CARLETON PROJECTS
Note the two holes in the small
radio telescope dish antenna located on the roof of Olin Hall.
These are the result of the recent hail storm that blew thru. The
top of the dish has lots of
dimples in it also.
The
new
sidereal clock located in the 16" dome. It gets its time from GPS
and automatically
dims as the dome gets darker or via
wireless control.
This is the
wireless control pendant that allows the operator to rotate the dome
clockwise or
counter-clockwise and then stop
its rotation. It
also has buttons to control the intensity of the
sidereal clock display and an indicator to notify when the RF link's battery is low.
The pendant
also has the cool abiltiy to illuminate all the buttons red when it is
picked up. It does this by
sensing the hand's capacitance. This allows the operator to see
the buttons while working in
a darkened dome.
Located in
the center of the aluminum cylinder is a Burr-Brown OPT101
photodiode/amplifier
chip. It is powered by a
9 volt battery
inside the box, and the signal is tapped off and output
on a BNC connector. The cylinder accepts 12 mm optical filters
such as narrow bandwidth
interference types.
This is a
handy op amp amplifier box for use in labs. It is battery powered
and allows differing
gains to be selected. It uses a precision op amp powered by a 9
volt battery. The negative
voltage is generated by a charge pump converter. The label on the
diecast aluminum box
was created in Microsoft WORD and printed on a sheet of label paper and
then cut
to fit the top.
This is the guts
of a time delay relay for a dc powered compressor. It uses an 8
pin Microchip
PIC microcontroller to monitor the 24 volt dc supply. If the
supply
goes out of
range the relay
turns off. Once the power is restored at its operating
specification there is a 10
minute delay
before the relay is turned back on. This gives the compressor
time to equalize
pressures
before trying to start again as might typically happen after a power
outage.