Adam@SheekGeek

The World’s Smallest Game System

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My_tiny_atari1 In about 2006, Atari sold some key chain games that connected to your TV via RCA jacks.  I am a huge lover of retro games due to the hardware challenges of the time and what clever people were able to build.  For a while now, I’ve wanted to get a tiny CRT screen from an old video camera viewfinder and pair it with these super tiny games.  Finally, I decided to do it (check out the video below!!!).

I went on ebay and grabbed a VF-129 display module board.  This is the Black and white display from an old Sony Handicam.   I looked up the repair manual for that camcorder to see what info I could find out about the module.  They have everything described from adjusting the alignment of the screen to the full-on schematic and PCB art.

The B&W displays connect with 4 wires: Power (4.7 volts)  Ground, Composite video input (Y) and there’s a line to turn on an LED to show that the board is turned on.  I got mine for $20-ish on ebay, but you can find them other places likely cheaper.  The color viewfinder screens actually take composite video input (RGB inputs) from what I’ve read so those might be cool for other projects.

I opened up the battery pack and soldered half of a USE cable to the outputs.  I used a USB cable because it had 4 wires.  I am using 3 (power, ground and composite video) for the screen and one more for the audio.  The battery pack looks funny because I had previously added a vacuum-formed topper and added screws and a switch to make it look like a real Atari game console years ago.  It was on an old blahrg of mine somewhere, but I’ll never remember which one, even if I can it is likely down.  Here are a few pics of the build of that if you are interested.

I ripped a tiny speaker from a greeting card and attached it to the CRT with foam tape and wired it to share the ground of the PCB. I put it on the bottom because those tiny speakers are meant to vibrate some object to help the noise be louder.  In a greeting card, the paper works, but I like just sitting it on the table (especially those cheap $7 Ikea tables which are basically hollow paper mache’). Being on the bottom allows for full contact with the surface.  Not to mention, this is the best place I could find to put it such that the tiny magnet doesn’t interfere with the CRT image much.

Enough talk, Just watch the video.

Adam-Atom

Easily get Public Link for Dropbox Files in Linux

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I got tired of going to the dropbox website to find the public link for files I put in the Public folder.  On Windows you can simply right click–>get Public link, but I’m running LinuxMint with Dropbox version 2.0.22 which doesn’t support this (among many other things like Pausing a sync…)

Anyway I wrote a script that you can just drag your files onto and it’ll pop up a box showing you the public link.  In Linux, a script alone can’t do this, but a script and a .desktop file can call a script to do it.  Here’s what I got:

Save the following in a text file called “getPublicLink.sh” inside your Dropbox/Public folder.  Make sure it has permission to run (right-click the file–> properties –>permission and check the box to allow it to run)

#!/bin/bash
publicLink=$(dropbox puburl $1)
zenity --info --text $publicLink

Now create a new text file named “Get Public Dropbox Link”.  Paste the following there, be sure to change your username, mine says “adam” yours does not and this will make it not work. Save it in the Dropbox/Public folder and give it permission to execute as well. Here’s the file:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Exec=/home/adam/Dropbox/Public/getPublicLink.sh
Name=My Application
Icon=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/status/aptdaemon-update-cache.png
#Required for double-click running and Drag-andDrop files into this icon.
#reference: http://linuxcritic.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/anatomy-of-a-desktop-file/
Name[en_US]=Get Public Dropbox Link

 

Now you can  simply drag files from your public folder on top of the “Get Public Dropbox Link” file and a window will pop up showing you the public link. from here, simply copy and paste that link to where ever you need.

Information_903

 

Adam-Atom

W.A.S.P. 2.0 Manual and Schematic Online

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WASP2-0_smallA while back, we released all the manuals for SheekGeek kits like the WASP Original and Black Widow Walker manuals to the public.  We have a newer version of the WASP called the WASP 2.0 and we are releasing the Manual and schematic for it.  We’d love to see what modifications you can make with the new WASP! Feel free to post in the comments.

Tips and Tricks to Optimize Your Photo Archiving Process

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Archiving family photos can be a monumental task. Scanning tons of photographs, editing them, and keeping track of what information might be on the backs of those photographs is generally an incredibly tedious process. Especially when there are hundreds or thousands of photographs to scan!

Using the GIMP scripts and plug-ins described in our earlier posts, you can easily improve your throughput when dealing with these images. This post will discuss a few things to keep in mind to help make the process even faster.

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