I have been working on my new art show, called PROPELLERS. For once, my art show is all one thing this time. It’s electronic and it’s kinetic and hopefully it’l all come together in the next 9 days. I’m nervous and I’m working hard.

The propellers represent ideas!

Poster by Steve

When I first got it it sort of worked but sounded really bad, to the point where listening to it was worse than not listening to a ghetto blaster at all, which is pretty bad. Rather than try to figure out what was wrong, or whether any of the electronics in a LLOYD’S brand boom box are any good at all, I replaced them with a car stereo.

Here’s what the insides ended up looking like. The main things I added are a deep cycle battery, a charging setup, and an iPod charging setup.

I hooked it up so the original power switch still turns it on, which is sweet. The button next to it, the Beat Cut button, no longer cuts the beat. Now it turns on the iPod charger. The FM STEREO light indicates that the iPod charger is on. Also, I got the green and red LEDs on the left to work as a level indicator, just like they did originally. That led setup is awesome. It’s just the lower leds in there, and then a mirror above them to double how rad they look.

Here are two little circuits I built while doing this.

The one on the left is the iPod charger. It takes the 12 volts from the battery down to 5 volts and then uses resistors as a voltage divider to let the iPod know it’s hooked to a charger. I liked building this circuit because the voltage limiter I used is one of the oldest electronic parts I have around. It’s not an antique or anything, but I bought it years ago for something and then have used it temporarily in a few other circuits and it just kept getting more stuff soldered to it, and the leads got worse and worse, and I think I still have the diagram of the pinouts somewhere from the original radio shack package. Anyways I’ve had it a long time and finally found a good use for it. I should probably add another one or two actually, because it gets pretty hot when it’s charging something.

And the one on the right is a voltage rectifier, which makes AC into something like DC. I didn’t end up using it, but it was fun to make because I had never made one before. I was going to use it to turn on the relay that connects the charger to the battery but I ended up just including another AC/DC converter because of how hot this rectifier setup got. I’m pretty sure the converter is more efficient.

Here’s the back. The power cable is just for charging the battery. the red light on the left means that it’s charging. I don’t know how long the battery lasts yet, but one day I played cds for about 4 and a half hours and it was still going strong.

Here are a couple gratuitous gifs of stuff on the boom box working. Yes!

I have already gotten another (smaller, but still pretty badass) boom box to work with. It might take me forever to get around to it.

Cut the ends off.

Drill holes for the screws.

I attached the chain using wood screws. Hopefully they hold up because if this ever falls on my toe it is going to hurt.

I would recommend using a heavy pure gold chain. But I used a $5 one from a costume shop.

There you go! Pure class.
Also, it has my name on it which might come in handy in some situations.

Here is the video we made at the Tim and Eric studios that explains what it is and encourages you to buy it.

I’ll put some pictures of it up soon too probably.

Huzzah!

For this one I opened the shutter and then ran around behind the trees and lit them up one at a time. This was the picture I was thinking about when I went to the woods that night.

This one I just took along the way. All the light on the pylon is from me. I’d like to try something like this again but with a shorter exposure so the stars don’t blur like that.

Happy Fall!

And I wasn’t going to put it online because it’s so dumb and because I wasn’t sure what the maker of the movie would think. Maybe he would tell me to knock it off. But then my co-worker Ben emailed it to him, and he liked it! Here’s what he said:

Ahoy hoy,

Just got forwarded this fuck compilation y’all did from American Juggalo. Holy shit. Fucking amazing. My crew and I got a kick out of it. Did I really just write that? Sorry, I’ve never used that term before, but it seems applicable.

Anyway, thanks so much. Keep doing whatever it is you do. Don’t change…don’t change.

I like to stab people,
_____________
Sean P. Dunne

 

Awesome! And Sean, if you read this, I’m sorry I let everybody know that you once said “got a kick out of it.”

Here  is the brain of it, an arduino running code by me.

Here is a close-up shot to give you a sense of the awful amount of soldering that went into this.

Talk Show sold, here are two pictures of where it lives now, in the lobby of an ad agency downtown. Not the one that I work at.

Here’s another close-up, with all the white leds on. If you are interested enough to look closely, you can see the red leds in there too. It is a lot of leds.

Painting from my recent show at Stumptown, 36″ x 36″, sold.

Here he is with the team. I’m pretty sure my mouth is in that shape because I’m saying “Fabioooooooooooooooooooo!”

I also got to take his pictures to make gifs with, because gifs are one of my specialties. Check these out:

You can also check newoldspiceguyfabio.com to see a bunch of videos that I had nothing to do with and a few that I helped to write.