Downing's Basement

Downing and Oculus?

Posted: 11/07/2013 in General News
Tags: CA, Downing, New Career, Oculus VR

We shall soon see! It’s now official that I will be hopping a plane to the Gold Coast a week from today to have an interview with the team at Oculus VR!

Now most people in the tech sector know full well what Oculus is and what it’s doing to change not just the face of video games, but change the way we interact in a virtual environment. I encourage you to click the logo above to get a glimpse of what this company is about and how they were founded. I never thought that my hacker/maker hobby would hold such professional potential, especially after a few failed attempts to give it a go on my own. But we’ll put a bit of perspective to this as well. As most of you who read this blog know, I held a meet-up back in April that brought 6 amazing modders to my little corner of Concord, NH. This in itself was awesome because of both the caliber of the modders invited and distance everyone traveled to attend. It meant a great deal to me to have them willing to make the trip and was all the more amazing when it actually played out the way it did!

Now, 3 of those 6 that came to the meet-up are now employed at Oculus, sooo yeah…that says something about the company I keep in terms of the hacker/maker circles I’m a part of. And that’s not an arrogant remark, it just states that maybe this hobby of mine has grown a bit more than I thought it was and suddenly I have a chance to be a part of the big league!

I don’t know where this will end up. I’m scared shitless to be all honest with you. I’ve never been to CA, never left NH, no idea if I’ll like the life style, no idea what kind of pressures it will bring having to be on both sides of the country for a time as well. But I do know that good opportunities are seldom given, great opportunities are seldom available and life changing opportunities are only earned. I hope I’ve earned this one.

Hack A Day Trinket Contest

Posted: 10/25/2013 in General News
Tags: case making, case mod, CNC Router, Downing, Hack-a-day

So for the fun of it, I decided to enter the Hack A Day Trinket contest. Basically they want to see the most creative and fun way their logo can be slapped on something so I figured why not engrave it into the back of my latest project? The PlayStation 2 Advance has now been permanently branded with my favorite blogs likeness. There are 20 winners and a cool prize (an Adafruit 5v Trinket Micro Controller) for all 20. So we shall see if they like my efforts!

The PlayStation 2 Advance Completed

Posted: 10/18/2013 in Current Project, General News
Tags: CNC Case Mod, Cross Plane, Downing, Made-By-Bacteria Forums, Modding, PlayStation 2

One of the fastest projects I’ve been able to design, cut, assemble and test, the PS2 Advance is a simple but cool looking mod that goes along the lines of the original Cross Plane and makes use of its Breakout Box. Not a portable, but just a dedicated controller with Audio/Video capabilities.

Basically this mod was done as a side project as I was waiting on parts for the N64 project as well as the Cross Plane commission that I’ve taken on. Honestly though, I did this just because I wanted to use up a bunch of loose parts I had laying around the shop and since I’d never done anything with a Sony product outside of the control pak for the Cross Plane, I thought this would be fun.

The build consisted of two AG-85’s from Poly Case. Though originally I planned to use the case as it was, I found that it was very thick and wasn’t all that comfortable to hold. So then I got to wondering, what if I could use two back halves of the case? Well, giving that a shot I found that yes, it would work and felt very comfortable and natural in the process.

A main issue I had to fix though was the top panel that holds the two halves together. I ended up having to mill out my top and I was extremely pleased with how well that fit together. Also, because the back halves were meant to have the screws just slide in and screw into the front half, I had to ditch the screws that came with it mill out a hex slot for an Acorn nut to fit into. This allowed me to use 4 #6-32 x 1.25″ pan head screws painted black to hold the two halves together nice and secure.

As mentioned before, this was just a mod made of parts I already had, with the exception of:

RDC’s PS2miniDS2 Controller Board

Which is a freaking amazing piece of modding technology. The controller board is an alternative to using the real PS2 controller board, which is beneficial as a space saver and is designed for modding situations. Because most controller layouts don’t work for 90% of the modding projects we do, we always end up just running wires to the controller and use a variety of tact switches or custom PCBs anyway, so stripping away all that from the board and replacing them with test points saves a great deal of space. The only downside is the boards need to populated with the original controller components, which can be a bit tricky as it involves hot air rework and a fair amount of time to swap them over correctly.

