Joe Beuckman

K-Means Clustering Code

December 24th, 2009

I’ve been having a hard time trying to train a Self-Organizing Map to categorize a large pool of short documents by my selected keywords. The initial results were promising but I couldn’t adjust the training parameters well enough to train the error sufficiently low that I would be confident of the categorizations, even after several days of training.

Some nice folks on comp.ai.neural-nets suggested a few other techniques and I’ve implemented simple routines to perform K-Means Clustering. The categorization of my 3300 documents by 323 keywords now takes less than 10 seconds.

download my k-means c source

(This source uses raw float arrays and includes a function to categorize the vectors in a FANN training data struct.)

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Tags: ai, mathematics, programming
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Automatic Closet LEDs

December 20th, 2009

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Tags: america, electronics
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ASCII Cutting Board

October 26th, 2009

Lauren gave me a classic 10″ radial arm saw for my birthday after we moved (and have a garage). I’ve been testing its ability to cut accurately. Ripping this walnut and maple to one inch felt reasonably dangerous and I’ll probably build the jig suggested in the original manual for ripping small stock.

This row encodes the ASCII character “e”. “a” is sitting on the table.

I decided the next cutting boards will be end-grain, so the rest of the letters for this one should be glued from single squares. This produces a less-accurate row but got the job done.

Here are the rows of the word I planned to spell.

I let the last glue setup cure for 72 hours.

Sanded flat, edged on the router table, wetted to raise the grain and sanded to a smooth finish. Then, mineral oil. Extra points if you can tell me what word is encoded.

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Tags: ascii, cna, tiles
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12-bit Color from Arduino to Nokia 6100 Knock-off LCD

September 21st, 2009

This code draws a Mandelbrot pattern on the 132×132 Nokia 6100 type screen with Epson controller (will not work for the Phillips) from an Arduino. I started with the code example from this post and made some optimizations- especially to the serial communication code. Then I ported the Mandelbrot algorithm from here. The zoom level and viewport into the fractal can easily be changed or made to update each loop. But it’s slow.

World's first 8Mhz pinewood derby car with 12-bit color?

source

To send serial data a bit faster, one might reserve an entire Arduino port and rotate/clock, rotate/clock and so on, instead of repeatedly testing the data byte and flipping a single pin. I still haven’t been able to engage the 8-bit color mode, which would again speed things up since I could send one byte per pixel instead of three bytes for two pixels. I used an 8Mhz and would only use 16Mhz or higher setup if I did this again. When will there be a 2Ghz Arduino? Then it might look more like this:

(mouse left/right for pan, up/down for zoom)

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Tags: arduino, electronics, fractal
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Clementine, Stay!

September 8th, 2009

Our house had fence on two sides and we needed to complete the circuit to keep in puppy.

The hardest part was getting started.

Simple design stolen from the neighbor’s fence.

A few measurements and…

…tons of pickets to cut.

The back gate touched on the side at first, but a quick ratcheting and extra brace put it right.

The front!

The back latch works great.

The back!

All finished up with copper toppers and some Behr semi-transparent deck and fence stain. I read the reviews of this stuff too late — evidently it’s terrible. Luckily we only put on one coat but it’s way more orange than the picture on the can (or here) would have you believe. Next time we’ll read up first and test on a scrap.

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Tags: Clementine, fence
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Laser Pointer First Attempt

August 21st, 2009

Here is a prototype two-axis pointing device designed to aim a laser diode’s beam. It operates via USB to Arduino with my modified Firmata and AS3 Glue code and two EasyDriver stepper motor controller boards.

This design is movable over virtually the entire sphere but it’s difficult to build a well-aligned bearing and gear or pulley system. And, the azimuth structure is massive enough to cause a lot of bounce when it starts/stops.

The rubber timing belts also contributed to the bounce.

Ultimately, the position was not repeatable. So, I’m working on a new prototype that will swivel on a lazy susan bearing and elevate across a sturdy hinge. The stepper motors will be joined to threaded rods which thread into t-nuts attached to the moveable parts. No play and no bounce should provide for positional repeatability.

And this time I have very good help.

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Tags: arduino, laser
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Supporting a 2W Laser Diode

August 6th, 2009

Left to Right:

Monster transformer from Mexico

Monster capacitor from Japan

Monster rectifier

High current 12V power supply (schematic)

Classroom style ammeter (YES, 2.3AMPS!!!)

Constant-current driver circuit (schematic)

2W laser diode w/TEC on a big heatsink

Below that diode: The faint red glow of 808nm love

Notes:

The thicker pair of wires on the transformer are the output - not mains. I found this out by tripping the circuit breaker a couple times. It’s so nice having a house!

Plugging this thing in caused a spark in the mains connection, which failed after a few seconds making me fear the worst for the laser. Turns out my soldering iron is not hot enough to bond to the heavy steel connectors so I hit them with a hammer to make them touch the cables. Works great.

This is the first circuit I’ve built where the fan really is necessary. The far transistor on the power supply tends to heat up and lose current without the fan.

This nice diode has a TEC right in the case, so I am just running that series with the diode from the driver circuit.

Big shouts going out to ABC Electronics, Ax-Man and especially heruursciences.

Next up: 7WATTS.

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We Bought This House

June 8th, 2009

The front is better looking in person.

newly built porch “wired for surround sound”

the kitchen? it’s marvelous.

seller is a cabinet maker and made these

concrete counter tops

dining room

original 1956 tiles

craftroom spaceship

immaculate new laundry room

balcony patio patio garden

View Larger Map

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Tags: america, cake, obama, tiles
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New Spaceship

May 6th, 2009

I did some home-mixing tonight for the first time since moving in with Lauren.

I mix music; Gatsby sends mixed signals.

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Easter Lamb Cake

April 12th, 2009

Grandma Beuckman made a lamb cake every Easter growing up, so I laughed a bit when Lauren’s mom produced their iron lamb cake mold. She gave it to Lauren (wizard of desserts) to try this year and I think we restarted their tradition today. An attempt yesterday afternoon failed miserably so I decided to document today’s go in case we got it right. And we did, somewhat.

All criscoed up and floured

Batter up.

No face? More batter in the head next year...

We decided the outside of the mold looks more like a lamb. The inside shape is creepy. But it stands!

7-minute frosting was difficult to control but light enough not to pose much risk of further damage to the lambage and also great for the facial reconstructive surgery.

Careful not to get green on the white!

Baaa

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Joe Beuckman

K-Means Clustering Code

Automatic Closet LEDs

ASCII Cutting Board

12-bit Color from Arduino to Nokia 6100 Knock-off LCD

Clementine, Stay!

Laser Pointer First Attempt

Supporting a 2W Laser Diode

Left to Right:

Notes:

We Bought This House

New Spaceship

Easter Lamb Cake

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