I tried the Oculus

The other day I had a chance to try the Oculus Rift "glasses". I had to queue for a while but since there are some guys freaking out in Youtube with them, I wasn't going to loose the opportunity.

 (Sorry for the quality, almost no light there)

The version I tried was the Developer Kit 2 which is the last out, of course only for developers. I couldn't play, just watch an animation, but fair enough.

The animation was about a roller coaster (Riftcoaster), you can see it Youtube here . The feeling was quite good, in fact it was real enough to make me feel some "virtual altitude sickness" in the higher points of the attraction. The fluency of the animation as you move your head around was very good and real.

However, I found a terrible fail that prevent more enjoyment. The screens inside the glasses had a very low pixel density which almost destroy the experience. If you look carefully, they resemble those old CRT TVs where you could count the pixels if you looked close.

To show you more or less how you really see inside, I've edited a picture.

(Original picture source)

Click to zoom it. Although you forget this error to pay attention to the video, it's something that must be improved quite a lot.

By the way, I can't remember about the black edges, so they probably aren't something to worry about.

Try them if you can, it's a nice experience.

Really? Thanks readers.

I didn't expect this,

Now, this old, not very updated, not very interesting blog has got 10.000 pageviews. For me, it's a lot!

According to the stats, the top 3 most visited posts of all time is this:

1. Tuning fails (I enjoyed this one).

2. Headphone Bass Booster (That was cool)

3. Amstrad Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2 128K (Something to remember. I won't be able to run that machine again as I did for that post).

So, thank you to the readers that come around regularly (if there is someone), and also to the ones that have ever entered this blog for some strange reason.

How to fix scratched coating on aluminium

Recently, it fell into my hands a Nokia C5 which was aesthetically brand new, except for some "deterioration" of the back cover. Terrible.

In the pics it doesn't look so bad but in reality it was worse. Even worse if you compared with the rest of the phone, a pitty. The deterioration was only of the transparent coating, not the aluminium itself, fortunately.

Unfortunately, it seemed this cover wasn't very popular and there weren't many fake covers to buy for less money than the original one. This genuine one was 8€ without shipping, so almost half the price I paid for the phone. I had to fix this one.

You might think a good solution for these problems is sanding and re-coating, but it may be a bit aggressive for the first attempt of mending this. So I discover something that was worth a try.

Fixing

What you need to start is a piece of copper to peel off the coating. Copper is less hard than aluminium, which means that there is no way you can scratch aluminium with copper. In Europe, coins of 1, 2 or 5 cents are great for this. So, let's start peeling.

The Nokia brand and model will be intact all the time because they are etched in the aluminium. However, if you have some stupid phone carrier logo there, it will almost surely disappear.

Sometimes you get some brown scratches for the copper. These are easily removed with a rubber eraser.

When you're done, do a hard use of the eraser to clean the surface and to find if it is some coating you missed.

Almost finished. You can stop here if you want, the result is great and shiny. However, if you want to go further and have some car polish around (like this one or similar), it is good to use it.

Of course, it is almost impossible to photograph the difference, but this last photo includes the polishing. This step adds shiner and softer finish.

The end product is impressive. Now it's your turn.

ERS Transponder

Sometimes you walk everyday through somewhere and one good day you realise there is something interesting just there. My case today...

This is an ERS (European remote sensing satellite) transponder. It was part of the ERS satellites project. ERS satellites were launched in 1991 and 1995 (there were 2 of them) for scientific research purposes, not about the space but about the Earth.

This thing has antennas and with them it captures radio frequencies from the satellites. Then it processes and converts them to signals that computers and other machines in Earth can understand.

Beautiful, isn't it?

Bass power!

I just wanted to say I LOVE the little bass booster I posted last time. It is marvellous!

Headphone Bass Booster

This is what I've come with this time, the main electronic project this summer.

What we have here is a bass booster device for headphones. It amplifies a range of signals that you can choose with the potentiometer on top. Although you can also boost high frequencies with this, it is intended to amplify low ones which are which mobile phones and MP4 players lacks.

This is the thing out of the box. Each PCB deal with one channel.

The diagram is from somewhere in Makezine, but I modified it to suit my preferences and for improving it a little bit. Mainly, as I didn't want it to be portable, and I hate batteries, I fed it with a wall adapter. I don't want to go too deep into electronic matters, but for this you have to get some adapter rated with more voltage than what you need (I chose 9V), then regulate and filter at the same time with a LM7805 to avoid noises. I made some other changes too.

The thing is based on a LM386. The green wired PCB is right channel.

The result is great. I was worried because when you work with sound stuff you get annoying noises very easily, an as I'm sort of an audiophile, I can't listen to music with a noisy machine. It would have gone straight to the bin if that happened. But fortunately I get absolutely no noise from it!, just pure sound!

Besides it boosts a selected range of frequencies, it also amplifies noticeably the sound in general. Nevertheless, as it's not its purpose, I haven't measured what amount.

I added a nice yellow LED and fitted it into a box with a transparent cover.

I'm very happy with this little thing. I reckon it'll be very useful. For me, it's not about simply using this and there it is. I think the greatness comes when you set up properly an equalizer to manage all the frequencies, then with this extra boost in low ones you'll get a very nice sound.

Testing

I want to show it to you the best I can, so I've made a video where I play with the potentiometer. The audio (courtesy of Evanescence) is recorded through the computer so you can listen better. I promise it's not altered in any way, I've turned off all the equalizers.

Nice project.

Multilayer Printed Circuit Board

The other day I wanted to reuse some parts from a broken computer motherboard. I didn't want to try desoldering because I knew motherboards are multilayer PCBs, extremely difficult to solder or desolder on them. As I only wanted the audio ports, on the edge, I cut them. Easy.

After taking a look at my rubbish cutting work I though it would be perfect for showing you how multilayer PCBs are inside.

It is very difficult to find on the Internet (I haven't been able) clear pictures or simply some pictures like these ones, so enjoy.

Click to make them larger.

 You might think this particular board is thicker than others, but it's just an effect for this much zoom. It actually is 1.5 mm thick.

You can see those copper layers. There are at least 6 or 7! Mad.