Design and Technology
My Own Personal Yellow Brick Road
Categories: Smart and Modern Materials | Comments Off
light-transmitting-concrete-material-a

Here are the most interesting new materials I’ve come across this year, smart or modern, I don’t care they’re so cool!! I want to build a garden installation out of air concrete, I crave having a thermotile shower and don’t get me started on neon tea bags… If materials designers and engineers keep this going […]

Categories: Competence | Comments Off
Competence

Wow, what a journey. From landing in OZ (being given my skills audit), traveling the yellow brick road (filling in the gaps in my knowledge) to escaping the evil flying monkeys (procrastination, confusion and misinformation) I think I’ve finally arrived… My attitude towards the whole of electronics at the start of this process was one […]

Categories: Prototyping and Analysis | Comments Off

Steve has been building this amazing electronics teaching aid for one of his projects this semester and today was his first complete test using all 5 panels together… Each panel interacts with the next to produce a final outcome of a binary to decimal counter that counts from 0-9 then resets. You’ve got the 555 […]

Protect_The_Earth

We have quite a quandary here don’t we? We all want to be more environmentally friendly but we also need to buy things like food, clothes, furniture and stuff to keep us clean. If you’ve read my posts on packaging design you’ll see that any company wanting it’s product to be successful, whatever it is, […]

Categories: Mechanisms | Comments Off
bookcase-balanced-leather-metal

I just thought I’d put together a collection of some of the cool things I’ve come across on looking into mechanisms and structures, it might be a bit disjointed but hopefully it’ll provide some inspiration The self balancing bookshelf: What a conversation starter, I think when I move next I might just have to make […]

homer-doh-square

I’ll be breaking this circuit down into its 3 component parts to make the analysis a bit simpler so I’ll be looking at the signals from the astable to the binary counter and from the binary to the decimal converter. So… like the input: the pulse from the astable 55, the process: the binary counter, and the […]

555 error

Starting with the visual: Double check your circuit matches your diagram. Is everything pushed in properly? Are all polarised components in the right way round? Are your stripped wire ends the right length? (5-10mm) Have any connections snapped? Are the values of your components correct? (resistors, capacitors etc.) Is your IC in the right way […]

OK, starting with the visual inspection again… Double check your circuit matches your diagram. Is everything pushed in properly? Are all polarised components in the right way round? Are your stripped wire ends the right length? (5-10mm) Have any connections snapped? Are the values of your components correct? (resistors, capacitors etc.) Is your IC in […]

switch error copy

So first I need to start with the visual inspection: Double check your circuit matches your diagram. Is everything pushed in properly? Are all polarised components in the right way round? Are your stripped wire ends the right length? (5-10mm) Have any connections snapped? Are the values of your components correct? (resistors, capacitors etc.) Is […]

transistor circuit to fix

My logic circuit is a nice, simple NAND gate to start this off:   The transistor circuit is one that I’ve not tried out before, I’ve simulated it using Circuit Wizard in my previous post so now time to bring it into the real world:  Next is the monostable: And lastly the beast… The binary to decimal […]