TakeItApart dot Net

I've been taking things apart since I could hold a screwdriver, and co-founded TakeItApart in 2006. It's a photoblog that attempts to answer, "Hey, I wonder what's inside this thing", or, "So how does this thing work, exactly?". It shows what everyday gadgets look like on the inside, and how to take things apart. The disassembly guides help visitors to better understand and maintain their electronic devices. In the words of Mister Jalopy, "If you can't open it, you don't own it."

Since its creation, TakeItApart has been featured on several media outlets. On 3 May 2006, it was featured on the LifeOnline with Bob Parsons radio show. On 21 July 2006, it was featured on the BBC News Website and on the international BBC World television channel. On 22 July 2006, it held a front-page slot on digg.com. It is visited by thousands of visitors each month.

A social replacement for the current photo blog implementation is in the works, to be released at TakeItApart.com.

Roadtrip Timelapse

During a February roadtrip between Poughkeepsie and Rochester, NY, I created a timelapse video.

An SLR was strapped in to the passenger seat and set to capture stills every five seconds. Since a traditional camera battery could not power the camera for all five hours of the trip, I needed another way to power the camera. An extra battery pack was sacrificed for the cause.
The innards of the battery were removed, and an LM317-based power supply was connected to the terminals. A single 10K-Ohm resistor was added to trick the camera into thinking that the battery's original heat protection thermister was still present. The entire setup was powered by the car's 12V cigarette lighter.

Frames of the video were captured with a Canon 350D and 17-40mm f/4L lens at Av ~11, ISO 800. Canon EOS Utility performed interval image capture and storage via USB. The stills were merged into a timelapse with Quicktime Pro.

Wearable Human Senses

In conjunction with several other students, I worked with RIT professor Dr. Bob Kremens to create a real-time sensor demonstration for the ImagineRIT festival. The project aimed to instrument five students with wireless sensor packages that would report temperature, sound power, GPS, and irradiance values.

I was responsible for the data storage and data visualization components. I wrote an extensible program to collect sensor readings via RS232 and store them in a MySQL database. For the visualization, values for temperature, sound power, and irradiance were overlaid on top of a WASP aerial image of the RIT campus. Each student was represented as a "spiky blob," with varying size, color, and edge roughness. Processing was used for the visualization, and the data collector was written in Visual C#.

Schema-less Data Store for Bioinformatics Annotation Data (ORNL)

During the summer of 2010, I created a prototype database for bioinformatics annotation data using CouchDB and a custom web service based on Django.

Sensorpedia: iPhone Application (ORNL)

While working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory during the summer of 2009, I created an iPhone application for Sensorpedia. The goal of the project was to develop a software application that can be run on a mobile computing device and used to transmit distributed data readings from citizens and first responders in near-real time. This application would permit citizens to rapidly report event information, such as disaster occurrences, security anomalies, and accounts of emergencies. It would allow field users to contribute to Sensorpedia. See the presentation below to get a gist of the motivations behind it (view at full screen to see the presenter text):

The Sensorpedia mobile application was designed to capture data from the iPhone's sensors and relevant context as quickly as possible. User interaction for the Sensorpedia mobile application was prototyped with sketch-based interfaces. This technique allowed for rapid iterative design, and greatly accelerated the development process. The Sensorpedia mobile application is implemented in Objective-C, and utilizes native Apple Foundation and Cocoa classes. It adheres to the model-view-controller paradigm for software development.

The creation of the mobile application necessitated an associated web service, which collects and registers data with Sensorpedia. The web service communicates with devices using JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and publishes data using the Atom Syndication Format (ATOM). Users maintain accounts to allow each user to be associated with multiple devices. Data are associated with users through an API key. Each of the sensors present in the device and a generic content block are represented in the data model.The associated web service is implemented in Python and utilizes existing libraries for its web server gateway interface (WSGI), image processing, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), and database interaction. Data are stored in a relational SQLite database and can be retrieved through a Representational State Transfer (REST) interface.

The Sensorpedia iPhone app is currently in transition from the simulator, and is not yet available in the App Store.

Sensorpedia: Sensor Integration (ORNL)

• How To: Interface an irradiance sensor with Sensorpedia
• How To: Interface a light color sensor with Sensorpedia and serve Atom!
• How To: Interface an ultrasonic rangefinder with Sensorpedia via Twitter
• How To: Setup a Sensorpedia Sensing Station

While at Oak Ridge National Laboratory during a June-February coop, I wrote several demonstration guides showing how to interface a few different kind of sensors with Sensorpedia.

HFIRvision (ORNL)

HFIRvision was a prototype I developed while at Oak Ridge National Laboratory during part of a June-February coop. It was an example tool designed to provide emergency management information for one of the research reactors at ORNL. It provided a common operating picture, and included GIS, an event feed, KML overlay, alert notifications, and real-time emergency procedure evaluation.

Buffalo River Monitoring Project (RIT)

I worked on the Buffalo River Monitoring Project with Dr. Bob Kremens in the summer of 2007. The project aimed to gather, store, and present data from a series of distributed sensor buoys placed in the Buffalo River.

The sensors communicated wirelessly to a central server which allowed students and interested individuals to access the data from an easy-to-use web interface. A second mode of data access was provided for researchers so that they could download a monolithic file containing a cumulative log of recorded data. The framework used for this project was designed to be easily adapted to other datalogging applications.

BASIC Stamp-based Lightmeter

In winter of freshman year, I built a BASIC Stamp-based lightmeter for the Computers, Instruments, and Data Acquisition Techniques course taught by Dr. Bob Kremens. It used a TSL230 light-to-frequency converter to sample irradiance, and a BASIC Stamp microcontroller to handle logic and output to an LCD display.

Social Networks

• 
  Facebook
• LinkedIn
• @tomkinstinch on HackerNews

Amateur Radio

KC2WMO

I'm just getting started in the world of amateur radio, but already love the intimate connection to physics and DIY electronics. It is exciting to be able to participate in good-natured global communication, and to be available for service in times of need.
I especially enjoy the interchanges on RIT's K2GXT 2-meter repeater.

Video

• YouTube
• Vimeo

Geocaching

profile: throughthekeyboard

I really enjoy geocaching, it's a great excuse to get outside and explore new places. It's about as close to treasure hunting as we can get.

Wikipedia

user: tomkinsc