All in all though, I’m very happy with how this came out and in such a short amount of time. Now that this is cleared off my work bench, I can concentrate on the N64 as well as the Cross Plane commission I took on and am waiting on parts for.

The whole unemployed thing sucks like you wouldn’t believe, but if I look at it on the bright side, it has given me a chance to pursue what I love at the same time while I wait.

Anyway, here is a video of the build process and a demo of the handheld in action. Hope you enjoy!

New Projects Underway

Posted: 10/09/2013 in Current Project, General News
Tags: commissions, Cross Plane, Job, Life, MBB, Nimbus III, PlayStation 2, Portable N64

On the heels of the Cross Plane KickStarter, I’ve been hard at work on a couple of side projects that of course have been taking up a lot of the down time that I’ve currently had while waiting for a few new job opportunities to come through.

The Nimbus III

My first portable N64 since 2011’s Nimbus II portable. This one is nice because it takes a lot of the design and 3D printing knowledge I received from doing the Cross Plane project. The casing is all 3D printed, complete with screw holes in the back and the face was CNC’d to compensate of the somewhat irregular holes the 3D printer can make. What’s unique about this build as well is that it will have the option for a wireless Audio/Video transmission to the TV. The back half of the casing just came in today so in the next couple of weeks I’ll start the painting and assembly process of the main unit.

Pictured below is the receiver unit for the N64 as well as the three play plug in so up to 4 players can be playing off the portable at any given time. Two USB ports on the bottom of the Nimbus allow for a quick connection to the receiver unit if multi-player is wanted. There is a work log on MBB started for this for more info.

The AG-85 PlayStation 2 A/V Controller

This was a side project to my side project as I had to wait a fair bit of time for the back half of the N64. But no worries, this was just as fun. This is essentially the same thing as my SNES-001 Advance II that I built last year, only of course, for PlayStation 2 and One. This is fully wired and connects to the same breakout box that the original Cross Plane (Cross Plane Retro) used. This is about 90% complete and I ran into some issue yesterday while testing so I’m not sure exactly when this is going to be finished. But all this was made up of parts I already had lying around. The only thing I had to buy were the speakers. Again though, this has been a fun project and I hope I can get it working before too long! Again, a build log for more info!

The Cross Plane: A One-Off Commission

That’s right, one more Cross Plane is being built at the moment for a customer who really really wanted one! This is going to be a far superior to our prototypes as I’ve made adjustments to both the casing and location of the HDMI receiver as well as to the internal circuit boards and just general location of things. It should be pretty cool to find out just “how” superior to the prototype it will be but just tackling some of the key issues of the CP’s first run, I think this is going to be leaps above the first version.

Right now I’m just waiting for parts to roll in and will be making a post on MBB for an actual work log. I think people will love to see what goes into making one of these and since we aren’t going to produce it, might as well show it off!

So stay tuned, there will be more to come in the future here very shortly and I’ll keep you updated as frequently as I can!

The Cross Plane KickStarter Cancelled

Posted: 10/01/2013 in General News
Tags: KickStarter

So sadly, today we pulled the plug on the KickStarter campaign that we’d been working so hard for the past year to create. Though it was a hell of a ride to get that point, it is kind of sad to see it go. But, not all is a loss as the experiences we gained through this will stick with me forever and hopefully open up a few doors in the future.

With that said, I’d just like to say thank you to all the supporters of the project and those who wanted to see it succeed as much as we did. Maybe in the future something will come of this but for now, we’ll put it on the shelf of interesting items and see how we can refine the theory into something people will crave!

The Cross Plane & OUYA Hook-up to make an OUYA Portable

Posted: 09/16/2013 in General News
Tags: portable, The Cross Plane, The OUYA