Cordislumen (Tentative Name) progress

Wow... last little while has been piss poor blogging performance for me, hasn't it? I apologize, many things have been happening in my professional life, the majority of which I do not feel comfortable sharing online.

Anyway, onto the cool stuff.

Cordislumen (Tentative Name) progress part 1 from Andrew Parnell on Vimeo.

I just finished building one of the ... I believe three ... components of my next piece. (Tentatively known as Cordislumen, hence forth not referred to by name). In function it's like the system of pulleys in my last piece. But practically speaking...it works so much nicer. In part this is because I'm not having to deal with co-opting a piece of building infrastructure (though, I did really like that element of Tangólumen) and also because I learned a lot from Tango's design, and was able to better design this one.

This portion of the project contains an outlet, a dimmer switch, and a servo (and for now: a dirty rubber band). The servo operates the dimmer, which in turn controls the amount of current going through one of the outlet's two sockets. (The other one delivers consistent power to the micro-controller / servo via a wall wart.) This is a really nice way to control an outlet...because in all truth, full source voltage is scary, scary stuff.

Some more photos...right here: