I have assembled a number of electronics projects, both for my own use, and also some projects I did to assist my friend Jeff’s biology research. For the projects with Jeff, we thought they might grow into a fairly serious business some day, so I actually registered a business by the name of Waterloo Instruments. But the business was inactive most of the time, I got tired of filing sales-tax returns for $0 of income, so I shut it down.
The scientific equipment I have designed and/or built include:
- A two-channel position transducer, used to convert the position of a locust wing in flight into electrical signals representing the flap angle and forward-backward sweep angle.
- A 16-channel electromyography (EMG) amplifier, used to record the electrical signals that drive the wing-muscles of a locust.
- A 64-channel digital input board, designed for another research in Jeff’s department, to record the activity levels of birds in a number of cages.
I am also interested in vacuum-tube audio, though my work in that field has been limited. I was designing a bass amplifier using 6L6 pentode tubes, based on ideas from Kevin O’Connor’s excellent books but that project has been stalled for years.
In my quest for inexpensive construction methods for my electornics projects, I’ve come up with a few things.
- Toner-transfer circuit-board techniques
- Photographic circuit-board techniques
- Homemade decals
- Front panels