Last month I decided to start brewing my own beer.  I’ve had the idea (and the necessary reference material) for a few years now, but there was always one reason or another for holding off.   Now that I finally have the space and resources to keep several batches going at once, I decided it was finally time to take the plunge.

After reading a few books to get an idea of how the process works, I picked up a brew kit and some recipe kits from Midwest, an online home brewing store that has received a lot of praise in the homebrew community.  Lincoln has a decent homebrew shop, but even with shipping costs I ended up saving a ton by going with Midwest.  I did buy a few things from Kirk’s Brew, like a brew pot and a few other odds and ends.  I think Midwest will probably be getting most of my business while I’m still in the kit brewing phase, but I may go to Kirk’s if I start designing my own recipes.

Beer making isn’t a fast process.  It takes 4-6 weeks before the beer is drinkable, sometimes longer if it’s a complex beer and the flavors need time to mellow.  I worried over a few minor mistakes on the first batch (a brown ale), but yesterday was bottling day and and a quick taste test proved I didn’t make any horrendous errors.  It pretty much just tasted like flat beer.  I won’t know for sure for another few weeks, as the bottles still have some aging and carbonating to do before they’re truly ready.

While the brown ale was fermenting, I went ahead and whipped up a batch of German apfelwine, which is a dryer-tasting version of hard cider.  That has another week or two until she’s ready to bottle.  I’m also planning to brew my second batch of beer tomorrow afternoon (an English bitter).  If I stay interested (and my concoctions actually taste good) I’m going to try and crank out two batches a month.  Each batch makes two cases, so that should keep me pretty boozed up for the near future.

I received my two MIDI Shield circuit boards from Batch PCB over the weekend.  I’m happy to report that they came out 100% error free.  However, I think I’m going to make one or two minor tweaks before getting a bunch produced.

MIDI requires the use of the Arduino serial port pins, which are also used by the on-board USB programmer.  With my current design the MIDI Shield has to be unplugged before the Arduino can be programmed, which is a pain in the ass.  Instead, I’m going to add a jumper to the MIDI Shield.  Remove the jumper, program the Arduino, then put the jumper back on.  Much better than pulling the whole shield off every time you need to upload code.

The other changes I need to make are to the silk screen.  I forgot to label the positive leads of the LEDs and some of the other lettering is a bit wonky.  All easy fixes that won’t require an additional prototype to be made.

I also need to create a few examples to get people started coding with this thing.  I spent about half an hour coding up a MIDI theremin, but it’s definitely a little rough around the edges.  It works, but I think I need to limit the note range to one or two octaves instead of all 128 MIDI notes.  I might also try to create a dead-simple 16 step sequencer.  With only two buttons and two knobs, it’s going to be pretty primative, but it’ll show people what kind of things the Arduino (and MIDI) can do.  If I come up with anything cool I’ll post a youTube video.

Stella had her first hiccup last week.  I noticed that she was having some difficulty accelerating from a complete stop on the way to work.  On the way home it was bad enough that I had to gun the engine to keep her from completely stalling out.  Not good.  After a little research and a post on StellaSpeed, the consensus was that it was either a clogged idle jet or a bad spark plug.  Replacing the plug didn’t do the trick, so I cracked open the carburetor and blasted the idle jet with some carb cleaner.  Problem solved!

Total cost to fix it myself: $5 and an hour of my time.  Cost if I would have gone to the mechanic: Probably at least $100 in labor to come to the same conclusion.  Hopefully all my future Stella troubles will be this easy to fix.

I decided to do a slightly more advanced version of my MIDI Shield this weekend.  It has MIDI in and out just like my prototype, but also has two LEDs, two buttons, two potentiometers, and a photocell.  All the additional components are optional, so if I just need a simple MIDI interface for a particular project I won’t have to bother with soldering on the extra stuff.

I finished up the PCB design today, but I had to make the board double sided, so I can’t make a prototype at home.  It’ll probably take two or three weeks to get my new prototype back from BatchPCB, but I’ll post some more info once it arrives.  Hopefully I have all the bugs worked out and I won’t need to do any additional revisions.

If my full version generates enough interest I’ll probably sell the boards, or even produce a small run of kits.  I’ll also release the board files and schematics under the creative commons license once I know I have all the kinks worked out.

Here’s a sneak peek of what the layout will look like:

I picked up an Arduino microcontroller and a few shields from Lady Ada last week.  I use PIC microcontrollers quite a bit, but I’ve been wanting to switch over to the Atmel AVR because it has better support for C programming.  The Arduino is AVR-based and their IDE uses C so it looked like a good place to start.

