Author: Steven Mackaay

New indicator head

Now that COVID-19 is in full swing around the world, I have a bit of extra time. I designed a new measuring head using the Renishaw RLC2IC magnetic encoder head from RLS.

This was borne from a need for one of these things but not wanting to spend $1200 CAD. Also, being able to use whatever connector you want is a nice touch.

A little overview of the head

In a package that’s 1.65″ x 2.5″ x .75″ you can plop this guy on the end of whatever and measure the insides of things (or dial them in). Also not shown is the strain relief for the ribbon cable or cable that would come out of the unit. The design isn’t fancy and I haven’t thought about attachment provisions yet but I should be making one of these this week.

The encoder itself is quite small and the output is standard quadrature so that makes it quite handy for all kinds of applications. Anyways, will update when I actually make this little guy.

Quick tile generator for games.

I found I kept making and drawing tile sets for little games I wanted to make and I found it time consuming. some engines require a bit of padding around each tile so that when the drawing is scaled, the next pixel isn’t shown from an adjacent tile.

I quickly wrote it in freebasic in under an hour, there’s an EXE in there too if you don’t want to use freebasic or look at the source. very little to it and everything is straightforward. The program will generate a blank tileset with both borders and internal padding indicators. I may write a program sometime that will automatically pad the tiles as needed from an existing set.

Get GenTiles zip here

Here are some png files that are generated by the program, you could use them directly if you want…

A Quick Series of Videos on Making a Pong Game

In my time making things for my YouTube channel, I’ve made a little series of videos detailing my creation of a crummy pong game. Fact of the matter is that I haven’t done some serious programming in some time so I needed to wet my whistle so to speak. You can play this game here. Quickie Pong!

A screenie of Quickie Pong. a very simple game indeed but I detailed my fumbling method of making it.
A screenie of Quickie Pong. a very simple game indeed but I detailed my fumbling method of making it.

So, for anyone who wants to view them, here are the videos for anyone’s perusal. Oct 1, 2016 is when the 3rd video is published so, if anyone cares, that’s when it is available.

Anyways, hopefully somebody enjoyed that. If not, you;re welcome to like and subscribe anyways!!! Again, go to my channel 🙂

New Youtube Channel for a new time

I’ve decided to start a new Youtube channel simply because I feel as though adding my projects and the things that I like to a video channel will drive me in ways I hadn’t had before. Thus far, I have 0 subscribers (aside from myself) and I’m genuinely curious to see how well I can make a Youtube channel work out. I believe I have some interesting things to share and some boring but popular things to share as well and a new Youtube channel that explores all those things.

Here’s a link to the channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwxvlEKdkh9eV9qLXHBh3fw

Not the most graceful URL but I will get a better one once I get some subscribers and I’ve been around for a while. I will explore things that I do such as electronics, gaming, machining, photography and whatever else I come across.

Here’s a video detailing something mundane, my calculator collection.

So, feel free to look at my channel, subscribe and like a video or two. 🙂

What a coincidence… The Remote indicator is alive!

Well, I was looking at my site and noticed that my last entry was November and it was the very project I’m starting to finish right now.

remoteacator

This is my Remote indicator. It’s a tool I developed after having found that standard indicators are a pain in the ass in some circumstances. While you can bash something together with off the shelf parts like say,  a Mitutoyo digital dial and a SPC box, that option can be pretty expensive.

Now I’m going to start developing the next version while I test out this one. The next one will be slimmer, more efficient and more attractive. There will be an optional Infrared communication port for it so when it’s sitting inside a deep bore or whatever ,it can still be read.

My new office and projects I’m working on

My office in September my office in October

My new office is filling up, now I need to move some of my test equipment in and start developing. Truth be told though, I have been developing some interesting things and soon I will post them here on the blog again. It’s been a while since I’ve felt like posting about the things I make but it’s always a good time to keep a good record of the things you do.

🙂indicator

Some more of Edmonton and what’s happening!

Like I’ve had to say many times before, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. It’s not because I haven’t been doing anything but because I simply haven’t taken any real pictures of anything crazy. Maybe I’ll post a bit later. First to post a few images that I haven’t posted as yet. They’ve been sitting here on the server for quite some time but i know people like these images so I’m not going to do a comparison, just post 🙂

Edmonton Derrick
This, I believe used to stand near 51st avenue. Nobody’s been able to confirm though.

Edmonton Downtown 1959
This is downtown Edmonton Circa 1959

Edmonton Downtown 1974
Downtown Edmonton 1974

edmonton civic center plan
This was a hypothetical city center plan for Churchill Square. It is vastly different today. I suspect this was from the lated 50’s, early 60’s

NAIT 1963ish
This is NAIT from when it first opened. From what I can tell, it’s about 1963 and looking from the south side of the building.

university early 70s
This is the U of A in the early 70’s

West edmonton mall mindbender
A promotional postcard from West Edmonton Mall’s the MindBender. From about ’85

west edmonton mall
West edmonton mall, late 80’s Early 90’s. looking NEE

Well, I hope somebody out there enjoys it!!!