Tesseract 1

To say that I was inspired  by Sean Hodgins' tesseract would be a massive understatement. I've spent the last three-ish weeks working on different ways of making one, for someone without easy access to tritium.

My first go is LEDs, using frosted acrylic rod to conduct the light along the length of the connectors.

One of the sides isn't glued in place, it pops out so I can access the switch on the inside.

Terrible photo! So sorry!

Similarly, one of the sides of the inner cube pops out, so I can replace the battery.  The battery is a 3V coin cell that's smaller than the standard 2032, and I'm not sure what I'm going to replace it with when it dies.  The 2032 won't fit in the box.  

I ran into a few issues.
I couldn't get mirrors as thin as his prints were designed for, and then the guys who cut my mirrors weren't very precise, so my mirrors didn't fit the prints I made from Sean's design.  So I dinked around on TinkerCad until I could make my own cubes.  I didn't plan for a switch on the outside (I didn't want visible wires running out from the center, but I think I know how to at least make it look intentional).  The acrylic rods didn't transmit light as well as I hoped.  Next time, I'll put something reflective on the far end, see if that helps.  I didn't really plan for a way to open it.  At the moment, the "door" side is held in place by just  a pressure fit, and is harder to get out than I expected.  Lastly, I was in a hurry to get it done, so I didn't give the super glue  enough time to cure, so the fumes frosted the acrylic slightly.

Overall, not bad for a first run, and I have a list of tweaks to make the next one better.

Electronics?!? What?

So, a few years ago, I spent a few years working part-time as a technician in an electronics shop.  I built cables, inspected circuit boards and replaced bad components, that sort of thing.  I gained a fair amount of technical skill, but while I knew what to do, I had no idea what I was *doing,* and that bothered me.

Years later, I'm finally doing something about it.

I worked through Make: Electronics and the Sparkfun Inventor's Kit (both editions; there was enough of a delay between when I decided to do this, and when I finally did it that the new edition was out, and an upgrade kit was available.  I do recommend the earlier edition of the SIK book if you're into that sort of thing, there are more different kinds of sensors covered.

And then I made some stuff.

I made a binary counter, that could theoretically be worn as a pendant, especially if you found a better means of power management!

I made digital dice!

And of course I did the whole range of usual intro to electronic projects, which weren't worth documenting.  It's fun!  And I have a much better foundation to build on.

What next?  Things get really fun.

Not dead yet

I'm sure I'm not the only one who will be rebooting neglected blogs, in this time of social distancing.
I have plenty of projects to post updates on, and a massive backlog of photos, but I'm going to indulge my short attention span and focus on my current obsessions.  I am definitely still sewing; textile-related pursuits will not ever stop.  But right now, I'm focusing on electronics.  So this blog is going to be taking a bit of a turn, while I indulge my inner toymaker.

Stay tuned.