JeremyBlum.com

Yesterday I released my longest single video to date, in which I cover everything you could ever want to know about LCD monitor specifications. Check it out below! Oh, and I’ve included a Topic Selector in the video that will allow you to jump to a particular part of the video..if for some reason you don’t want to stare at me for 15 minutes ;).

In other news, the 2009 UC Member Awards have come to a close.  I managed to pull ahead with the most total votes, but my brother came in a close second, so he’ll be receiving a free UC.net t-shirt.  Keep an eye out, he’ll probably be wearing it in his next youtube video.  And be sure to check out the full breakdown of the results, to see who won each category!

The title says it all!  Visit m.jeremyblum.com from your mobile device to access a mobile-friendly version of my blog.  I’ve only been able to test it on my Motorola Droid so far, so please let me know how it looks on your phone.  Alternatively, scan the QR-code below using your smartphone.

Well, it’s taken me forever, but I finally managed to upload a new video!  TechBits 11 is embedded below – I’m discussing the differences between Solid State and Mechanical Hard Drives.  Don’t forget to subscribe to me on youtube!

In other news, the 2009 UltimateComputers.net Member Awards are currently underway.  You can vote for members in a total of nine categories, and the user with the most votes overall by January 15th will win a free t-shirt! GO VOTE NOW!

So, it’s been awhile since I’ve actively updated  my blog or my youtube videos.  Even my presence on UltimateComputers.net has gone down as of late.  As many of you probably know, I’m currently in my sophomore year at Cornell, studying electrical and computer engineering.  This semester has been a tremendous amount of work, certainly more than I’ve ever had to handle before.  As a result, I’ve had to prioritize my time, and I had to make sure I didn’t start failing my classes just because I was behind on videos and blog updates.

But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel!  I’m in the middle of finals week now, with three done so far (differential equations, electricity and magnetism, and computer instrumentation design), and two more to go (digital logic design and microeconomics).  I plan to do some work on the ultimatecomputers.net site over winter break, including a needed upgrade to the forum software, some new features, etc.  I also plan to start catching up on video’s and bringing TechBits back to life.

The Solar House Control System…

What have I been so busy with!?  Well, in addition to classes, I took on a leadership position in Cornell’s Solar Decathlon Team.  The solar decathlon competition took place during the first two weeks of October, so from the very first weekend that school started (in August) up through October, I basically did nothing but focus on getting our Solar House ready to display to the world.  Before taking the home down to the international Solar Decathlon competition in DC, we first displayed it to the public at the Great NY State Fair.  During the first 8 weeks of classes, I spent every weekend, and some weekdays in either Syracuse, or DC – hence why I had no time to make TechBits episodes…  In addition to working on the home’s automation, electrical, and entertainment systems (see the picture above), I also gave tours, talked to the media, and developed the team website, along with Dan Strongwater (a Junior at Cornell who was on the team as well).

Upon the completion of the competition (see the results here), myself and a few others decided we wanted to continue the momentum from the team, without the restrictions of the competition (ie. only using solar power when geothermal, wind, etc are also clean and renewable).  So, we formed the Cornell University Sustainable Design Team, and we are currently gathering support from all the colleges within Cornell.  We hope to start designing a new structure next summer.

Machine Metabolism…

As if that all wasn’t enough to keep me busy, I also started research at the Cornell Computational Synthesis Lab after the Decathlon ended.  I’m developing a sensor interface for a robot that scales and dismantles structures (see the picture above).  The whole deal is called a “machine metabolism” – the robot is like an enzyme crawling around on a protein and reshaping it.

So that’s what I’ve been up to!  I think next semester is going to be pretty hectic too, but I think I should have a bit more time than I did this semester…  I look forward to getting back into some youtube videos, and UC.net soon!

If you don’t read hackaday already, you should be, because it’s probably the best blog around.  Anyways, they’ve recently featured my roboclaw on their website: go check it out!

Here’s some of my other stuff that’s been on Hackaday:
http://hackaday.com/2008/07/14/deepnote-guitar-hero-bot/
http://hackaday.com/2009/05/17/nerf-centry-gun-with-image-recognition/

This past Thursday marked the start of my sophomore classes at Cornell University.  I’ve decided that I’m going to affiliate with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Major, and I’m also hoping to pursue a business minor.  However, classes have not been at the front of mind recently; instead, I’ve been far more focused on Cornell’s Solar Decathlon Team.  As I have mentioned before in my blog, I’m the Engineering Controls Team leader for Cornell’s “Silo House” entry into the bi-annual competition.  While I did not stay up at Cornell for the past summer as some other team member’s did, I did stop by for a while to get some work done on the home’s entertainment systems, and I spent a good amount of time maintaining and developing the back-end of our website.  About a week before the start of classes, I made my way up to the NY state fair grounds in Syracuse for 4 days, where the house will be on display until the competition in October.  So here’s the point of this post: If you live anywhere remotely close to Syracuse, go check out the house at the fair! It’s coming along really well, and if I do say so myself, it looks awesome!  We’re offering tours for as little as $2, and I’ll be giving some of the tours.  You can also check out pictures of the house on our website, and I’m hoping to have a virtual fly-through available soon.

This is a project that I’ve been working on on-and-off for over a year now. A while back, a friend got me this robotic claw kit from thinkgeek, basically to make fun of my prosthetics research.  It’s simple enough…A wired controller is connected to the claw and has a few levers for eliciting movement from the arm’s various motors.  As you might expect, I got bored with picking up blocks rather quickly.  I instantly had the idea to pick up blocks remotely!  Oh what fun that would be!  To accomplish this I employed one of my favorite microcontrollers, the parallax propeller. Admittedly, the propeller is overkill for this project, but it’s what I happened to have on hand–It has 8 cores and I am only using one, but this is only v1 of the claw, and I hope to take better advantage of this chip in the future.  The propeller chip communicates with a small web server (also sold by parallax) via a serial connection.  I’ve even setup a network webcam, and embedded the feed in the control webpage, so I can easily control the claw from anywhere in the world!

Read on for pictures, source-code, a video, and a walk-through of the system!

Read more

Upgrading the RAM in your laptop can be surprisingly difficult, especially if one stick is located under the keyboard. In this tutorial, I walk you through the steps needed to replace RAM on most laptops. Enjoy!

Well, solid state hard drives seem to be all the rage these days, so I figured I’d try one out in my Dell D630 Laptop.  After doing some research, Kingston’s SSD Now drive series looked like the best bang for the buck, so I ordered it.  Check out my review of the drive below.