Canon T90 Vertical Grip

Built using a modified VG10 (normally for an EOS5), the T90 was modified to have 3 contacts at the bottom of the grip (gold contacts from an old ISA PC-Card, wired to the cable release socket) that match 3 spring contacts on the grip. Allows to hold, meter and release in vertical position - and most important prevents the T90 from falling on it's nose with a lens attached :-)

http://www.vp7.de/grip/t90grip.html

wood, silicon, magnets and lithium in teal and orange

After building a little battery powered cube boombox for a friend, here's a more powerful version that I built for myself. it's based on the Yamaha YDA148 (aka Y148) class D amplifier chip [1][2] which delivers 2 x 20W into 4Ohm at 12V.

power is supplied by three 18650 LithiumIon cells in series, which are charged by a cheap balancing charger[3] - this one is in fact not really a balancer but merely three 4.2V chargers in series.

the speaker is a Visaton FR10/4Ohm [4] and is rated for 30W, so this little box can get quite loud if needed. There is a jack to connect a second speaker if needed for a stereo pair.

the audio input is a standard 3.5mm jack and of course the box comes with a complementary set of teal and orange connection cables

the box itself is made from leftovers of 18mm pine, dyed and sealed with acrylic

[1] http://www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/lsi/amplifier/
[2] http://www.dx.com/p/y148-audio-amplifier-module-93121#.VMvoWXV9qRs
[3] http://www.aliexpress.com/item/IMAX-B3-Pro-2-3-cells-LiPo-Battery-Balance-Charger-free-shipping/682551063.html
[4] http://www.visaton.com/en/industrie/breitband/fr10_4.html

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+VladimirPantelic/posts/GAYeaYthRm5

and it goes up to 12 - desktop volume control

making use of this vintage HP instrument knob since it did not fit what I needed it for - and I always wanted a nice big desktop volume control

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+VladimirPantelic/posts/G5TSXgERhf3

Magic Trackball

I brought my Marconi RB2 trackball from 1985 into the 21st century by converting it to USB. It also got a special lucky trackball.

I had it running as a serial device in the past using an old Genius mouse that was wired to the optical encoders. Sadly that never really worked reliably, I think the serial mouse could not provide enough power to also power the trackball electronics. The removed Genius mouse PCB can be seen on the left side.

Now I upgraded the electronics with an old Logitech PS/2 mouse that runs into an PS/2 to USB converter. Hookup was straightforward after removing the optical receivers in the mouse, I only had to switch the polarity and pullups of the mouse buttons. I had planned to put the USB converter also inside and only expose an USB cable, but the original brown cable is molded in and I did not want to do too much damage, so now it carries PS/2 and the converter is outside.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+VladimirPantelic/posts/URrzMyAPch5

LEGO sorting boxes

Plywood sides and MDF bottoms. Sorting boxes are various size Allit E45 sorting boxes in 45mm height

JANSJÖ, JANSJÖ sat on a wall

SansAmp PSA 1.1 internals

Looks like they shrank it all to SMD and used Analog Device digital potentiometers instead of the Dallas parts