Music Updates

Made some updates to some of my tunes a few days ago, also added some new ones. I put the dates next to them.

My friend Jorge did the guitars on most of these songs. He plays drums for FUZIL.
Their band site is at:
http://www.myspace.com/fuzilguaymas

Music!

I added a music player to the blog!

These songs are still in progress, but I've put a lot of work into them, so tell me what you think.

You can listen to them at the right by pushing the play button. They come up in a floating media player.

Enjoy!

Wii Custom Sensor Bar

I have a little larger room now and was noticing that the Wii remotes werent really responding well on the sides. I decided I needed a higher powered sensor bar.

The sensor bar has IR LEDs inside of it. The wii knows the pointer location and roll by tracking these two LED points with an IR filtered camera inside the wii-remote.

Normal LEDs have a viewing angle of about 45 degress, meaing you can be right in front of them or up to 23 degress to the direct left or right. Outside of that range, the wii pointer will start to glitch. This is what I wanted to get rid of. I also wanted higher power so I could stand farther away. So the normal viewing angle is like this

And I wanted a wider viewing angle like this

So I decided to build my new sensor bar with multiple LEDs on each side, pointing out in different directions, thereby expanding the viewing angle of the wii remote camera.

Here's the simple schematic. I used a 5V wall adapter, but soon I'll be hooking it up so it will turn on wirelessly with the Wii. That step is pretty low on the priority list right now, though.

I used some little hobby PLCs from Radio Shack and colored them black with a marker. Then I used 2 sided mounting tape to attach them to the projector screen case. I wanted them at the top of the screen because I've noticed I get wrist cramps with them at the bottom.

I left the LEDs sticking out about 1/2" from the board, this way I could point them around to find the optimized angles for all the play positions in the room.

Finished Product!

New Home Theater Shelf

So my friend Josh is a carpentry genius. He used to have a business doing cabinetry so I talked him into building an entertainment shelf for my home theater. I drew it up in google SketchUp. This is what I wanted:

I wanted to have my electronics next to the projector itself, so I could slide my DVD player and other stuff into the shelves.

He brought it by last night, and Here's how it looks all hooked up.

I also put a light underneath it for Vicki to do her cross-stitching without having to turn the overhead light on. You can also see that I put the subwoofer on top.
So here's the finished product:
It looks friggin awesome. I used wire anchors this time and routed the wires around the moulding so they wouldn't stick out or run across the floor.

This time I didn't actually have that many wires to route across the floor though, because now that the projector is next to the electronics, only the front 3 speakers needed longer wiring.

In fact, Josh made little shelves for the speakers as well. He even made a new shelf for my center speaker.