Kaffir Lime Flowering ✓

Kaffir lime - Citrus Trees - Canada

So Ive just noticed our kaffir lime has started to flower/fruit. To think here in Canada it flowers in march/april is quite different (but I could be tricking myself). The strange thing was, I think this was by accident. A while back I brought a few Meyers from our hot sunroom
( 25c+ )  into our greenhouse  ( 13c ) during the winter and almost instantly they started to flower. This same situation/reaction happened with my Star ruby grapefruit. Now after moving our kaffir lime from the greenhouse into the sunroom there was an instant flowering. So I cant be positive of all varieties of citrus but it seems like they are like other species of plants where cold weather signals them to fruit, almost in a dash to save it genes. This is great for growers in canada with stubborn trees that are harder to flower ( To bad this wont work with bananas tho). Try setting your plant out side for a minute  ( not directly on the cold ground or in snow ) this might  stimulate that tricky tree. Please feel free to comment if this scenario works for you or what trees/plants you have found this trick works with.

The kaffir only gets half light but still fruits

We also noticed a friendly new predator spider the other day, while weve seen one like him thats all black with white stripes, this one was much larger with almost a blueish white on the stripes, not sure if its just more mature but Ive never seen one this size before.

Natural pest prevention

Attack spider

Read More..

Visualizing Music With LEDs And Lasers

If youve been reading this blog, you probably know about the Humboldt Laser Harp project (HLH). Todays blog post is closely connected to the HLH, and addresses the general topic of ways to visualize music with LEDs and lasers.

John Van Duzer Theatre

The HLH is the first foray for the Humboldt Microcontrollers (MCUs) Group into connecting music with light. Nick A has done a little music-into-light on his own, but the HLH will be the first collaborative group project for this type of application. It will be fun to see where the HLH leads. If we can involve some of the fabulous Humboldt musicians with our projects to visualize music with LEDs and lasers, including some of the Humbodt State University students and instructors, the skys the limit. Maybe in a couple years there will be a Humboldt Electronic Light Orchestra performance at the Van Duzer!

Laserium

My first experience with music and lasers was a Laserium laser light show in Seattle -- it was an impressive and immersive experience that I really enjoyed. That was many years ago and musical-light technology has come a long way since then. At this point the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group isnt trying to replicate or out-do the Laserium experience or compete with existing advanced lighting technology in the music world. As far as I know we dont have people in the group (yet) who have the knowledge and interest to design and build top of the line music light show equipment, or the funding to buy the components. But it will be fun to see what MCU-based instruments and systems we build or experiment with. It will be fun if we can get some people in the group whose main passion related to MCUs is in the area of music or music-into-light.

Echo Rises 800+ LED music-into-light system

The Hack A Day post "800+ LED Wall With Diffuser Panel is a Work of Art" was the catalyst for todays blog post. It shows a music-into-light system from Echo Rises. If you watch the video in this post closely, youll see its title or subtitle is How To Visualize Music Using LEDs. For the Humboldt Electronic Light Orchestra, Id like to extend that theme to include lasers. The Hack A Day post gives this overview of the Echo Rises system controlled by a Teensy MCU:

"What happens when you take over 800 individually addressable super bright RGB LEDs and house them in a giant diffused panel? You get awesome...[Epoch Rises] is a small electronic music and interactive technology duo who create cool interactive projects...for their live shows and performances. They love their WS2812B LEDs...it can take any video input, it can be controlled by sound or music, an iPad, or even generate random imagery by itself. The 800 LEDs are controlled by a Teensy 3.0 using the OctoWS2811 library...which is capable of driving over 1000 LEDs at a whopping 30FPS using just one Teensy microcontroller."

Noomis

Whoa!! Wouldnt that be fun, controlling 800 - 1000 LEDs with one tiny Teensy MCU. If we had one or two systems like that, and combined them with the HLH and Jonathan Sparks Noomis electronic musical instrument, wed have a pretty good reason for serious and innovative musicians to collaborate with the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group.

