TheVaporTrail

What a Great Wall!

So many steps....

I had the good fortune to be able to visit The Great Wall of China earlier this year. It was amazing. But, no matter how much you walk, there is always more.

See the big picture.

Gelato Ahead

E' Obbligatorio Il Casco Di Protezione

When I first saw this sign, from a short distance away, while wandering around Italy last summer, I thought for sure it meant that a gelato store was nearby. We were having gelato as often as we could in our travels and seeing this sign clearly indicated that more was to be had.

Clearly I don't know my Italian construction signs.

NewDimension: Triangle LED Animation

Introduction

This project uses the Simple LED Animation Kit (SLAK post or page) with red/green LEDs arranged in a triangle.

The three sides of the triangle are connected in parallel. Even though there are 18 bicolor LEDs (36 individual LED elements), the PIC16f628A is controlling only 6 bicolor LEDs (12 individual elements) and these are duplicated around the triangle.

This is the first project where I tried using bicolor LEDs. Since the SLAK platform drives at most 12 LEDs, this ends up with only 6 bicolor LEDs. And although running animations on six red/yellow/green LEDs is nice, I thought it would be more interesting to find some other arrangement. While looking around for inspiration I saw a triangle design that was made of three parallelograms. I realized that this would be a great shape for the LEDs.

Between the triangular arrangement, the red, green, and yellow color possibilities, and the transitions, it is possible to create a large number of different animations. In the current code, the animation sequence takes 10 minutes to repeat. For the video I created a build that runs each animation sequence only twice, so that the video is only 2 minutes long.

(Pictures and download link after the jump)

Notre Dame de Paris Detail

You might notice this face at the top of one corner of Notre Dame. I wonder if this is actually a rain spout. At least it seems that way in the complete picture. If it is not, then it is just plain weird, in a cool, creative way.

Bizzarro Trasporti

I don't want to know what they're carrying.

Driving around Italy last summer we spotted more than one of these trucks. Sure, it's probably a family name, but, hey, I'm not familiar with it. In fact, it seems a little...

See the big picture

Danger of Death

Ouch, that's gotta hurt!

I saw this rather severe sign in Bristol, England, a few years ago. The bottom part says Keep Out -- I sure did. I wonder what he would say about it.

May the guy on the sign is about to meet the dude on this sign

See the whole picture

Idee Luminose, Piacenza, Italy

The neon sign at the neon fabricator is broken.

This neon store is next to the Hotel Ovest, where we stayed while passing through Piancenza, Italy, last summer. By the way, the hotel was so nice, I would have stayed for a few days -- great breakfast, big, clean room, secure parking, great staff -- such a gem.

See the big picture or see the other post.

André-Marie Ampère, Currently in Lyon

A measure of current.

You know you are a nerd when the high point of a visit to Lyon is finding the statue of Ampère and being excited about it. Read about him on wikipedia.

See the big picture and accomplishments.

Neon in Piacenza, Italy

Our hotel in Piancenza, Italy, was next store to a neon fabricator. This was one little sign hanging in the front.

See the big picture.

Cannes Tomatoes

Never to be confused with canned tomatoes

Tomatoes at the market in Cannes last summer.

See the big picture.