As the LEGO NXT is more complicated than the RCX; I had to do my own research to be able to hack the NTX connectors. Here is some interesting information about the signals from LEGO Mindstorms NXT.

If you are a millionaire and able to buy a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, you may find kind of difficult to hack it or create homemade sensors.

I believe you already noticed the particular jack that comes with the NXT. It looks like a telephone jack, but the latch is located in one side, making difficult to connect any other cable.

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Some companies are blamed to have subliminal advertisement. Many times it is denied by the companies. Technical error? Subliminal ads? See it by yourself.

A glass with three ice cubes and sex. Sounds familiar? That is a famous photo used on subliminal advertisement many years ago. I even myself I consider I found one on Diet Coke ad, In fact, I’m not the only one that saw it.

Now, appears “technical errors” are another reason for subliminal advertisement.

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As the previous motor is not easy to build and it doesn’t have too much torque, I decided to improve the design.

This motor is more like “Pulse Motor” as it pushes the magnets with only one coil. With only 3 Volts, it have three times more torque that the previous one and is easier to build.

With only one coil, this motor produces more torque than the previous Electic Motor and the easy-to-build Beakman Motor.

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As the beakman motor have no torque at all, I decided to build this project based on the design of the regular electric motors.

With a medium difficulty, this motor is able to work with a fair load using 6 volts.

Someone, I don’t remember who, asked me if the Beakman motor can be improved to have more torque.

Well, I made another motor, more complicated, but with more torque.

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I’m ending the year listening old music from Vinyl disks, So I build my home-made gramophone using a pin and a plastic cup. With my LEGOs “mindstorms” I was able to spin the disk at 33 RPM (approximately). Here are some photos an a video of my gramophone.

Many times I can see old vinyl disks on the flea market. Many disks have good music and the sound is not quite “hi-quality”, but the sound brings back good memories.

If you are old and cranky like I am, you will know what I’m talking about. If you think that big black vinyl disk is a freesbie, you are totally lost.

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Francisco Arroyo Garcia sent this schematic as an alternative to program MICROCHIP PICs. This programmer is a JDM-based and works fine to program the PIC 16F628A.

Francisco Arroyo built a tachometer based on my schematics, but he got a PIC 16F628A instead of 16F628, so he was not able to program the pic. I was told already my PIC programmer doesn’t work with 16F628A because there is a connection missing.

Here is the schematic of the PIC programmer that he used sucessfully to program the 16F628A:

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The Thanksgiving 2006 was an opportunity to visit the missions at San Antonio Texas. Finally I had the opportunity to join with thousands of people and have a great thanksgiving vacations visiting great places. This is the first of five missions that I visited: The San Jose Mission.

After mi ex-wife decided to finish my slavery, finally I had the oportunity to travel and visit great places like the Stone Mountain at Georgia, Atlanta y finally: San Antonio Texas. Texas is a place with lots of historical sites to visit. The city with the most importance of Texas, in my opinion, is San Antonio, where the battle at the Alamo was the key to become what Texas is today.

On Thanksgiving 2006, I decided to visit San Antonio during that long weekend. Here is my visit to one of five San Antonio Mission: San Jose Mission.

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Here are more pictures from my Visit to San Antonio, Texas. This is one of many Missions that I visited on Thanksgiving 2006.

I hope you enjoy the photos as I did. “Recordar, es volver a vivir”.

You may need to read the first part before you continue. Click here to read the 1st part.

After visiting the convento, I went to the back of that building. There is not many things to see, but I do enjoy every detail of old places, each corner, each rock from the walls.

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“Spark, Bang, Buzz and Other Good Stuff” is a great web page to learn about “homemade” crazy projects.

Since long time ago, I do visit this page to get inspiration about new ideas. The author creates “hi-tech” electronic parts with “homebrew” technology. You will be amazed by his homemade Cathode Ray Tube. He built an oscilloscope with it.

You are not impressed yet? check his other projects:

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Some useful circuits using the LM555 IC.

Timer with 555.

This circuit can be used to activate a relay for two or three minutes. Pressing the switch the relay will be activated. Changing the 1M resistor with a variable resistor you can vary the time. The 0.01 capacitor is important because it prevents any false triggering.

The circuit will work OK with 6 Volts without any modification. If you want to use 9 or 12 Volts, you need to change the relay with a 9V or 12V relay. Using this circuit with 120 VAC is not recommended, however, using the right parts and the right isolation, will be not a problem.

The aplications for this circuit may vary, for example: Bouce-free switch, A three-minutes light to walk thru a dark area, A timer-activated faucet to save water, etc. Any project that needs only a few minutes of power will be perfect for this circuit. Ever if you have an old microwave with the broken electronic control, you can replace it with this timer (using the right hi-current relay).

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Two places to eat pizza buffet: Cici’s Pizza and Stevi B’s Pizza. The price, the quality and some facts.

