Design segmented bowls for woodturning. Model the entire bowl in 3D. Graphically adjust the profile, segments and colors of each ring. Calculate cut angles and lengths. All from your browser on any operating system. Free and open-source code, no sign-ups required.
Features include:
I recently upgraded my home server from Linux Mint 17.3 to Mint 18 (effectively moving the Ubuntu codebase from 14.04 to 16.04). Despite some nice changes, the update broke the earlier script I threw together that prevents the system from sleeping while streaming media through Plex. Sometime …
read moreUPDATE: The below script works for Linux versions running sleep.d, like Mint <= 17.3 or Ubuntu 14.06. For a version that works on systems running systemd, including Mint 18 and Ubuntu > 15.04 see my update.
I recently set up a Plex server on a Linux Mint desktop …
read moreThis Python program will help determine distances in images with a scale bar, like those taken from a microscope. First, draw a line along the scale bar, enter the distance, then draw other lines.
Here it is in action, measuring the distance of a nanowire transistor. Yes, the microscope has …
read moreDrawing quality electrical schematics is one of those tasks that always takes too long. Most software for the job focuses on fancy circuit simulations and doesn't care about appearance. Constantly facing the dilemma of how to draw simple schematic diagrams, I threw together a little Python package to help out …
read moreHere's another round of bouncing liquids! These are all high-speed images of liquid being propelled off a speaker blasting sound. A picture of the setup is below. Three components are involved: 1) open camera shutter; 2) start playing sound; and 3) fire the flash. (Step 4 would be close the …
read moreThese two projects are Mac OS X Quicklook generators for GDSII stream files and DC2 Design Cad files. The GDSII file type is commonly used in integrated circuit layout. The DesignCad quicklook was written specifically for DesignCAD 2D ASCII format used with the NPGS e-beam lithography system.
I had been using a basic timer to turn on the lights in my house in the evening using my Raspberry Pi and the x10 firecracker python script I wrote about earlier. It's easy enough to make a cron job (sudo crontab -e), for example:
00 20 * * * /home/pi/x10 …This is a little python app I wrote up to provide a sort of GUI for the circuit_macros package. Circuit_macros is an excellent way to draw professional-looking electrical circuit diagrams, but it takes a series of steps to compile the code describing a circuit into a finished image. This app …
read more[UPDATE 06-29-2014] This technique has been refined and even better photos are in this post
These are splash pictures taken using a Raspberry Pi as a controller. These aren't your typical water-dripping-into-a-pool photos, they're actually made by placing a drop of liquid on a speaker and blasting it with sound …
read moreTime-lapse video of winter storm Virgil on 24 March, 2013.
Make sure to click-through if you want to see the full-resolution version. The video was made using a Nikon point-n-shoot camera tethered to my laptop, and gphoto2 to capture and download one image every minute. Entire time was about 4 …
read moreMatplotlib is capable of drawing polygons with a hatched pattern, such as the one below, using the patch function. The key is in the "hatch=" parameter, in this case it is '/' to add diagonal lines. According to the documentation it can also be one of these:
/ \ | - + x o O . *
Add …
read moreI had previously developed a script to control the x10 firecracker (CM17A) module using python. Of course, my new Raspberry Pi would make a perfect home monitoring server to control the lights. The script works fine on the Pi using a USB-to-serial converter, but when there's only 2 precious USB …
read moreMy Raspberry Pi arrived a few weeks ago, and has been a great way to pass these cold snowy winter days. I have a number of projects in mind, but one was to interface with a temperature sensor and serve the results to a web page. I had a couple …
read moreWhile there's a number of software applications for building circuit diagrams, they tend to focus on running fancy simulations, while the schematics themselves are ugly to look at. So when writing papers (and ECE201 exam problems) where nice looking diagrams are important, something specifically made for quality drawings is required …
read moreI've been using Python to analyze the majority of my research data, so was very excited when the IPython Notebook was released at the end of last year. Over the last few months, I've been learning how to use the Notebook and transitioning some of my new research data to …
read more
