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Vivitar Foot Repair

Vivitar

So I got this Vivitar 285 flash last year, and it’s been working great, except for one thing… the little plastic foot is no match for the weight of this thing. Eventually, it broke. Argh… To be expected though.

I found a replacement metal foot on ebay for $6.99, and I watched some YouTube video that explained replacing it. Here’s the thing though… after I watched a damn advertisement, and then a 9 minute video showing how to do the replacement, I decided that I’d help people of the future by presenting the same info in a good old no-nonsense way, with words and pictures!

Broken Foot

So here is our broken foot. Thin, old, cheap plastic. No good! Grab a tiny screwdriver and remove the foot. Don’t lose the screws, they are tiny! (Also, you will need them later!)

Remove Foot

Here is the broken one still attached, next to the new one. On the original unit, there are 4 wires. Two of them (white and green) go to the test button. You don’t need these! You just need the black and red wires. The button on the new one will work just fine with only the black and red attached.

New Foot

The black and red wires are short, so don’t cut them, you need to desolder them. If you don’t have a good soldering iron, and some soldering wick and a solder sucker, find someone who does. (Maybe your local hackerspace?) I did cut the white and green ones, and put a tiny amount of tape over the ends, just to be totally safe.

Soldered

Solder the black and red wires in place securely. It appears I put the black on in the center. I’m not sure that it matters, but YMMV and I make no guarantees. (See where I put the screws? Right where they belong, because they are so damn small I was afraid of losing them!) Also, don’t put the foot on backwards, as that would be stupid. (Disclaimer: I’m not even sure you can put it on backwards. I just like disclaimers.)

New Foot

With the soldering done, put the foot in place, put the screws in, and put the batteries back in (you did take them out before you started, right!?) and test it!

OK, there’s your short guide to replacing the hotshoe foot for a Vivitar 285 camera flash. Hopefully you read this in less time than it took me to watch that 9 minute long YouTube video.

(And yeah, the fact that this is a post about photography that has terrible photos is not lost on me. Apologies…)

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DamCamp ReCap

DamCamp

DamCamp (aka BarCamp Beaver Dam) happened on Saturday, March 24th, 2012 and this is my review…

First off, I will shout out a big thanks to Jason Gullickson, his wife, Wayland Academy, the Beaver Dam Makerspace Project, and anyone else who helped organize the event and made it happen.

Wayland

The Venue
DamCamp was held at Wayland Academy, which is a coeducational college preparatory boarding and day school in Beaver Dam. The main room was an auditorium, which was full of seats, a stage, large screen, and projector. There were two other rooms we were going to use, but we really ended up just using one other room, the lab, where the 3D printers were set up. The venue was easy to get to, and there was plenty of free parking! :)

The People
This was the smallest BarCamp I had ever been to… and that isn’t a bad thing. I remember times in BarCampMilwaukee history when some people were very focused on the numbers, and personally, I prefer quality over quantity. If the right people are there, that’s better than more people being there.

I saw people I knew who I haven’t seen in a while, met some new people, and met people IRL that I’d only met online before. What more could you ask for?

Time Lapse Bot 3

My Junk
If you’ve been to a BarCamp with me, you know I tend to bring a lot of stuff. I’ve been known to bring a photo booth, cameras, tripods, audio recording gear, tables, 200 feet of extension cords, power strips, and on and on. This time I brought Time Lapse Bot, the Egg-Bot, Friday Night Drawbot, my still camera, and not much else. It only took me about 3 trips to load in! (And I found it quite refreshing.)

Friday Night Drawbot

The Sessions
After the opening and introductions we launched into the first session… which happened to be my session. I gave a quick talk about some art robots that I like, and my take on what an art robot is (and isn’t) and then did a demo of the Friday Night Drawbot and the Egg-Bot. (Slides are here.)

I did not keep track of all the sessions, but we did one on 3D printing (there were 3 RepRaps there) and one on creating hackerspaces/makerspaces, and one on making noise with electronics. I ended up getting a lot of good info from the 3D printing session, and I’m a bit more motivated to find the time to finish my RepRap build. (Less sleep is the obvious answer!)

In conclusion, I had a good time, and I learned things. It was a small event, but I don’t think that detracted from it at all. In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing more smaller events. BarCampMilwaukee is big, and it’s awesome, but it’s also a lot of work, involving a lot of people. Perhaps both ends of the spectrum can co-exist.

If you haven’t been to a BarCamp event yet… why not!? Maybe you’re more into food than technology. Well, you should consider attending Madison Food Camp which is coming up April 7th, 2012! (Yes, I said “Food” not “FOO”, just to be clear.)

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Skill Badges

I decided to award myself some badges, I mean, no one else is gonna do it, right? Badges? Badges! Yeah, all those awesome badges you’ll find over at Adafruit… those badges.