One of the things that makes the Arduino so cool are the “shields” you can buy.  They stick on top of the Arduino and let you add additional functionality without the need to breadboard or worry about which wire goes to which pin.  I’ve seen shields for motor controllers, wave playback, LCD screens, ethernet…just about anything you can imagine.  However, I was surprised that no one had come out with a MIDI shield.  I had seen a few posts on the Arduino forums about people breadboarding MIDI interfaces, but no one had bothered making a shield.  My main use for microcontrollers is for music projects, so I decided to make my own.

MIDI I/O isn’t too terribly hard, so it only took me an evening to draw up the schematic, design a circuit board, and etch a prototype.  I made a few minor mistakes, hence the green jumper wires in the photos below.  Still, not bad for an evening of screwing around with Eagle and playing with volatile chemicals.  In fact, it was easy enough that I might just get real boards manufactured and flesh this out into a complete kit to sell on the site.  I can’t be the only person out there who wants to play around with MIDI on the Arduino.  Maybe I’ll add a few knobs, a light sensor and a button or two to version 2.0.  That way people could have a few more options for manipulating MIDI data.

I just got a new scooter.  A beautiful Avocado green Stella with white wall tires.  It’s basically a modernized Vespa PX150.  In fact, they’re made in an old PX150 factory.  The only big difference between the Stella and it’s Vespa brother is a slightly improved engine and breaking system.

So why buy a scooter that was state of the art in the 70’s?  Here’s where the “science” comes in.  While electronics and computers are very familiar to me, I know next to nothing about engines.  However, I have always been interested and have performed several minor acts of vehicle surgery in the past.  The Stella, like the Vespa, was designed with the intent of being 100% user serviceable.  Theoretically, all you need is a little mechanical aptitude and a copy of the Haynes manual to keep one running.  It also helps to have a brother that’s a certified 2-stroke mechanic.

So while my new Stella should give me a few years of trouble-free service, I’m actually looking forward to my first mechanical problem to solve.  I definitely can’t say the same about my car.

This week I started the process of adding a M.A.M.E. PC to my cocktail arcade cabinet. The PC is a 3.33GHz Celeron D with 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. Probably a little overboard for a MAME PC, but I wanted some room to grow if I need it. I also wanted to make sure I had adequate horsepower to play games like Street Fighter II and the Metal Slug series, which can be problematic on slower MAME machines. The whole PC was under $300, but I also had to buy an ArcadeVGA card and a J-PAC from Ultimarc so that I could interface the PC with my vintage-spec arcade cabinet.

I decided to use Windows XP as the OS. I considered both Linux and DOS, but XP ended up being the best fit for my needs. I also installed a VNC client, an FTP server, and a wi-fi card on the box so I can administer and configure the machine remotely. That way I don’t end up elbow deep in arcade guts every time I need to make a simple software change. The arcade screen looks great with MAME, but using XP with a 640×480 interlaced screen is a nightmare…that’s where VNC comes in handy.

Finally, to handle sound I got a little unconventional and decided to modify a small car amplifier and an ATX power supply to drive the four 4″ speakers in my arcade cab. Most MAME builders just modify an existing set of PC speakers, but I wanted to try something a little different. Modding the ATX supply to work with the car amp was a lot easier than I expected and my bench test with a pair of junk speakers and a CD player sounded great.

Right now all I need to do is install the amp and tidy up the wiring and I’m done. I’ll post some pictures of the guts when it’s finished.

A few years ago I purchased an FC Twin and went on a NES and SNES cartrige buying spree, but a lot of the games I really wanted (RPGs, mostly) were incredibly expensive. I also wanted to play some of the Japanese RPGs and platformers that never made it over to the states, but those required a Japanese SNES and any ROMs that had been translated to English required an emulator.

As much as I love emulators, they just aren’t the same as playing on the real hardware. I have a PC hooked up to my TV that I’ve used with NES and SNES emulators in the past, but I’d much rather use the FC Twin or my SNES if I’m going to sit down and do some serious playing. For years I wished I could buy a flash cart for my SNES that worked the same way my Gameboy, GBA, and DS flash carts did.