Hack A Day also did an interview with Paul Stoffregen, the creator of the Teensy, talking about his latest version, the Teensy 3.1. You can buy the Teensy 3.1 direct from Pauls website, or from the regular places like SparkFun. I dont know of anyone whos used the Teensy, but I foresee that happening in Humboldt before too much longer.

Teensy 3.1

If you think it would be interesting, challenging and fun to help create eight or ten unique Humboldt music-to-light different but complementary systems that would form the nucleus of an awesome performance, show up tomorrow, July 23, for the next meeting of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group. At the meeting well talk a little about the Humboldt Laser Harp, and also review Serial Peripheral Interface, the subject of Jeremy Blums #8 Arduino video tutorial. See you from 6 - 8 PM at 1385 8th Street, Arcata, California, USA.

**********

Read More..

Electric Waste Orchestra Humboldt Electronic Light Orchestra

So a couple days ago I read about the Electric Waste Orchestra (EWO) in PSFK. It seemed like an idea that is harmoniously complementary to the Humboldt Electronic Light Orchestra were working to kickstart with the Humboldt Laser Harp project. Then today I met Tibora Girczyc-Blum, the director of SCRAP Humboldt, and I realized how well the EWO concept meshes with the SCRAP Humboldt mission. Per PSFK:

Electric Waste Orchestra hard drive instrument

"The Electric Waste Orchestra at Makerspace Urbana, located in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, takes outdated technology and turns them into pieces of fully functioning musical equipment. One guitar, shown in the video above, is comprised of an old keyboard number pad, six hard-drives, Arduino hardware and some software, all of which will not decay into toxic waste. They have other musical hardware in the works, including a Wiimote, and yes, they can all create beautiful music. The electric orchestra is a clever way to bring new life to these old technologies...It’s nice to see people taking these old gadgets out of the dumpsters

Arduino controlling the hard drive instrument

and onto the stage to bring others joy..."

Here is a YouTube list of the EWO videos. It looks like theyre in the early stages of learning to play somewhat traditional music with their Aduino-controlled instruments. However, some of the music played in the video embedded in the PSFK article seems closer to circuit bending than to traditional music. If youre not familiar with circuit bending, Wikipedia says circuit bending is:

"...the creative, chance-based customization of the circuits within electronic devices such as low voltage, battery-powered guitar effects, childrens toys and digital synthesizers to create new musical or visual instruments and sound generators. Emphasizing spontaneity and randomness, the techniques of circuit bending have been commonly associated with noise music, though many more conventional contemporary musicians and musical groups have been known to experiment with "bent" instruments. Circuit bending usually involves dismantling the machine and

Cateura sax from trash

adding components such as switches and potentiometers that alter the circuit."

Youll likely get a different definition of circuit bending from every person you talk to about it, but "BEND: A Circuit Bending Documentary" is a relatively good place to start if youre new to the genre.

While circuit bending is an aspect of the EWO that microcontroller people would likely enjoy, creatively reused materials seems to be an aspect of EWO thats more along the lines of what SCRAP Humboldt would focus on. When I did a YouTube search for  arduino recycle electric instrument, two of the more interesting finds were The Recycled Orchestra of Cateura and Bash The Trash. There are countless other videos of musical instruments made from upcycled goods, so if Humboldt musicians and upcyclers want to join forces, there

Bash The Trash cardboard trombone

are plenty of examples out there to learn from, and homegrown ingenuity can add local flavor to the effort. Most of the instruments in these videos arent based on Arduino or other microcontrollers (MCUs), but there are plenty of musical instruments made with the SCRAP Humboldt approach to creatively reusing materials, and there are enough MCU-controlled instruments to make it an enjoyable challenge for the electronically-inclined members of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group.

Make some music (with any type of instrument or source materials you prefer) and make the world a better place!

**********

Read More..

MCU Music Home Multi zone Arduino Audio

Members of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group have a more than average interest in microcontrollers (MCUs) and music, e.g. the Humboldt Laser Harp (HLH) and Raspberry Pi music systems.

