There's always something new happening around the Surf Shack. This month has been a whirlwind of day job office calls, weekend hikes, and political shenanigans, but I've managed to make progress on a few checklist items, and even squeezed in a warp speed trip to the thrift shop to pick up a Heathkit TS-4A signal generator that a friend tipped me off about. You can check out more about that on my Instagram account, but expect that to show up here once I get around to refurbishing it!
PROJECT MEGO:
My parts have arrived, and I'll be putting together the voice changer module, power supply, and final assembly over the next few weeks as well as de-yellowing the plastics through the tried-and-true "Retrobrite" process. My voice changer circuit is based on the HT8950 which is a common digital voice modulator IC from HOLTEK (Velleman uses it in their voice changer kit). In the element14 presents episode (and supplemental content), I'll walk through how the chip works and hopefully use it to give Google Assistant a reasonable facsimile of Michael Freeman's iconic voice effect from the original toy.
VHS TIME CAPSULE:
Still updating the Time Capsule with goodies from my archive of 1980s and 90s commercials. The jingles will get stuck in your head quickly, but let them tickle your brain for a while!
PROJECT TIROS:
Someone had asked for the scripts I used to automate the collection of satellite images on the Raspberry Pi satellite receiver, and I had to go looking through my archives (this was an earlier video when I wasn't quite as organized in my post-production process as I am now). I did find the original scripts by Jim Haslett that I based the project on and posted them here in my blog for archiving.
