RE: I Spy With My Little Eye: The Ben Heck Shop Edition.

e14 Contributor — Sun, 07 Sep 2014 23:48:20 GMT

I love Ben's motherboard wall.

RE: I Spy With My Little Eye: The Ben Heck Shop Edition.

kidiccurus — Sat, 23 Aug 2014 00:05:45 GMT

I think I worked it out. When Ben explains the hackaday prize, he mentions smoke signals. He is going to use the fans and smoke alarms to set up an automated smoke signal setup in his shop that that can send and read signals.

RE: I Spy With My Little Eye: The Ben Heck Shop Edition.

kidiccurus — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 12:55:27 GMT

Nice label maker (PIC 1).

RE: I Spy With My Little Eye: The Ben Heck Shop Edition.

e14 Contributor — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 01:25:58 GMT

Hmmm, fans, smoke detectors, flash light, a usb charger, some 3d printed parts, I see a usb plug in there. Let me see what could he be making.

How about a true random number generator?

The Smoke detectors contain a radioactive isotope americium 243 if that isotope is isolated and placed in front of CCD Imagers they detect the alpha particles that are emitted during decay. By placing the isotope in the middle of 6 CCD imagers that are 1024x768 the particle impact points can be identified on the imagers and use as a random number that is between 1 and 210,119,944,215,000,000,000 That number is provided back to a Linux based system where it is stored in /dev/random. Strengthening the random numbers that are the basses of all cryptography. [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-69a17633-160c-4fe8-9198-f9bfc0ab7438/contentimage_5F00_938.png:16:16]

The fans are to keep him cool while working. [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-69a17633-160c-4fe8-9198-f9bfc0ab7438/contentimage_5F00_3.png:16:16]

BTW, if that is not the project you may want to note that yes CCD chips do detect alpha particle emissions from the decay of AM243 and you only need a little Copper plating lining the box to stop the low energy alpha particles. It is neat to watch as the flashes light up points on the dark display.

RE: I Spy With My Little Eye: The Ben Heck Shop Edition.

e14 Contributor — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 21:14:45 GMT

What camera did you use to film it?