It took some hunting, but there are a few dark corners of the interweb that provide just such a device. The one I found is made by Tototek. It works with about 90% of the SNES ROMs out there, and more importantly, works with homebrew and modded SNES ROMs, which includes the fan-translated RPGs. The device can also copy SNES carts for creating your own ROMs, and is capable of copying and writing save games to original SNES carts. The only ROMs it won’t work with are ones that required additional chips. Super Mario RPG, Mario Cart, Pilotwings, Star Fox, Yoshi’s Island, and the Mega Man X games are just about the only “good” games that fall into this category. I already own cartridges for all of these, so this really wasn’t an issue for me.

My only gripe is that the flasher requires a parallel port, so any laptop users are out of luck. Luckily I just switched from a laptop to a desktop, so this isn’t an issue for me. It might make using this thing a little tough in another 4 or 5 years, though.

A few years ago I purchased a Linux based gaming system. The GP2X was designed to be as powerful as the DS and PSP, but completely open source. There was a lot of buzz about all the emulators that would soon be ported to the system. I had always dreamed of having a portable SNES/NES, so I joined the pre-order list and was one of the first people to get my hands on one.

Unfortunately, the GP2X got off to a rocky start. The initial firmware was buggy and the company was slow to release an SDK, which kept all but the most basic software from being ported to the system. The only thing I ever found useful was the built in DIVX support, which I used to watch movies any time I traveled. After about a year without any decent software my GP2X was boxed up and forgotten.

Fast forward nearly two years.

While I was searching for some long-lost Magic: The Gathering cards in the attic I rediscovered my GP2X. I was curious to see if any progress had been made on the console I initially had so much hope for. After a quick check of the GP32X Site I was amazed at all the software that was available. Just about every gaming system you could think of has been ported over to the GP2X, with many emulators working with near 100% compatibility. My dream of a portable SNES/NES is finally a reality, but I was also able to install Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, emulators for the Sega Genesis and Neo Geo, and even LucasArts adventure games. Everything I installed worked perfectly.

The best part is how easy it was to install it all. I managed to get more than half a dozen emulators up and running in only a few hours. That’s probably less time than I would spend setting up the same software on my PC. The GP2X has definitely come a long way.

I thought I’d do a quick review of the company I purchased my cocktail cabinet kit from, arcade depot.

Packaging

Packaging was excellent. Everything was bubble wrapped and the outside edges of the box were lined with plywood to prevent any damage. Everything arrived without a scratch.

Quality

This definitely isn’t your average piece of Wal-Mart furniture. The plywood is very high quality and the staining and sealing is excellent. Everything fits together perfectly and has perfect right angles. Most arcade cabinets sold on the internet are MDF with a fake wood-like veneer. The arcade depot cabinets use real wood veneer over high quality plywood, which looks better and will probably hold up to more abuse than an MDF cabinet would.

Assembly

If you can put together flat-pack furniture from a big box retailer, you can build this cocktail cabinet. The instructions were fairly easy to follow, but there are a few things left to your own ingenuity and imagination. I would definitely recommend doing a dry run before gluing each part to make sure you know where everything goes. I would also recommend having some clamps, as there is quite a bit of gluing involved. I was able to assemble everything except the table top and vertical control panels in one evening.

I ran into a few snags with the Ultimarc joysticks I used, but that isn’t arcade depot’s fault. The mag-sticks fit in the vertical panels just fine, but they were too long for the horizontal panel. I ended up using a hole saw to put 2″ holes all the way through the bottom of the panel. The holes won’t be visible (unless someone happens to be lying on the floor) and the joysticks work fine.

Turnaround

For a product that is made-to-order I thought the turnaround was very good. I placed my order on March 15th and my shipment arrived on April 4th. A 3 week turnaround isn’t bad considering they built the whole thing from scratch, including staining and sealing the wood and installing the T-molding.

Communication

This is the one place I feel that arcade depot fell a little short. arcade depot is an online company and email is the only way to reach them. Unfortunately, they weren’t very quick in responding to my email inquiries. Most emails were returned within two or three days, but there were two emails that took almost an entire week and one email never received a response at all. I also didn’t receive a tracking number for my package, even though I requested one and got an email from arcade depot saying they would send it.

Maybe I’m impatient, but two or three days is pretty sad and a week is just unacceptable. My perception may be skewed because I work in IT and I’d probably be fired if I didn’t respond to an email the same day I received it.

Conclusion

Over all, I thought my experience with arcade depot was very good. I would definitely order from them again. It also doesn’t hurt that they’re the only game in town for cocktail kits that aren’t made of crappy MDF. If they improved communication a little I don’t think I’d have a single bad thing to say about them.