors, they’re pretty common and easy to find)
• a 4,5v-5v DC source(I used my power supply to test, but you can use 3 AA batteries)

Some pictures:

This project is so easy to build that I don’t really think it’s necessary to explain how to do it. But I’ll give you some indications if you really want to build it.

-When soldering it’s really hard to solder with one hand and hold the pieces together with the other hand. You need to use some kind of stand. If you don’t have one, you can improvise, like me . I used a pair of pliers with a rubber band on them so it can hold small pieces while I solder them.

-Be attentive to polarities.  For resistors it doesn’t matter(you can actually see in the pictures they’re not in the same direction). LEDs, electrolytic capacitors and transistors are polarized though. Be attentive to the schematic and solder them as indicated. Need help here too? Well here’s how to find the polarities:

• LEDs: on the schematic, the negative part of the led is represented by a bar on top of that triangle. The other side of the LED(the one that, if you follow the wire, goes to the +5V input) is obviously the positive wire. Negative= Cathode, Positive=Anode. You know which is which because the anode wire is longer than the cathode. Also, near the cathode the LED is a bit flattened(it’s a bit hard to see).
• Electrolytic Capacitors: this one is easy, because it’s written on the capacitor’s package(usually the negative side is indicated).
• Transistors: This is a complex subject but I’m only going to clarify how to solder in the current situation. On the schematic you can see there’s an arrow on one of the wires. That’s the emitter. The middle one is the base, and the other wire is the collector. Because there’s no indication on the transistor, you need to consult the transistor’s data sheet. Here’s the BC547C  datasheet.

Ok, here’s the schematic:

2 Leds flasher Schematic

I made the schematic using an open-source software: TinyCad !

Have fun and have a nice day!

Repairing the Audio System

One and a half year ago my audio system(Manta Merlin 2.1, aprox 25W RMS) made a loud bang. It scared the crap out of me. I was, in a way, suspecting something like that would happen because the back panel was seriously hot all the time. From that moment, the bass didn’t work anymore.

In the meantime I bought a 5.1 audio system and left this at my grandparents where I used it to play music in the yard through an external speaker mounted outside.

I thought, out of boredom, it’d be cool to repair it and have it fully functional again.

Here are 2 pictures with the exploded IC( I think TDA 2030):

I then resoldered the new IC( TDA 2050, a bit more powerful), and applied lots of thermal paste . I believe my soldering went really well, even though I usually have problems soldering such small points.

The front panel had 2 leds that stopped working long before the loud bang, but it didn’t really matter for me as long as the music kept playing . In a precautionary manner, I measured the voltage before installing new leds. It turns out those LEDs were tortured at 6 V. And they make the package shiny and write 1400 PMPO on it… oh well… I put a 91 ohm(0,25W) resistor on each led to limit the voltage and current for each of the blue and white led.

Finally, a video with the test(the song is “Netsky- Smile“, dnb for some bass ). I must say, the back panel isn’t that hot anymore!

If you want, you can watch it HD directly on youtube.

Special thanks to Elforum, a romanian forum where I got some help with those ICs.

Write with style

I just found a cool site that makes it extremely easy to digitize your writing style. You can use a webcam, you camera or a scanner. I tried it myself- I used a scanner, it’s more accurate. And of course, you need a printer.

Here’s the site: Pilot Writing

And a demo video:

I don’t know why they don’t allow this, unfortunately they don’t let you download the font you created. But it’s still cool to write emails using your own writing style, it’s more original than a boring computer font that hides your personality.

DIY CD Solar Concentrator -attempt

Well, I thought of building a solar concentrator out of cds, but it ended up being just a … “reflector”.

It could work by having something painted in black and placed in the center of this thing, but I’ll try to build a concentrator some time.

Here are the pictures:

Actually, just before sunset, a couple of the cds( I think about 3-4, but they are 12 !) reflected the light into one spot: it was super bright. Now I know that if I build this correctly, I can have a powerful concentrator that can heat things so much they can catch fire !

Handheld 220 Dynamo Generator

There is a show on youtube that I subscribed to. Some teens from France make all kinds of inventions and innovations in their show called “Incroyables Expériences”.

Their last entry (from 5th August) impressed me, they created something really useful: a handheld generator that produces 220v using a dynamo, excellent for emergency situations. You might be puzzled how this can actually work( and you don’t see this kind of stuff everywhere to be honest), but I’ll explain in a bit.

Here’s the video:

View it HD on youtube.

I’m not going to detail here, because curious people will look further and search about it on wikipedia and google. They used a transformer( ac adaptor). When this transformer is put in the right way, it transforms the 220v Ac current to whatever it is specified on the transformer case. But if it is inverted, it amplifies the voltage( the amperage is lowered).

Well, they didn’t make any breakthrough discovery, but they did show a very good example how this principle can be used in practice.