I found a possible reason why Cici’s pizza is doing false advertisement. Check this photo:

As you can see, the False advertisement from Cici’s pizza is just right in front of Stevi B’s Pizza. I believe the false advertisement is just an effort to get customers out of Stevi B’s place.

I decided to compare both pizza. Here are the results:

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A letter from an “alcohol lover”… well, a co-worker sent me this e-mail.

Dear Alcohol,

First & foremost, let me tell you that I’m a huge fan of yours. As my friend, you always seem to be there when needed. The perfect post-work cocktail, a beer at the game, and you’re even around in the holidays, hidden inside chocolates as you warm us when we’re stuck in the midst of endless family gatherings. However, lately I’ve been wondering about your intentions. While I want to believe that you have my best interests at heart, I feel that your influence has led to some unwise consequences:

1. Phone calls:While I agree with you that communication is important, I question the suggestion that any conversation of substance or necessity takes place after 2 a.m. Why would you make me call those ex-girlfriends/boyfriends when I know for a fact they do not want to hear from me during the day, let alone all hours of the night?

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Do you want to make lots of money with a product? Simple: Just get a container, a brand name and add water! Some expensive products are basically; water.

Believe it or not, sometimes, when you purchase an expensive product, you are buying WATER! I will give you two examples of it.

Clorox Anywhere $3.95

This product “Kills 99.9% of bacteria on hard, nonporous surfaces, Gentle as water with no harsh chemicals or fumes Contains bleach at a low…”

There it is! Gentle as water, because IT IS WATER! Let’s see the ingredients:

• Sodium Hypochlorite 0.0095%
• Other Ingredients (Means WATER) 99.9905%
• “Available chlorine 0.009%”.

So, if you have a glass of water and add a drop of chlorine, Also know as ‘Clorox Bleach’, you can make “Clorox Anywhere” at home. Just like that.

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Here is a technique how to implement an ON/OFF button using microcontrollers.

Using a switch to power up your microcontroller projects may not be a good idea if you need to “wake” the PIC during some events. For example: A metal detector sends a pulse indicating a car is ready to enter into a garaje, so the user needs to type a password to open the garage door or just slide the access card.

You may leave the Microcontroller ON always, 24/7 and it, someday, will fail or just freeze because a glitch in the code or just a failure caused by a voltage variation.

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Basic circuits and information about this timer/oscillator.

The 555 is a timer/oscillator and it can be used in a lot of applications like precision timing, pulse generation, time delay generation and sequential timing. Here are a few basic circuits using this integrated circuit.

Before we start, let’s learn more about it:

• It works with 4.5V to 16 Volts DC. Some version works with 4.5 to 15 Volts. A CMOS version can use less current.
• At 5V, it uses about 5mA. (Read the data sheet)
• Maximum output current: 200mA.
• Maximum power dissipation: 600mA.
• Operating temperature: 0 to +70 oC for the LM555/NE555 and -40 to +85 oC for the SA555.

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Anyone that decorates cakes knows how difficult is to stop frequently to rotate the cake and continue to decorate it or apply the frosting. This rotating cake tray helps to easy the process of decoration.

My honey bun likes to make cakes but the hard part of it is when is time to decorate it. Applying the frosting and icing can be back-breaking work.

As I don’t have any knowledge about cakes, I decide to help her in any other way: Creating an automatic rotating cake tray. She told me she already have a tray but is difficult to use because it doesn’t stop by itself and can move while the cake is being decorated.

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The first kiss is so special… Sent by

So, it’s your first kiss and several questions might come to mind:

Is it the right time?

Is anyone watching?

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Now what? Another woman found “a finger on her food”? This story sounds very familiar. Let’s discover what really happen on October 2006.

I wish I can travel to California and investigate personally this one, but I can’t. I don’t have a sponsor to cover the expenses. Anyway, the only way to know what really happen is collecting some information and facts regarding this issue over the news.

Let’s see…

First of all, No one knows exactly what is the item found in the steak & cheese sub. I may think it is a piece of meat because the sub is made with STEAK! Anyway, A woman went to buy a Sub at the Chowchilla Subway restaurant (located in California). Several hours later, the woman took an object back to the restaurant, she said it looked like part of a finger in her Steak & Cheese sandwich. At that moment, the Subway manager, Anita Munoz, was at the restaurant when the woman returned several hours after she purchased the sandwich. “It looked like a thick piece of fat,” Anita Munoz said, “It doesn’t look anything human to me.”

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Some information about the new Microchip PIC 16F505.

I consider the new 16F505 as the “missing link” between the 12F50X and the 16F84A. Basically, the 16F505 is fully-compatible with the 12F50X

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How to tell if you need to pray at work.

• When a co-worker comes in a little too happy singing “good morning” to everyone and you think, “Somebody needs to slap the s#@! out of her/him”…

…You need to pray at work.

• When someone comes in and announces, “office meeting in 5 minutes,” and you think, “what the f*&% do they want now?”…

… You need to pray at work.

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