Master Project Proposal List

In Greys Anatomy (S8E8), Christina looks after a Heart in a Box. She has a list of a million procedures she want's to do, and she is told to reduce that list - and she uses the heart as a process. She reads each one out, looks at the heart, and basically, if the procedure isn't at least half as cool as the heart in a box, it gets crossed off.

I'm going to do this process here as well. If I don't think the thing is half as cool, then I'm going to cross it off. If I think its over done, it's gone. This page is a tracker.

This page is an overview of projects which may, or may not, get worked on, mainly due to time, equipment, skills etc. They are broken down by category rather then any other order. Some are one-off projects, some are more long term things.

Rocketry Bits

Various rocketry (both solid state, liquid, and plain old water rocket) projects:

  • Sabot Vacuum Cannon. So this is a multiple part build - the first easyish bit is the vacuum cannon with the sabot, the harder bit is then as it leaves the sabot, allowing the water bottle rocket that was inside then to release its pressure and run as a rocket.
  • Better release mechanism for water rockets.
  • Biggest Rocket Ever (™). Needs some of the components from above.

Radio Bits

  • Sat Comms - A sequence of mini projects to get to the point where we're able to do an exchange with the ISS. Currently underway, building Weather sat detection. Sat tracking is done, currently looking at stepper motor options.
  • Also consider stat comms using 2.3 gig for downloading data from geo. needs a cantenna.
  • Moon Bounce - always wanted to do this, but might need a bigger antenna and a good 100W+ output (e.g. maybe a linear?)
  • Valve Amplifier - for radio ... but why not for audio at the same time?
  • Can Sat (project to develop a 'sat' in a can, not actually launch it). ESA challenge.

Astronomy Bits

  • The big Telescope Build (underway, some arguments about glass grinding)
  • Automating / tracking on little scope?
  • Better Photography (™)
  • A Moon Map (Slightly underway, some issues with good nights)

Minecraft Bits

  • Anti Cheat Detection Tooling - Project underway, using multiple techniques to detect suspicious activity.
  • Fun stats on the group.
  • Economy Tracking & Analysis (Big data on Minecraft shop transactions)
  • Helpful Bot - a full automation client to do boring repetitive tasks.

Other Bits

  • Time - Better Clock (atomic?, fountain counting) - Basically frequency dividing from a regular source. This was something that I was really keen on until studying 'time' more and accepting that it's something that just doesn't exist.
  • Pseudo Random Generator - Making sequences of random numbers, ability to analyse and measure performance of the random number generator.
  • Electronic Randomness - Using various techniques to generate noise & Chaos as inputs to the pseudo random generators
  • Mechanical Randomness - Dice roller and detector? Coin flipper? etc.
  • Railgun. Sorry, Magnetic Mass accelerator.
  • Big Screen - Building out the big screen inside the shed framework, builds. Currently underway, with its 2nd iteration currently being displayed.
  • Printer/plotter - either a hanging 'large area' printer, or similar, using servos and a pen/spraypaint to be able to paint murals on the side of buildings.
  • Fractal Generation (in progress, published and video published). Still areas to progress this explaining the box model.
  • Cathode Ray Screen

Lab Gear

  • Electron Microscope - detector and maths.
  • Spectroscopy?
  • Scales?

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