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Bar Sign Finished

The sign is finished and wrapped up ready to go. You’ll have to wait until after the party for me to reveal the completed photos. I’m very happy with the result. Here’s a teaser…

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Slow progress

It’s been very slow going attaching the EL Wire to the sign. The sign needs to be finished for the 16th April, so I need to pick up the pace. I’ve started to use a toothpick to apply…

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Attaching EL Wire

I’ve started attaching the EL wire to the sign. I first attached it using a Gel Superglue, but it spread terribly and left cloudy marks everywhere, so I carefully undid my work and went looking for another glue….

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Brushed Steel Plate

I’ve cut myself a piece of steel for the sign and managed to get it completed to the point where I can attach the EL wire. I first grabbed two washers, bent them slightly and welded them to…

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Obtaining Materials

I’ve done a bit of work on my bar sign project. First of all, I’ve converted my design to black and white, resized it a bit and printed it out onto A3 paper. This is the (rough) but…

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Electroluminescent Bar Sign Project

A friend of mine is coming up to his 40th Birthday and he’s having a cocktail party to celebrate. I’ve decided I wanted to make him a “Neon” bar sign for a gift. Neon signs are expensive, use…

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Astro CCD Camera and 50mm F1.4 = Mag 9

Auckland weather has turned in the last week. Evenings must be about 5-10 degrees cooler now meaning the atmosphere is more stable and ultimately better sky viewing conditions. I set up my Mintron camera with the 50mm F1.4…

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Satellite Tracking Camera – Progress Update

Regular readers of my blog will know that I’ve been working on building a satellite tracking system. The plan is to end up with a fully automatic Pan/Tilt positioning system with a high sensitivity video camera, millisecond accuracy…

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Adding Custom Characters to the MAX7456 Video Overlay Generator

I’m playing with the Maxim MAX7456 Video On-Screen Display Generator for my Satellite Tracking Camera project. I’m wanting to use it to overlay accurate (GPS locked) time stamps onto each individual field of a PAL or NTSC video…

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AVR Pulse Per Second & NMEA simulator

As part of building my Satellite Tracking Camera, I’m building a GPS time inserter to insert accurate time stamps on a video feed. I’m unable to get GPS reception in my test/development area, so I decided it would…

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