Ejaad-Nama 0x06: The hair-dryer approach to space
Ejaad-Nama (Urdu: Letters of Invention). A bi-weekly newsletter about Science, Electronics, Makers, DIY, and everything technical. We talk about lemons, acid battery and anything in between.
If you have not subscribed yet, here is your chance:
Bulent Altan, senior director of avionics, provided an account of the very first Falcon 9 rocket:
The day is June 3rd, 2010. It had been pouring “pitchforks” (in Florida-speak) earlier in Florida. SpaceX has seen multiple launch failures by this point and the next launch is set for the next day, June 4th, 2010. The weak telemetry signal from the rocket made Altan suspect water getting into the electronics. He got to the launch pad, climbed a ladder to the antennas, and confirmed his suspicion.
He talks to Musk and his crew for possible solutions. They decide: Instead of delaying the launch, he is going to use a blow dryer until the electronics are dry. After he is done, a silicone sealant is used on the compartment doors for the ascent to space. When he is done here is the conversation from the article:
Musk: “You think it is good enough to fly tomorrow?”
Alten: “It should do the trick."
At that time, it did indeed do the trick. 10 Years later, it has done even more. Here is the celebration from the dragon crew after the launch:
I had to share this story because I feel this cowboy attitude is essential to all engineers.
I am going to talk about three home-made projects by myself and my fellow makers just because we wanted to make them.
—————————————————————————
Aqeel Arshad, who featured in my previous newsletter, has been working on hacking his apartment door and automating it using Bluetooth. He has managed to do that and much more with his hacked solution: he made a weather station, that provides current/forecasted weather updates but also doubles-up as a Bluetooth controller to open the door remotely. The slick solution turns what would have been otherwise an ugly useless box on the wall to completely something useful(Github Link).
Unfortunately, while he was hanging the device on the wall with a double-sided tape to take pictures, his weather station fell dislodging both micro-USB connectors. I have never seen solder joints to breakke in that way with the fall but micro-USB has had its problems.
—————————————————————————
While SpaceX has just sent two astronauts to the moon, Nishant is also absolutely “over the moon” with his simple moonlight with dimming function. He has also contributed previously to this newsletter with his 3d Printed Wifi Antennas. This time he has decided to 3d print the surface of the moon and add in a bit of the light to increase the romance (Link to his writeup). He has experimented a bit with different light colors which seem majestic. The circuit and design files can be found on his page.
One of the interesting finds from his side:
For power I plan to use mobile adapter/ mobile power bank. The catch with mobile power banks is that if the current drawn from them is below certain threshold, they automatically shut down! By hit and trial I found that if I draw 50mA of current constantly, the power bank does not shut down.
—————————————————————————
Last month I had decided to Pimp-up my workspace. I wanted to add the same wackiness to my workspace which is constant in this newsletter.
For that, I wanted to mark my territory. Since my employer did not put a name-tag on my desk for me, I decided to put one in my style. I used an EPaper display which shows my picture and name indefinitely. The eink displays is a thin film consisting microcapsules with particles of different colours and charge inside. By providing different voltage, these particles can be moved to top surface of the microcapsule so to be seen.
Eink displays provide very wide viewing angle as you look at the ink stick to the surface and does not require any backlight like standard lcd. They also need power only during refreshing the display. On the downside, the refresh rate can be very slow as each micro capsule needs clear the ink stuck by means of opposite voltage.
For technicals, I did this by taking my jpeg picture, scaling it the same number of pixels my display is, and saving it as a monochromatic BMP file using Windows paint (Oh, Yes!). This file can then be converted to C array (a big int array) using the tool Image2LCD. Plug that into the Arduino code, add your name, and Disco.
Another thing I added was the multicolored 3d Printed Darth Vader warning my colleagues about me. The first four layers printed with white filament after which I changed the filament to black and printed the text and Darth Vader on top.
Most Chinese 3d printers do not come with the latest version of Marlin to support the change filament command. If that’s the case for you, I suggest this video from Teaching Tech who does a good job of explaining the process. This will also help you to get your hands wet with Marlin firmware if you have not done it already.
—————————————————————————
If you would like to send in your projects and hacks to be part of the newsletter, please do comment below, or email me: a.nadeem89@gmail.com. Leave your feedback in the comments about the content. and subscribe here, and share the newsletter with your friend.
Read the previous editions here:
https://ejaadnama.substack.com/