Weve got the proof-of-concept HLH working, but we need to take the next step in expanding the musical capabilities of the HLH. After I talk with Ed, Nick and others in the MCU group about how to most cost effectively improve the music from the harp, Ill write a post about electronic music component options. In the meantime, heres an MCU music topic I read about in an August 2014 Atmel blog post.

Custom PCB fabbed by OSH Park

The Atmel post points to an Instructables titled "The Smartphone Operated House-Wide Audio System" that talks about a system that:

"...solves the seemingly ubiquitous problem of being able to listen to your music from anywhere in your house. Say goodbye to a separate iPod dock in each room! This instructable will show you step-by-step how to build a house wide, multi zone audio system which can be entirely controlled from your Smartphone or computer (really anything with a web browser) from anywhere in your house which you have a Wifi connection...its also expandable to however many zones you need...this system allows you to use speakers and amps of your choosing and at a fraction of the cost of a Sonos system. In this project we will be making use of an Arduino uno with an ethernet shield and a custom PCB which can be ordered from your favorite PCB manufacturer (I recommend OSH Park). The central component of the PCB is the PT2258 IC. This IC allows for volume control of 6 audio channels and communicates with the Arduino over the I2C bus."

Arduino with Ethernet shield and custom PCB with PT2258 IC

The Princeton Technology datasheet for the PT2258 IC shows the block diagram and pin configuration for this component. Reading over the Tutorialsto.com write-up about the IC will give you a general understanding of the component if you dont already know what it is.

Lepai LP-2020A+ amplifier

This MCU project is more complicated than some projects in other posts Ive written, but it will give you good experience in doing activities like ordering a custom PCB (printed circuit board), soldering components on the custom PCB, and hooking up your fabbed and assembled custom PCB with a 6-channel amp and power supply. The Instructables has a pretty good set of photos showing how to solder the components on the PCB, so dont worry about that step if you havent assembled many, or any, PCBs. The two amplifier options listed in the project write-up both look fun to work with; a Lepai LP-2020A+ for about $20 or a Parts Express AA-AB34181 for about $60.

The Instructables project author describes using the finished audio system this way:

Parts Express AA-AB34181 amplifier

"In order to maintain the idea of being able to control the system from a smartphone, I used a Chromecast with an HDMI audio extractor. This allows us to take the audio the Chromecast outputs and plug it into our PT2258 control board. Thus we can simply cast our favorite Pandora station or music from Google Play Music to the Chromecast and control the volume from our Arduino. Simply plug the Chromecast into a TV and set it up on your home network, then unplug it from the tv and plug it into the HDMI audio extractor. Using a RCA to 3.5mm cable, plug the HDMI audio extractor into the input of the PT2258 board...The system can be controlled by anything which has a web browser and is connected to your home network. All you have to do is type in the IP address of the arduino followed by "/?app" (i.e. 192.168.1.199/?app) and you will be brought to the control app for the system...The greatest limitation of this system is the fact that there is only one audio input for the entire system. That means you have to listen to the same song throughout the entire house."

This system costs about $300 to build, so I wont be putting one together any time soon, but the project gives a good overview of setting up a pretty versatile home audio system from scratch.

**********

Read More..

please enjoy the party while your music is being reached

So today...fail day II

Thim went to pick me up from Adams house...and FAILED like WTF.
dsf7jnybgfre4tyhjmukjnhb6g5vcf4

XD

So we were riding to school with ging-ah, yacob, and thim driving...and the radio was talking about this dude. When they called him back it said "please enjoy the music while your party is being reached" and the first thing I did was sing "GIVE INTO THE NIIIGHT"

thats adams callback tone. I call him too much XD

then while I was trying to explain it to people I said "please enjoy the party while your music is being reached"

lol

And Im totally wearing adams pants and socks cause mine are soaked.

and its 8:05 AM...so were not even done failing today.

Read More..