Today I had a great time going to Maker Faire in San Mateo. It really is inspirational for one’s own projects to see other neat work being done.

I’m currently busy working on a couple of things, but I realize it has been a while since I’ve posted updates on anything I’ve done. Back in September of last year I put together a DMX-512 level converter breakout board for my EasyLase USB.

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I’d previously ported and debugged the DMX portion of the driver for the board just using TTL level loopback adapters. I also went on to build the Wonderwall project using the DMX output of the EasyLase, but the level shifter and RS-485 transceivers were all on a solderless breadboard. That needed to be corrected. :)

I’m rather proud of the size of the board–especially being made of all through-hole components. It neatly plugs in to the existing headers, and I think it looks right at home where it has been mounted on the board. All the schematics to build one for yourself are available on the Müller Elektronik website. Enjoy!

I relabeled all of the bookmarks in my bookmarks bar today:

I know the usage of the symbols is non-standard, but I love looking at the beautiful text ornaments and the space efficiency. I know I’ve seen this concept somewhere else, but I just can’t remember where.

Mouse over so you may see to which link each symbol correlates.

☺

Update:
Looks like it comes from Merlin Mann circa 2004.