Author Archive: Brian
Display Systems 19S-8 Vintage Eggcrate Display Technical Overview
For those of you that REALLY want to know the inner details behind my Vintage Light Display project, I made a technical overview video. You might be sorry you asked.
Display Systems 19S-8 Vintage Eggcrate Display Clock
There was a reason that CBS and other television networks used these type of displays on game shows when they had bright studio lights to contend with. The light is piercing from these!
Tonight, I got 22 wires soldered on 22 pins to mate with a Molex connector on the back of each display. Both digits are now directly connected up to the relay board. The software I developed can display an arbitrary 2-digit number, and then count up or down from that number until it reaches 00 or 99.
This has been a cool project! I’ll probably try to make a more detailed video in the future on the parts I selected and how all this works together.
Check out how this display worked on “Classic Concentration” hosted by Alex Trebek in the late 1980s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1izUPd87wmw
Display Systems 19S-8 Vintage Eggcrate Display
Logic and software I wrote is all good! The correct plug didn’t come for the displays so I’ll have to hook the rest up later, but this is super cool!
A relic and mainstay of all classic 80s gameshows…
Initial Test of a Display Systems 19S-8 Vintage Eggcrate Display (Light Bulb Matrix), common to television game shows of the 1970s-1990s.
This is one of two Display Systems 19S-8 eggcrate displays that I purchased from Surplus Sales of Nebraska. I plan to integrate both into a working count up/count down timer powered by a ESP8266 microcontroller module and a couple of relay boards.
This eggcrate display uses a common 28 volt DC power source on one pin. Then, depending on which pin the ground is connected, will light each of one possible digit: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 and $. It’s also possible to display strange characters by connecting multiple grounds between pins.
I plan to use a single 150 watt 12 volt DC power supply to power dual boost controllers that will output the needed 28 volts. The 12 volts is still needed for the relay boards. The ESP8266 module will be connected to a 5 volt DC output from the relay board.
In both displays, I only needed to replace one lamp upon receiving them. The lamp is a common 1820 mini-bayonet style incandescent.
It’s December 7th.
It was a sobering experience for Bethany and I to be on a ship in Pearl Harbor in February of 2013, but absolutely nothing compared to what people experienced here on today’s date in 1941. 9 quarts of oil still float to the water’s surface from the USS Arizona EACH DAY as a permanent reminder of the sacrifices made here 79 years ago. Bullet holes etched in the hangar glass on Ford Island are still visible today, telltale marks of the strafing from the Japanese Zeros. Let’s not forget the sacrifices military personnel and civilians made through World War II to lead our country and our allies to victory, allowing us all to continue to live the freedom we all take for granted from time to time.
2020..a year to be thankful for
2020 was a year to be thankful for.
“Oh really?” you might ask. What was possibly so good about this horrible, pandemic year?
I believe that 2020 taught us that the simple bonds are the most important. Bonds between one and their family, between one and their friends, and between one and their spirit. Helping one another out, enjoying simple times together when able.
It was the freedom, rather, “society’s permission” to explore a little out of our comfort zones. To pivot around in our lives which many of us may have been guilty of being complacent in. Each one of us found something new about ourselves to help build us into that person we want to become.
Grace. We know that not all of us have had a smooth go at it. And given these unique times, we’ve found the strength to be more flexible with our fellow man.
On a personal note, I can say that I am thankful for a short recovery from my injury back in June. It is a weakness of mine to not ask for help when sometimes I need it, and to those that offered that help, whether through task or encouragement, I am thankful for you.
2020. This year, we have more to be thankful for than ever.
Return the shopping cart…
The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.
To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore, the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart. No one will find you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart. You gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.
A person who is unable to do this is an example of someone who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it. It is an excellent indicator of an individual’s ethics and moral philosophy.
Be the person who, in your life, does things because they are the right thing to do.
— Unknown Author
The First Computer Bug
The First Computer Bug…
In 1945, Grace Murray Hopper was working on the Harvard University Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator. On the 9th of September, 1945, when the machine was experiencing problems, an investigation showed that there was a moth trapped between the points of Relay #70, in Panel F. The operators removed the moth and affixed it to the log. The entry reads: “First actual case of bug being found.”
Grace Murray Hopper, who lived from 1906-1992, found the first computer bug while working in a temporary World War I building at Harvard University on the Mark II computer where a moth had been beaten to death in the jaws of a relay. She glued it into the logbook of the computer and thereafter when the machine stops (frequently) they say that they are “debugging” the computer.
The very first bug still exists in the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution. The word bug and the concept of debugging had been used previously, perhaps by Edison, but this was probably the first verification that the concept applied to computers.
Searles MX in Searles, MN from back in June of 2008
In 2008, there was a natural terrain motocross track in Searles, MN near New Ulm. It was open for a few years and was always a good time.