And now for something completely different

I have been working at various technologies over the summer holiday:

For the casually interested, I've been experimenting with Garageband on the iPad for Educational use. I know that some teachers look down on the iPad version of Garageband because of its limited (At the moment read non-existent) ability to input and output samples. I suspect that the upcoming iCloud (Oct in UK) will go some way to sorting that out. I know that on the iPad it is a sublime, simple and relatively easy to understand DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). I suppose the more you use it the more you notice whats missing, but for the price of an iPad, and the base version will work fine (£399) you get a complete recording studio complicated enough for most casual users/ bands, plus a state of the art fondleslab as touch screen tablets are becoming geekily known as. A standard guitar interface such as the Griffin brand one works extremely well and there are a couple of companies producing serious studio quality microphone interfaces with mics for under £100 which will surpass the quality of any cheap Zoom or Tascam hand help recorder mic.

For the keen technologist, I have finished translating a 3D shark model (3DS) into a 1 long metre set of 63 vertical slices to create a hanging model for a client that requested it. Not easy, not fast but if they can assemble it.. should be a great advert for their faculty and inspiration for the next cohort learning CadCam. It was one of those projects that was far easier to state the problem than produce the solution!

For the seriously Geeky, I am working on a PCB for a new educational Electronics Project using an 8 pin PICGenie to drive an RGB LED as a wall washer through sequential programming of Pulse Width Modulation commands using variables to cycle through a (relatively random) set of colours at the push of the switch and experimenting with reflective tube mixers (Rolls of aluminium foil) to dissipate the three focussed beams to produce a steady hue. It uses a cars convex stick on side mirror to direct the light but at the moment I am still fiddling with protoypes and 'generic verses Piranha' brand LED's. What fun...

Here is a video of the prototype wall washer. There is also a PCB layout but as I am still making changes to the prototype, that is on hold. The main thing to notice here is the ease of use. A few resistors and a 3.5mm stereo socket make the programming interface, and a few led's make the output. The special programming leads are £12 but the basic Genie programming software which is a very slick and incredibly well supported design, is FREE. If you want access to advanced features and to design your PCB and see the effect on the PIC live, you need the full fat version of Circuit Wizard (NOT the one sold in Maplins, its missing PIC bits) , but for a total outlay of around £70 you could buy three cables and enough protoblocks and parts to keep a small electronics class happy all year!