The idea was to reinterpret Andy Wahrol’s Dreamachine with nowadays possibilities. In projection technologies, not in drugs

Therefore, we decided to build a projector stand with a 45 degrees mirror in front of it. The mirror sould be able to rotate on 360 degrees, and had to be controled by the computer projecting the image.

Now we have to find a good stepper motor.
I started opening an old floppy, and an old Zip drive.

But the data sheets were to hard to find, so i finally decided to use this one because it was the same used in Epfl’s e-puck robots, witch is open source, so it was easy the find to drive sequence for this engine.
All I need now was to find a driver. I found a very usefull tutorial by Juan Manuel González on controling a stepper motor with the Wiring Board on his website, and I chose to use the same driver, the L293D.

Then I wrote the following driving sequence:

void forward(){
digitalWrite(0, HIGH);
digitalWrite(1, LOW);
digitalWrite(2, HIGH);
digitalWrite(3, LOW);
delay(time);
digitalWrite(0, LOW);
digitalWrite(1, HIGH);
digitalWrite(2, HIGH);
digitalWrite(3, LOW);
delay(time);
digitalWrite(0, LOW);
digitalWrite(1, HIGH);
digitalWrite(2, LOW);
digitalWrite(3, HIGH);
delay(time);
digitalWrite(0, HIGH);
digitalWrite(1, LOW);
digitalWrite(2, LOW);
digitalWrite(3, HIGH);
delay(time);
}


And here is the first test:

View the test video

I remembered Smarty Pants, a perl script that changes typographic mistakes when typing ASCII text to the correct signs formatted into html entities.

It was easy job to make it a Coda plugin so I asked John Gruber if he would be agree to let me distribute this plugin. Here it is!

Smarty Pants 1.5.1 for Coda
Copyright and release note in the zip file.

Options:

• Enter defined values and get different sizes with the same ratio.
• Use defined ratio and get width or height from a defined witdh or height.

To do list:

• Complete the defined ratio menu with video standards.

Download Ratio 1.0

This software is provided “as is”. There are no warranties that this is appropriate for any specific use as we cannot test it on every configurations. Sigma6 cannot be held responsible for any trouble caused to your computer. Use this at your own risk.

Options:

• Fit any screen ratios or resolutions.
• Option to change background color and have a gradient or not.
• Option to change the corners color.

To do list:

• A real preference window.
• An option to change the logo on the test card.
• Center the monitor chooser images to avoid big screen to be cut out the area.
• French localisazion (or other languages).
• An option to show the test card on multiple screens simultaneously. 

Download testCard 1.0, Leopard ONLY!

This software is provided “as is”. There are no warranties that this is appropriate for any specific use as we cannot test it on every configurations. Sigma6 cannot be held responsible for any trouble caused to your computer. Use this at your own risk.