And, no, I’m not the first to show some badges, and hopefully not the last either. At Milwaukee Makerspace we often refer to ourselves as “Skill Collectors” so these badges fit in nicely with that idea.

3D Printing

3D Printing: I think I’ve earned this one. While it’s true my RepRap is only (about) 80% done, I’ve managed to tame the MakerBot CupCake we have at Milwaukee Makerspace.


Bike Repair

Bike Repair: As a kid I used to fix my bike all the time. Also, when I was in college I managed to rescue a bike from a dumpster behind a frat house in Madison and re-built it into a completely usable ride.


Catapult

Catapult: I seem to remember building a small catapult out of scrap wood and rubber bands when I was a kid. I’m pretty sure I scared the cat with it. (Since I have no photographic evidence I should probably try to earn this one again.)


Circuit bender

Circuit bender: I supposed I did do this thing… but let’s be honest, that was pretty simple, and again, I should do much better to earn this badge.


Drawdio!

Drawdio!: I have built a Drawdio! I wasn’t really happy with it though, and I want to rebuild it into another device, but that’s a project for another time.


Dumspter Diving

Dumpster Diving: I’d actually have a sash full of these. Besides the bike I mentioned above, things I’ve gotten from dumpsters include: stereos, books, money, a photocopier, food, clothing, tools, and on and on and… I’ll stop before I embarrass my family any more.


(ESD) Electrostatic discharge

ESD (Electrostatic discharge): Have you ever grounded yourself by touching something metal before installing something new inside your computer? In the olden days when I had a Macintosh IIvx I used to put on rubber soled shoes, attached a wrist strap and treat RAM like it was highly explosive. Of course nowadays I install new RAM while eating pizza and sipping whiskey. (RAM also costs about 1/10 what it did back then.)


Hacked Kinect

Hacked Kinect: All I’ve got so far is that we did some 3D scanning of heads at Milwaukee Makerspace, and then reduced the complexity of the models, and 3D printed one of them. (It’s a work in progress.)


HTML 5

HTML 5: I’ve built more than one thing using HTML 5. The first one was probably the Evil-O-Mator.


Lasers

Lasers: Although it’s been a learning process, I’m getting good results from the Laser Cutter now.


LEDs

LEDs: I’ve definitely done projects with LEDs. My CheerLight is one of them.


Linux

Linux: Although it took me a few years to get into Linux, I now own about 3 Linux machines and administer 5 more. I like Linux. (Well, for servers anyway.)


Magic Blue Smoke

Magic Blue Smoke: Sadly, I have released the Magic Blue Smoke at lease once… and at least once it wasn’t my own equipment. Oops!


Metric System

Metric System: Ah, the good old Metric System! I really didn’t use it much until recently. Working in the RepRap world, and with the laser cutter, and other hacker/maker things, I’m starting to get used to it. (Sort of.)


Micro-controllers

Micro-controllers: Do Arduinos count? Does the Teensy count? Then yeah, I got this one…


Multimeter

Multimeter: I probably first used a multimeter in 1986, and while I still have a lot to learn about them, I can handle the basics, so that’s something.


Whew, I didn’t realize there were so many badges!

That said, I’m going to break this post into two parts, and I’ll cover the rest of my skills (or lack of skills) in the next post…

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Art Robots at DamCamp

Make Zine Egg

DamCamp is coming up on Saturday, March 24th, 2012 in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin… and I’ll be there talking about Art Robots, machines that draw, and other various nerdy things.

So besides the Egg-Bot, I’ll also have the Friday Night Drawbot there, and talk about a number of other art robots I’ve seen, and would like to someday build.

There’s been so much intersection between art and technology lately (at least in the groups I’m involved with) that I’m really hoping for a lively discussion. Of course we’ll also have a fun demo too.

Since the event is being put on by Beaver Dam’s fledgling makerspace project, I thought printing a Make Magazine egg would be a good introduction to the magazine and blog for those who might not be familiar with it yet… :)

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The Tool at Hand Challenge

One Tool
Mark Lindquist, Dowel Bowl, Hardwood Dowels, Glue, 5 1/2″ H x 36″ D, 2011. Copyright © 2011 Lindquist Studios – All Rights Reserved

If I haven’t bugged you about it yet, I’ll be at The Tool at Hand Milwaukee Challenge with a piece I created using just one tool.

There’s a little background on it here, and a post about it here, and you can RSVP on Facebook.

But besides all that, it’s at Sweet Water Organics, 2151 S. Robinson Avenue in Milwaukee, from 1pm to 5pm on March 17th, 2012. I hope to see you there.

And here’s a sneak peek at my piece:

...

Update: Enough waiting… you can see it here: rasterweb.net/raster/projects/plasticsun/